One summer during university, I took a summer job at a private, fishing club in the country. Built in the early 1900s, it was a large, four storey lodge, complete with massive stone fireplaces and a wrap around veranda overlooking the gardens, lawns and ponds on the property. The men who joined the club fished for rainbow, brown and brook trout in the stocked ponds and I worked in the lodge serving wine at meals and cleaning the fish caught that day. It was an idyllic oasis from another time, not much in touch with modernity or the rapid pace of day to day life, but rather an escape from life, a chance to slow down and step back. Even for us staff, we lived on site, either in the rafters of the main lodge, small, squeaky rooms hidden on the upper floor accessed through a back servant’s staircase or in Goldie Lodge, a whitewashed, green-trimmed lodge above a garage, hidden among trees, walking distance from the lodge past a fish pond, bedrooms running off a main hallway, with a kitchen and sitting area. To be honest, it was a wonderful summer job, a chance to get to know new friends, enjoy nights sitting in that living room talking, laughing, complaining about guests, never realizing entirely what a unique and unrepeatable experience we were having.
I learned a lot about fish that summer. How to clean one, prepare and fillet a trout. I watched the chef prepare them, quickly, lightly, to preserve the fresh flaky taste of the freshly caught fish on the plate. I learned how to mix a brine to smoke the trout. I learned to gauge how many apple wood pucks to put in the smoker to give the flesh a particular taste, how much brown sugar to add to the brine, when to increase the spices when the fish were muddy in the mid-summer heat.
I learned that pansies taste peppery when added to a summer salad, that flakes of gold on Scotch broth make the serving more elegant, that being able to make a brown sauce is just as important as being able to make a white one. I watched the chef that summer and learned. I watched how wholesome food, when served with flair, becomes gourmet. I learned that sandwiches, a plate of cookies, a bowl of homemade soup and a pot of tea served on a veranda in the July sun is a repast. I tasted food I have never had, wild boar sausage, pickled tongue sandwiches, veal chop. I feel in love with variety but also with the pace with which the food was served. Meals always began with cocktails in the lounges or on the veranda. Wine accompanied dinner. Starters were savoured, mains enjoyed and dessert something to insist upon having.
I suppose I was younger but we rarely felt tired; we certainly worked hard and special events at the club were even larger undertakings and more work for us. But there was a tranquility about the club, a dream like quality that took us somewhere else, where time slowed, conversation was encouraged, silence was treasured, the swish of the fly in the air over the still pond something upon which to be mediated and meals, good food, good wine, something to respected, something for which it was important to slow down. Even now, I always insist that my guy and I sit down at the table for our meals, even when it is lowly soup or Kraft dinner or sandwiches. I take it from my mother’s table. She insisted we eat together. Working at the trout club, this notion was reinforced. We staff became friends because we ate together. The club members and their guests became closer as they ate together. More and more, as I work on this cookbook and think about my experiences with food, I am realizing that the centre act of cooking and preparing food is to create community, communities in families, among friends and strangers, in private homes and in restaurants. In the pace of my current life, it is in sharing a meal perhaps the one moment when I consciously make time to connect.
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