Marhaba catches up with Canada’s baking sweetheart Anna Olson, who was in Doha now as part of Qatar International Food Festival (QIFF) 2018

Hosting Food Network’s Bake with Anna Olson and Fresh with Anna Olson, she has earned a loyal following in over 190 countries. An expert in writing recipes with a practical sense, her work appears in magazines and cookbooks. She has authored seven best-selling cookbooks, two of which were written with her husband Michael, a fellow chef.

Anna was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but grew up in Toronto, noting her grandmother as an early influencer of her love of the kitchen. She has degrees from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and Johnson and Wales University in Vail, Colorado. While initially trained in the world of savoury cooking, Anna is equally recognised for her abilities in the pastry kitchen, having worked as a professional pastry chef since the mid ’90’s.

Anna’s culinary philosophy is based on a common-sense approach to cooking and baking with the seasons as well as respecting the ingredients, the technique and the process of sharing with others through food. Most of all, cooking and baking should be fun.

You quit your banking job to pursue a career in baking. Talk us through the thoughts that accompanied your decision.

Well after studying political science at university, I was struggling with what to do career-wise and I found myself in banking – not an intentional plan. And I was surrounded by people who loved what they did and I could tell I wasn’t fitting into that mindset. Part of why I didn’t go into cooking right away, it was so much a part of my life, I couldn’t see it! My love of going to the market, buying ingredients, trying new dishes; it just was part of my every day.

Then I had what I call my ‘Muffin Epiphany’: I was in trading and bonds, the currency the dollar was trading horribly and I was very stressed, I couldn’t sleep and I found myself in my kitchen making banana muffins. Not because I wanted to eat them at 2  in the morning but because it was the only thing to calm my mind and it was in that moment that I realized: ‘ok, this is what makes me happy!’ And, within a matter of 3 months, I did my research on where I wanted to go to school, quit and never looked back.

Chef Anna Olson

What message do you have for others considering a similar step to pursue a career in cooking?

There are a lot of things to consider. If you are making a shift from a conventional work schedule, a cook’s hours are usually double what everyone else’s is and you have to work while everybody plays… weekends, evening and holidays.. and so you have to be ready to make that shift.

Tell us more about your motto ‘what grows together, goes together’.

People often question ‘Well, how do I pair ingredients together?’ That motto applies to the style of cooking where I live where we have four seasons and not all ingredients are available all the time. Following the seasons tells you if something historically is harvested at the same time as another ingredient, it tends to be what we put together in our cooking.

  • For Spring you get asparagus and snap peas which go with light fresh herbs like tarragon and mint.
  • Summer veggies like zucchini, pepper and tomatoes go with herbs like cilantro and basil and oregano.
  • In the winter you have harvests of squash apples, potatoes & caramelized onions and those go with rosemary and sage which have heavy, full-bodied flavours that require slow cooking, which you normally do that time of year.

Share three simple tips that make a huge difference in perfecting baking.

  • Time: If you are trying baking for the first time, make sure you are not rushing, so you are paying attention to the ingredients and the order in which you mix them.
  • Having a scale so you can easily, tidily and precisely measure your ingredients.
  • Make friends with your oven. If you haven’t used your oven much for baking, the best took you can buy is a little oven thermometer. Just because you set the outside of your oven to 180°c, doesn’t mean that it actually is 180°c.

Which cuisine inspires you the most?

There are no rules when it comes to cuisine. Like most chefs, I am trained with a French background but I don’t cook French all that often. I like to buy my ingredients locally and cook globally from a number of influences. My background is Eastern European so those flavours will come about and because I travel, the influences of where I visit will also show up on my dinner plate.

What’s your favourite cooking show?

Barefoot Contessa with Ina Garten

Name one of your dishes that your husband Michael finds irresistible.

I would say lately Michael’s favourite dish that I make is a French tian of thinly sliced eggplant, tomato, zucchini and onion and a homemade tomato sauce. Slow-roasted in the oven so all the flavours just melt together. You can put cheese on it but you don’t really need to.

When not cooking, how do you spend your time?

I enjoy quiet activities that help me be calm and find my zen-like yoga, ballet dancing & reading.

This is your first visit to Qatar. How did you find your experience here?

I think a visit to Doha is just so easy. It’s on the way to so many places but also a destination of itself. As a Canadian, we love to travel and adventure and we also love going to that next new place and I think we are going to start hearing more adventurous stories of people’s visit to Doha.

I went to the souq and tried Konafa – what an amazing dessert?! While simple, immensely complex because you have the crunchy exterior and the soft warm soft interior of the cheese the saltiness of the cheese against the sweetness of the syrup. The crunch of the pistachios and the richness of the butter. It’s just amazing.