Comfort in a bowl

When I first leafed through Goodness, a book just out last month, I couldn’t immediately see a common thread among contributors. There are recipes from Keith Froggett, executive chef at Toronto’s Scaramouche, which is listed among the top 50 restaurants in the world, and Ned Bell, chef at Vancouver’s Yew and whose recipe for Dungeness Crab Tacos was recently featured in the New York Times.

But the new book also features recipes from non-chefs, such as Ashrafi Ahmed, co-ordinator of community gardens in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood, and Michael Ableman, a farmer on B.C.’s Salt Spring Island.

Chatting with Peter Neal, one half of Neal Brothers Foods and publisher of the new book, however, it all came clear: goodness (duh).

Not only is each of the 78 recipes good to eat, each of the 37 contributors has, well, done some very good things.

Froggett of Scaramouche holds an annual dinner to raise funds for Toronto’s The Stop food centre, supports other good causes and says he gets his greatest joy not from critical accolades but from nurturing young chefs.

Ned Bell “pedalled his heart out” in a one-man, cross-Canada cycle to raise awareness about sustainable fish, says Neal, whose own business is as much about Neal Brothers’ chips and salsas as promoting other food entrepreneurs “who are good people and whose stories need to be told.”

One of the good people in Neal’s new book is chef Judy Dempsey, originally from Ottawa, who says she finds it even more rewarding to cook at Perth’s The Table Community Food Centre than she did at her own restaurant, the once wildly popular Hungry Planet restaurant in Perth.

“I just love this job,” she says of her new role at the reinvented food bank. “The other staff here are passionate about what they do and really feel that the work we are doing is important.”

Fifty per cent of the profits from Goodness will go to Community Food Centres Canada, the umbrella group for centres like The Table.

Here’s Dempsey’s recipe for a thick and satisfying soup that she calls “the perfect autumn comfort food.”

“I used to serve it at the Hungry Planet,” she says. At The Table, she makes it with “whatever winter squash is available from our local farmers or The Table Community Garden.” I made it with roasted pumpkin from my jack-o’-lantern, and it was excellent.

You can meet Peter and Chris Neal, and get them to sign copies of Goodness, on Friday, Nov. 27, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at Rainbow Natural Foods, 1487 Richmond Rd.