Chef Michael HunterIllustration by Pablo Lobato
You couldn’t come up with a more apt name for Toronto chef Michael Hunter. He is the co-owner of Antler Kitchen Bar, which bills itself as a destination for Canadian cuisine highlighting local and wild foods. Now he and business partner Jody Shapiro have teamed up again, this time for a new cookbook, Hunter Chef in the Wild. The book features Hunter’s recipes for cooking outdoors alongside nature photography by Shapiro.
In this instalment of the new series “Joy Diaries,” Hunter explains why foraging for food is deeply satisfying.
I find joy in food. My whole world revolves around food, cooking and bringing people together. Anything outside also brings me joy.
My mom taught me to cook at a young age. She would have to work late so she would call me to tell me how to start dinner. I was about 11 or 12, and because this was the eighties and nobody minded, she’d work late and dinner would be my job.
One of my first meals was Shake ’N Bake chicken. She’d leave out the box and the roasting pan, and it was my job to take the chicken wings out and shake them and get them into the oven. It wasn’t fancy or anything, but I was into it.
When I was 13, the summer before high school, I wanted a part-time job, so I rode my bike to a local diner and ended up in the kitchen washing dishes. On the breakfast shift on weekends, I was in charge of buttering toast and deep-frying home fries and hash browns. Soon enough, I was flipping eggs and pancakes.
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From there I moved to a golf course where I worked through high school. They did weddings and banquets, so I got my first taste of fine dining. During the off seasons, I worked at the county inn. The cool part about that was we’d go foraging on our lunch break for the dinner. We’d go looking for mushrooms and herbs. I was already really into food, but adding nature to the mix made me fall in love with food.
It’s fine to go to the grocery store, but there is something really special about going into nature and finding your dinner. Certain types of wild mushrooms, for example, can’t be farmed. If you want one, you’ve got to go into the woods and look. If you get some, it’s so rewarding. Foraging for your food satisfies this unconscious primal urge we all have deep down.
Foraging is even better nowadays because I’ve got my kids into it. It’s like a little treasure hunt for them, and they’re lower to the ground with better eyesight so they’re pretty good at it too. It’s a great way to get kids to eat, too. My kids eat all kinds of foods that other kids don’t because of the satisfaction of being able to say, “We grew this!” or “We caught this fish!” It makes it more special and it gives kids a connection to where their food comes from.
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My perfect “found meal” would go something like this: It’d be in the spring, and I’d start with some morel mushrooms and ramps, which are wild leeks. Since we’re dreaming big here, I’d also harvest a wild turkey. Then I’d make a recipe from my book: wild turkey breast stuffed with goat cheese, morels and ramps. I’d cook everything over a fire. Turkey breast meat is great for grilling and smoking. For dessert, something with maple syrup like one of my favourite desserts of all time, the Québécois sugar pie.
Just like my mom did for me, I’m trying to involve my kids whenever I can in the kitchen. My oldest is 21 and she will text me from university and ask, “How do I cook a deer shoulder?” My son is 15, and I just taught him to grill a perfect steak. My youngest is three so she’s all about getting her hands dirty – anything with dough is a huge hit. Just getting them involved in the process makes it fun. Clearly, I find joy in food, so now they do too.
As told to Rosemary Counter
