Date-night dinner, but make it easy
TV star and cookbook author Mary Berg shares her approachable tips to cooking
If you’ve seen Mary Berg on television — be it as an expert on daytime TV or on “MasterChef Canada” (she won Season Three in 2016) — you know she navigates the kitchen with a calm, collected and charismatic command. Even under watchful eyes or looming time constraints, the Torontonian cooks like there’s no place she’d rather be.
That’s because there isn’t. “The kitchen should make you feel comfortable,” says Berg, who started cooking as a child when she helped with — and eventually took over — family meals. “I have a very active mind, and the kitchen is the only place it quiets down. I feel like I know what I’m doing, and even if I don’t, it’s going to be fine. It’s the only place in life where you can’t really mess up too much. And even if you do, just order a pizza.”
Now, with her new show, “Mary Makes It Easy,” airing Mondays at 8 p.m. on CTV Life Channel, Berg wants to help others feel the same way.
It’s her second go at hosting her own show. In her first, the Canadian Screen Award-winning “Mary’s Kitchen Crush,” she shared event-worthy dishes inspired by friends and family. Her new series, however, aims to guide viewers through not-too-tricky recipes they’ll love just for themselves, like a speedy version of chicken parm.
In the half-hour episodes, Berg slips in little tricks (like salting onions as soon as they hit the pan to draw out moisture and flavour and get them to brown more quickly) and fan feedback. It almost feels like a conversation between Berg and the viewer, which is only natural given her approachability; even before becoming a public figure, she was the kind of person in a crowd who would draw strangers wanting to ask a question.
“This show is really just about you and me in the kitchen making delicious food. It’s 20-per-cent effort and 80-per-cent payoff,” she says of the show, which was shot in her own home. “I want you to be able to apply the tips to other recipes — not just mine — and give you confidence in the kitchen.”
Because of the pandemic, Berg had to develop recipes without having her extended circle do taste-testing, so this is a long-awaited opportunity for her to share her food with others. There are four recipes in each of the 25 episodes of “Mary Makes It Easy” she’s filmed (they’ll air in two separate batches), plus another 100 seasonal recipes in her upcoming cookbook, “Well Seasoned: A Year’s Worth of Delicious Recipes,” which hits shelves Oct. 5.
“It’s vaguely selfish, how much I love doing this and how much enjoyment I get out of cooking for the people in my life,” says Berg. “I’ve never been a secret recipe person — recipes are meant to be shared. They are meant to be enjoyed, and meant to be taken and made your own.”
Like any good foodie, Berg has a host of date-night recipes in her back pocket (the second episode of “Mary Makes It Easy” is dedicated to some of them). But whenever she really wants to impress — whether she’s having a romantic night in with her husband, or meeting someone for the first time — nothing beats breakfast for dinner.
“Breakfast is unassuming and immediately relaxing. Everybody loves it,” she says. “And eggs are the one thing that always seem so much better when someone else cooks them for you.”
Breakfast for dinner is, of course, versatile, but if you want to show off your creativity, Berg says, you have to go for a frittata. They’re impressive, surprisingly
easy and you can basically toss whatever you want into them. “If the date doesn’t go well, at least you’ll have cleaned out your fridge,” she says.
When Berg is making one at home, she starts by tossing onions and garlic into butter or oil in a nine-inch cast-iron skillet to soften and brown, along with anything else you might like to include. Her pièce de résistance: leftover pasta (most recently, she used penne alla vodka, but she says any kind of sauce will work), tomatoes and ricotta.
“Because the eggs will cook so quickly in the oven, make sure everything (in
your pan) is tender and warm before it goes in,” she says, adding you don’t want to just drop a brick of cold noodles into your eggs. Give your onions and garlic time to cook, then add the pasta on top to heat it up a bit.
Once your filling is heated, pour six whisked eggs and between a 1/4 cup (for a denser dish) to 1/2 cup cream (for a fluffier one) in the pan while it’s still on the heat.
Then pop your skillet into the oven (preheated to 400 F). Bake until the frittata looks puffy and golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.