In her third cookbook, My New Table, the award-winning author celebrates seasonality, simplicity and togetherness
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Our cookbook of the week is My New Table by Trish Magwood. To try a recipe from the book, check out: Euchre tourney salad, curried chicken thighs with pomegranate and Mom’s simple sweet potato soup.
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With a boot in the village of Creemore, Ont. and a shoe in Toronto, author and entrepreneur Trish Magwood takes inspiration from both city and country.
“The boot/shoe analogy is funny because it’s like the really dirty Blundstones on the weekend, and maybe mildly cleaner running shoes — although not right now (during winter) — in the city,” Magwood says, laughing.
Her third cookbook, My New Table (Appetite by Random House, 2021), doubles as a lookbook. As much as it’s a collection of family recipes, it’s also a visual representation of the places and objects that bring her joy.
She and photographer Ksenija Hotic were “kind of like a travelling duo,” Magwood says, as they captured scenes from her life in Creemore and Toronto during the pandemic.
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“We were shooting stuff right in the scariest time, and so it was really just my kids and (Hotic),” she adds. “But what we learned is that when you’re doing a project, especially a creative project, the people you work with are everything.”
This pared-down production was in sharp contrast to Magwood’s first book, the James Beard Award-winning Dish Entertains (HarperCollins, 2009). At the time, she was hosting Party Dish on Food Network Canada and overseeing a team of 40 at her company, Dish Cooking Studio, which meant she had plenty of support to produce a book.
Writing My New Table , on the other hand, “felt very old-fashioned”: Her mom and dad acted as editors, helping fine-tune her tone and voice; her daughters Olivia and Charlotte tested recipes.
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“Ksenija would be here and some of the shots that are in the book were actually ones that the kids were making while we were testing,” Magwood recalls. “So it’s really authentic. We shot it all in my house. There was nothing that was done in studio and there was nothing that was really propped at all. We basically cooked and shot and ate it.”
Though it came together during the pandemic, My New Table was a decade in the making. After “emptying the tank” with her second book, In My Mother’s Kitchen (HarperCollins, 2011), it took time for Magwood to find the right direction and feel comfortable sharing a more personal story.
She finished writing My New Table late in 2020, which coincided with her 50th birthday. “(As we get older), it’s more important to be really real,” says Magwood. “I’ve always stood true to totally just doing my thing my way. And it’s not right or wrong — it just kind of is. So that’s what this book is: It’s quite personal and casual.”
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Magwood’s passion for design is reflected in the book. A chapter devoted to her “Home Essentials” — from front hall to the table — leads into her “Cooking Essentials,” and a collection of recipes celebrating seasonality, simplicity and togetherness.
While training as a chef at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School (now the Institute of Culinary Education ), she was captivated by the Meatpacking District — “which some people would think would not be a pretty sight” — admiring the doors and structures as others might the luxurious storefronts on Fifth Avenue.
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“The thing I’ve learned through my whole career and my whole life (is) I am such a visual person. Probably more than anything, I really have an appreciation for things that are beautiful, but in the most natural way,” says Magwood, adding that it was important for her to visually capture not just her food but her lifestyle in My New Table .
Maintaining her roots in the country — spending time on her parents’ farm, taking inspiration from its large vegetable garden, orchard and vineyards — has affected her as an eater as well as a chef. “It’s like a holiday. Waiting for the ingredient and then letting that do its thing and really not doing much to it,” she adds.
This sense of simplicity is a thread throughout the book. In winter, she often has in-season pomegranates on hand, which she might deseed and add to her curried chicken thighs — a speedy one-pan supper. Her lemon goat cheese dip is similarly a go-to, drawing on the lemons, plain yogurt and goat cheese she has stocked in the fridge.
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“I love to eat but I don’t always love to cook,” says Magwood. “That is the truth and I think it’s the truth for a lot of people. The recipes had to be simple because sometimes I don’t like to cook and so I need something that is not going to stress me out and I have on hand all the time.”
For Magwood, the book’s title holds layered meaning. A new table literally sits “smack-dab in the middle” of her new Toronto house, which she shares with her partner Peter and their combined five kids. But more symbolically, it represents the family hub.
“It gives us a reason to connect. One of my kids is away at university; one’s away in high school. As we get older and the kids go away, we use food and meals almost like good, old-fashioned family bribery. Like, ‘Come home for my birthday dinner.’ It becomes the table we gather around,” says Magwood. “It is the thing that brings them home.”
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'I love to eat but I don't always love to cook': Trish Magwood on the beauty of simplicity - National Post
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