Dana Chadorf eats well even while cleaning out fridge
Never one to waste food, some of her best creations clean out the fridge
Bertha, a sweet and rambunctious dog, greets us as we enter the home of Saskatoon chef Dana Chadorf.
Dana, a transplant from New Jersey via San Diego, has made Saskatoon her home for the past eight years. Her culinary career in Saskatchewan began at the Saskatoon Club, where she is now sous chef. In addition to the many hours spent there, she also teaches cooking classes at the Local Kitchen, and once every few months she offers cooking classes in her home.
Dana is a passionate, creative cook, and her talent shines, not unlike the city she now calls home.
It’s her half-day off when we hang out with Dana in her kitchen, and she’s doing some recipe testing for an upcoming plantbased class. Two different discs of fresh pasta dough are ready to be rolled out into tagliatelle. One is made with buckwheat flour, and the other is from Saskatchewan-grown Red Fife wheat.
The pasta will be tossed in a sauce made from ingredients that need to be used up in her refrigerator. Dana hates food waste, and when she cooks her meals at home, they are often clean-out-the-fridge culinary creations. Today, she found some homegrown tomatoes, mushrooms and onions, which will be roasted in the oven.
The roasted veg and tagliatelle will find their way into a hot skillet along with leftover brisket her neighbour gave her a few days ago, fresh asparagus, and some random bits and bobs of cheese left over from a recent cheese platter. The finished dish will be drizzled with turmeric oil — which Dana makes at home by simmering chopped turmeric root in canola oil, then letting it steep overnight and straining it the next morning.
If anyone can make random ingredients work, it’s Chef Dana. She’s been crowned Top Chef three times at the Farm and Food Care Chef’s Series at Taste of Saskatchewan. Those competitions are black box events, full of mystery ingredients ready to be turned into delicious masterpieces in under an hour.
When I ask Dana what she loves about culinary competitions, she says it’s because they push you out of your comfort zone — kind of like when a food writer pops in on your day off and wants to know what you’re cooking.
While Dana gets her lunch rolling, we chat a little about this and that:
Q If you have only 15 minutes to eat, what do you cook for yourself ?
A I usually only have 15 minutes to eat, so I’ll have pasta already made in the fridge, or I’ll make a salad, or I’ll clean out the fridge and sauté vegetables with pasta. Or, I’ll eat dates and a banana.
Q What is your guilty-pleasure grocery store item?
A I think a lot of people would judge that most of the stuff in my cart is a guilty pleasure. Instant coffee. Blue Raspberry Kool-aid. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Ramen noodles — the ones for 25 cents. Meat sticks, like Hot Rods. Kraft processed Parmesan cheese. I buy it in bulk at Costco and put it on everything. I hate it when people food shame people. A lot of people don’t have the opportunity to learn about food, and you should be allowed to like what you want without being judged for it.
Q What’s your favourite Saskatchewan ingredient to cook with?
A I use mustard a lot in my cooking. In the summer, tomatoes. I eat them every day. Saskatchewan-raised beef and pork is way better than most places, so I snack on that a lot at work. I eat a meat-heavy diet at work, and a vegetable-heavy diet at home.
Q If you could cook for anyone famous, who would it be?
A So before I really learned to cook, I had the opportunity to cook for famous people in New York. I cooked for Ed Norton, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep, and I found it wasn’t as rewarding as cooking for somebody you know.
Q Who is your inspiration when it comes to cooking?
A My Aunt Eileen. She owned three restaurants in Manhattan. When I turned 10 she had me cook in the restaurants. Instead of the servers watching me, it was now the cooks watching me, and I bet they hated that. But, I got to get a taste for kitchen life. From there, I saw that the servers made more money than the cooks. That’s when I started serving, bartending, freelance serving at people’s houses and what happened was I found out that if I learned how to cook and serve I could make twice as much money, so I started to learn how to cook, slowly.
I learned one dish at a time. I was a one-hit wonder. But, it was stressing me out — what if they asked me to make something I didn’t know how to make? So I stayed up late reading cookbooks, and learning terms and techniques. Books by Julia Child, James Beard, Alice Waters. When I was learning to cook, my Aunt Eileen gave me a subscription to Gourmet magazine. Eventually, I went to culinary school, and graduated top of my class.