‘Tis the Season! Chefs Lynn Crawford & Lora Kirk celebrate the holidays with family, feasting and wanderlust
Chefs Lynn Crawford & Lora Kirk celebrate the holidays with family, feasting and wanderlust
By Lorie Steiner
Excitement is rising high at this time of year, as plans are forged to gather together and make merry. In the Crawford home, with a pair of celebrated chefs and their two little girls teaming up, it’s a given that incredible food and festivities will top the menu. Canada’s much loved Chefs Lynn Crawford and Lora Kirk left the city hustle in 2020 to set up roots in rural Ontario and begin a new chapter. As moms of adorable Addie Pepper and Gemma Jet Aubergine, this culinary couple’s priorities have shifted and the fun is just beginning… especially at Christmas!
I sat down with Lynn and Lora for a candid chat about what goes on in and out of their kitchen. Spoiler alert… when they describe their holiday feasting, you’ll be craving a taste. Best thing? They’ve shared recipes!
H: Everyone has a different perspective on the holiday season, what are some of your favourite traditions?
Lynn: Well, our floors are already covered with little cutout bits of paper from the girls making snowflakes! For me, as a chef, Christmas was always before or after the actual day – I worked at the Four Seasons for 24 years and every Christmas was spent preparing the holiday feast for our guests. But family traditions are so wonderful and varied depending on your cultural background and different age groups.
My father always prepared an amazing Scottish breakfast feast on Christmas morning, that was his special gift and since his passing we’ve continued it. Fruit puddin’, black puddin’, tattie scones, Ayrshire bacon, eggs over easy. Lora and I have kicked it up a notch with a bottle of Champagne, sometimes with orange juice. To get all the fixings you have to be organized, it can’t be a last minute go-get. And the kids love it. They know it’s a special breakfast day.
We spent one Christmas in Prague, we’re spending this Christmas in Hawaii with friends and last Christmas we had a full-on house with 30 people here and we cooked Christmas dinner. So we’re trying to alternate family traditions being at home, but also our family’s new traditions experienced in another part of the world.
H: Time to tempt the tastebuds… what was on last year’s family Christmas menu?
Lora: We have two harvest tables with benches that we put together to fit about 24 people. My Babka is Ukrainian, so she brings sauerkraut, perogies, cabbage rolls – every holiday those are the three staple dishes. Aunt Lucy makes milk buns and others bring trifle. Everybody wants to do potluck and our nature is to say just come and enjoy yourself and let us host you.
Lynn: We did the most magnificent cheese and charcuterie spread – we could have invited another 50 people. We had chilled seafood, PEI lobster, shrimp, raspberry point oysters with a beautiful shallot mignonette, and then we had the classic beef tenderloin Wellington, salt-baked salmon with a teriyaki cranberry glaze, macaroni and cheese, two turkeys, mashed potatoes, squash, green beans, green salad and then the baked goods. It was the best.
When we moved here, we renovated the kitchen and made it really for us with a grand island and that’s where the buffet was. Everybody popped the crackers, wearing the hats, the music’s on and people are passing the mashed potatoes… and the gravy! Afterwards, we put out a buffet of sweets – the Chai latte pumpkin cheesecake with caramel sauce and sweet potato pie.
H: You both love to travel and now you go on trips as a family. What advice do you have to keep the kids happy?
Lynn: We really want to show them the world. Just because you have kids, I don’t think it should be a stumbling block for anybody who enjoys travel. It’s such a precious gift of incredible experiences and memories of having the kids go out and explore the world.
Lora: Our kids love to travel. They packed and repacked for about two months before Italy and there will be swimming and new adventures in Hawaii – but I’m sure there will be lots of paper snowflakes. You have to climatize with the kids and roll with the punches. Once they’re into a routine, they’re happy too. We usually do a nice Airbnb, so we can cook food at home and have a landing zone where the kids can be loud and have their toys and have their moments where they can destress themselves. That’s important.
Q: You’ve recently done the city mouse to country mouse journey… how has that worked out?
Lynn: Lora and I are in a brand new chapter in our lives with our two girls being the centre of our universe. We’ve both had our fair share of city life and what we love is being out in the country. From where we are, just outside of Peterborough, it’s only an hour and a bit into Toronto. I still have two restaurants at Pearson Airport – The Hearth and Hearth Market – so that’s a big part of my life. But the day-to-day operations of opening up the restaurant, prepping, getting ready for service, dealing with customers and staff, that chapter has changed for me.
I’ve never looked back since our move here. I’m so incredibly happy and we’re so blessed to be living in this gorgeous part of Ontario and giving our girls the opportunity to live here. We’ve got our family vegetable garden, we’ve got family surrounding us and having that family blanket is an incredible thing. Being chefs, you make a lot of sacrifices in the pursuit of your culinary ambitions. A lot of vacations and family events go on the back burner. That’s really changed and it’s great!
Q: What are your thoughts on farm to table ingredients?
Lynn: As chefs, you know that your dish is only as good as the ingredients you procure, and supporting your local farmers, growers, ranchers and fishermen is all about that. Cooking in the season and shopping local, so the product you’re enjoying has come from the peak of its season and the harvest. We’re surrounded in this area with so many incredible farmers and we have our own vegetable garden that we’re enjoying learning about. Our daily lives are leaning toward being more plant based now, as so many people in Canada and globally are doing with respect to responsibility to the environment. We’ve got two greenhouses – we were eating lettuce and radishes from our greenhouse last Christmas. What a gift! Knowing where your food comes from and having kids participate in that has been epic.
Lora: Our daughters love having their own little garden. It’s their cucumbers that they planted and the radishes, cherry tomatoes and beans. They’re supposed to help pick and then I see them on the corner of the raised bed with a handful from the basket that I just picked and they’re eating and saying, “We’re doing a great job!”
H: Do you change up the menu in the winter?
Lora: In the winter, we have fresh ingredients (the heartier vegetables) in the root cellar. We’ll pick our carrots, beets and potatoes, and some we’ll process into relish or blanche and freeze. If you don’t have a root cellar, just leave them very dirty – don’t wash them – and pack them in a container with holes in it (like a milk crate) in a cool dark place. Put a tea towel over the top to help absorb moisture and then just wash as you go. They’ll last for months and you’re still eating your ‘fresh’ veg.
Lynn: In Ontario, in February, everybody’s crying for something other than a carrot but there’s a lot of greenhouse growers where you can get a delicious ripe beefsteak tomato. It’s about sourcing your food and knowing where it comes from and making those choices. Sometimes what you want isn’t available and you have to be creative. Lora: That’s what motivates us to come up with new dishes. Going into the winter months you have to stay motivated and figure out how to use what you have. Instead of wishing you had fresh tomatoes or strawberries, you have acorn squash and pine nuts and add some honey and rosemary. Root vegetables don’t just have to be roasted. You can bake a whole spaghetti squash and restuff it with something fun – whether it’s vegetarian or meat – like a Spaghetti Bolognese. You can be pretty creative.
