The Current - Chef Chuck Hughes on cooking for — and with — his kids

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Acclaimed Montreal chef Chuck Hughes never really cooked at home before he had kids — but now he's conjuring up recipes like hotdog bun French toast with his mini sous-chefs. He shares some recipes that your kids might love in his book Home Cooking: Family Favourite Recipes From My Kitchen To Yours.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. Swordfish with celery root, orecchiette with PEI, cultured butter and white truffle, agnolotti with lobster mousse, wild mushrooms and brioche crumbs. Just a few of your choices when you eat at Garde Manger. That's the Montreal restaurant owned by chef Chuck Hughes. At home, though, Chuck's menu these days runs more to more kid-friendly and wallet-friendly meals.

Cream of tomato soup, pizza, mom's meat pie, and hot dog bun French toast. Chuck has turned his family recipes into a new cookbook, his first in a decade. It's called Chuck Hughes Home Cooking, Family Favorite Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours. And I spoke with Chuck Hughes in October. Chuck, people don't usually think of French toast or even hot dog bun French toast when they think of you. Why the change of gears here? Well, you know, I had kids, so that's what happened. You know, I've worked in restaurants basically my whole life. I've owned Garde Manger and worked there for 18 years.

years. And, you know, when I had my first child 10 years ago, the reality of cooking at home became something that I never had to deal with per se in my life before kids, because, you know, I would work late, obviously eat at the restaurant, probably too much takeout and ordering late night, but really never cooking at home and never having the right tools and never really wanting to, you know, but when you have kids and obviously you need to feed them, but it kind of changed my life in terms of how I do like to cook at home now and how different it is from cooking in the restaurants. So kids rocked your culinary world. Well, basically, and I mean, I still bring, you know, air quotes here, professional kitchen attitude to my own kitchen at home.

You know, I like to still, you know, there's some standards that are never going to change. Being organized and getting your mise en place, which is basically getting all your ingredients out and kind of figure out what you're going to use. So you don't have to, you know, crack an egg and then go get some flour in the cupboard and have everything measured out. So, you know, it's, it's, I never cooked at home before. And now, obviously I cook all the time. I cook with my kids and, you know, it's very different. There's a lot of

pressure in restaurants, obviously. Every single plate has to be, you know, perfect or as good as it's going to be, but there's a lot going on. And then at home, it's kind of a different kind of pressure. And I've truly started really loving it. And my kids kind of, you know, they're not good with the cleaning up, but they like to cook and make a mess and have fun. And to me, that's important. So yeah, it's definitely changed my life. And the book is a reflection of that. And including your kids in what you cook is a big part of what you do now. I'm lucky I have, I feel like kids in general go through phases where when they're really young, you can kind of feed them whatever you want and they'll just eat it.

Then they start going to daycare and preschool and and then they hear stuff like, oh, mushrooms are gross. I don't like onions. And you you kind of have to deal with that at home. And now they're eight and ten. They're pretty adventurous, maybe a little too adventurous because we all know the cost of food. So when we go somewhere, it's it's they say stuff like it's always better with lobster, right, dad? I'm like, I don't know if that's an actual fact when I'm paying. But but no, I'm lucky they they love to get involved. They love to cook. They love to eat. They like to try new things. So also when you get them involved a little bit more at a younger age, obviously you create a better lifestyle in the future. I would think, you know, making better choices at the grocery

store, uh, starting with, you know, real ingredients from scratch instead of maybe buying the frozen stuff or already prepared. Um, and just the joy of cooking, like for me, it's really been my life. And my mom was always really big on me getting in the kitchen and I'm kind of in the same boat here with my kids and their favorite recipes are in the book. What is one of their favorite recipes in the book? Well, the hot dog French toast is kind of a classic at my house. It really stems from, you know, mostly the summer when you're having hot dogs, if it's on a fire pit outside or whatever it is, a barbecue, you always have buns left over

and it's like a perfect little sponge. Really, that bread is, it's not normal how spongy and and how moist it is so when you when you use it for french toast it it's so moist on the inside and it kind of gets a little bit crispy uh on the outside so it's really the perfect bun so that's something that like it became a classic at our house kind of by mistake but it's really good you know and it's funny because when i before i had kids, like I mentioned, I never really cooked at home and, you know, we make fresh pasta at the restaurant and it's, you know, it's kind of a staple in restaurants, if you will. But at home,

I never really did anything like that. But like on a lazy Sunday, when you don't know what to do, you know, we, we make fresh pasta once in a while. And it's one of those things that, you know, we just make fresh pasta with butter, cracked pepper, a little bit of salt or even just pesto. And we have a lot of fun doing it. And it's it's that realization of almost playing with food. But really, in the end, you have something so good and delicious. And it's kind of I feel like it opens your mind to

different possibilities. You know, I have a huge maple syrup section, a whole sugar shack, Cabana Cirque section in the book, because I go to Cabana Cirque every year. I love eating it. I have it almost every day. But when I had kids, I realized like, you know, my parents have maple trees and we could be making our own maple syrup, even though it's just a small batch. And so we've done that now, you know, I never did that without my kids or would have thought of doing it. You know, one thing I've noticed, and I have a busy household as well, three kids, and there are sort of, my partner is really good at just opening the fridge and making something delicious. Whereas I'm the kind of person that

has a recipe and has to go out and buy things for the recipe, even though there are delicious things in the fridge that I should be using. What kind, I mean, how do you sort of make, bridge that gap so that you have the skills to just visualize something and ta-da, you've made something delicious for your family? Yeah, that's, I think that's, that's one of those skills that mostly it's kind of organizing. I kind of, that's how I like to start my day. I'll take literally 10 or 15 minutes. If I, if I feel that like I've got a couple elements in there that I can make maybe a baked pasta dish or something, I'll, I'll, I'll get the pasta out and I'll put it in the saucepan, no water, but it'll be there. Whatever I can kind of just prepare so that I can at night put everything

together really, really helps. So I think it's a matter of using stuff, obviously, that you have that you can sort of recycle, if you will, but also to organize it in a way that you're not left with a whole bunch of decisions to make in like 15 minutes. My favorite thing is to do that in the morning. That's where I'll kind of plan my dinner. And so it'll look like it's maybe kind of put together last minute, but at least there's some thought into it.

And if there's a couple other elements that I need so I could probably get them or realize that I have a substitute that'll work just fine. So those are kind of the things that for me I love to do when you kind of put a meal together with pretty much nothing. You talk about substitutes and I know you've certainly mentioned pasta a few times here as well already. And one of the big ingredients usually in a pasta sauce might be a little bit of red wine, but I understand you don't use wine or alcohol at all in any of your cooking. Well, I mean, I don't at home because it's 17 years that I don't drink. You know, I quit drinking. I had a drinking problem and I knew for a long time, basically, that I had a drinking problem. But, you know, knowing and and dealing with it is two different things.

So professionally at the restaurant, obviously, I'm surrounded by it and we cook with it. And it's part of our staples, you know, whether it's red wine sauce or deglazing with some white wine or, you know, cognac or spirits. I mean, it's, it's kind of part of the professional cooking at home. You know, I allow alcohol in my house when we have parties and people come over. It's not, it's not a problem, but I just won't have it on hand. And, and, and in another sense, you know, alcohol and cooking when used poorly doesn't necessarily enhance a dish. So I've seen, I've seen it used because we, you know, everything's better with wine, um, which is probably not true, but it's kind of that philosophy, you know, oh, well I added a bit of

wine and so it sounds good. It sounds fancy. It sounds French, sounds exotic, but it's not always something that really brings to brings to the recipe. So sometimes I find like if you have a really good stock or even just water, sometimes you'll get the same results or just as good. And then for a risotto, like I have a risotto recipe in there, for example, where I don't use wine. And I tend to sometimes feel that if the wine is not really cooked down properly and really kind of completely evaporated, well, sometimes you get likeising something with red wine for three hours, four hours, and, you know, you then strain that sauce to make, you know, to reduce it, to make a really flavorful sauce. Well, the wine is cooked out, the alcohol is, and you're really left with that flavor. And you've got that three hours of kind of building those deep, rich flavors. So in that sense, I mean, it does work.

But for me at home, it's more based on my lifestyle than anything else. But, you know, anybody that wants to get creative with any of my recipes and they want to add wine if they think, you know, that that would work. I mean, I'm not against it. It's just really a personal thing for me because I don't drink. I just don't have it around in my house here. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs.

We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. One thing that I think about quite often is that, you know, everyone needs to eat to live

and yet fine dining is certainly not accessible for a lot of people, or the idea of going out for a fancy meal or buying lobster or fancy ingredients is not something a lot of families can afford. So how have you sort of incorporated those sort of ideas of making delicious food accessible for more people in the ways in which you do this particular cookbook?

Yeah, it's, you know, this cookbook is really, you know, it's not a 15 minute meals or a kind of quick fix cookbook with shortcuts. And so it's definitely a real cookbook in the sense that it's got a little bit of everything in it. You know, a lot of times we probably like I mentioned risotto before, but you know, people are always very scared of it. But you know, with a few ingredients, even like dry, I use dried mushrooms, and you know, water, and onions. So it's, you know, with with a simple technique and basic few ingredients, you can get a lot of flavor. So I think there's a lot in there about how to maximize flavor with ingredients that we can two to three days, you know, maybe not a family of five, but definitely two meals. I think there's a way of kind of stretching your ingredients.

And I think that's it's a real professional, once again, air quotes, professional cooking way of looking at ingredients is, you know, you do pay top dollar. So you want to maximize the flavor, maximize the yield of whatever you're buying so you know i think everybody's faced with that um with that reality now that you know food food is expensive nothing nothing is cheap anymore and so you have to make those choices so substitutes uh really work but like things like dried mushrooms and lentils and certain spices just to kick up the heat or even to add a bit of flavor doesn't really cost much. And I think it's also respecting those ingredients and making sure that we use them to their fullest. And so that's kind of the philosophy in this book is that, yeah, there's, you know, right now,

So that's kind of the philosophy in this book is that, yeah, there's, you know, right now, one of those recipes is that's kind of of the moment is an apple galette, which is, you know, basically an apple pie. But it's in its simplest version with things that we already have in our cupboard. It's just a little bit of extra work, but it's pretty free form and it's fun to do with kids and it always delicious. You know, I tell people, you know, cooking does take a little bit of time and more importantly, you need to want to. And I think that's, that's the first thing. Some of my friends, I feel like it's complicated or this and that, but they also don't really have a desire to cook. So I think that's kind of why I tried to ignite that passion in my kids to, you know, to enjoy it, too.

And because, like you said, we need to do it to survive. And we're probably going to do it three times a day for the rest of our lives. So we might as well have fun doing it. Yeah, you know, what's really interesting, Chuck, is that I wonder, you know, when you were first getting into the industry and you were, you know, you were first getting your first TV shows and your first books and you were kind of hot on the scene. And I wondered if that Chuck would have imagined that you'd be doing this interview about French toast with hot dog buns and comfort food. And, you know, the philosophy is still the same. You got to love cooking and you love it, but there's been an evolution. And I wonder, did you ever imagine that this particular evolution would have happened for you? Well, that Chuck probably thought that this Chuck was already dead by now. So yeah, so that Chuck,

I didn't have, you know, it was a different time. I started working in the restaurant business 30 years ago when I was 17. My first job was at the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta. I went for the summer like a lot of Quebecers. And I realized that, you know, my mom had always instilled this in me, this passion for cooking. But I realized then and there that I fell in love with the actual cooking for work as a job or as a career. And it took me down a path that was a very tough industry with a lot of different traps, if you will. And at that time, I was struggling with addiction and a lot of things. But if you would have asked me back then, I was exactly where I needed and wanted to be. And I was working probably way too much and way

too hard and not focusing on myself and kind of just really living a lifestyle that was what I thought was exactly what I should be doing with this kind of live fast, die young punk rock mentality of, you know, just go, go, go. And don't, don't, you know, nothing's going to matter in the end because you won't be here long enough to being the guy that, you know, weirdly enough has had a pretty successful restaurant and career so I mean that that Chuck would probably look at me and be like really not excited but I also left that Chuck back there a long time ago because he he wasn't good for, you know, in the end, he wasn't a positive, good Chuck. So, you know, quitting alcohol for me was really what kind of, you know, I say cooking saves my life,

but it truly did because it gave me a passion. But, you know, when I quit drinking, I was able to focus and kind of be more present, be in the moment and actually take part in, in life. You know what I mean? And, and so I don't deny the past and I, you know, I got here today because of it, but that's life. You never, you, you, you really don't know where you're going to end up. And my prospects, if you would have seen me when I was 21, 22, weren't amazing. You know, the one constant thing was that I worked every day and I loved it. And it was my life, even though everything surrounding it was pretty negative in retrospect. And so, you know, working in a kitchen today is still hard work, you know, andots, they're just not going to peel themselves.

There's things like a 50-pound bag of potatoes is still 50 pounds. There's things that are never going to change from the industry, but I think at least the regard for personal life and to having, you know, passions outside of work and being able to go to another restaurant and have money in your pocket and not be, quote unquote, like, you know, shackled to the stoves like I kind of was, it is very different. But you would have told me back then, hey, you know, take a couple of days off to relax. I would have said, like, in my mind, I said, oh, my God, my chef doesn't love me anymore. This is the end. What can I do? I need to be here.

So it was just, you know, a completely different mentality. You know, I can't I can't say enough for the progression of how it's been going in kitchens. And it's obviously going in the right direction but what do you mean by that there's so many shows now that kind of exposed how kitchens i want to say used to be more than they are today because it has changed a lot but you know when i started working in kitchens it was all um the same type of people if you will a lot of times it was a lot of fringe people in society, either kind of like cooking, not because it was their passion necessarily, but because they showed up and no matter what they look like or what they were on, or as long as you're putting in a 15,

16 hour shift and you're consistent with your food, You get a pass on, you know, if you're a good person, if you're addicted to this or it was just a different landscape. Like it's just not when I was 17 and I said I was I was working in restaurants. It wasn't like, oh, wow, what a career choice. It was kind of like, are you going to be OK? It was just a lot of people that kind of were on their last chance um you know and at that time Anthony Bourdain wrote a book called Kitchen Confidential where you know he talks about this kind of pirate lifestyle of like going hard and and partying every night and doing drugs while you're cooking and and you know look at us where we go to war every night and and drugs while you're cooking. And, and, you know, look at us where we go to war every night. And, and, you know, the book became sort of kind of a Bible for, for young cooks at that

time where we were sort of doing the same thing. So it kind of validated what we were doing. It's like, Hey, if he's doing that, we're doing the right thing. And look a lot, I love Anthony Bourdain and I thought, you know, his books and his shows, but, you know, being an alcoholic and a drug addict myself, recovering, but still, you know, I always felt that there was this glamorizing this, that book, as well written as it was, there was a couple little things that were missing. as it was, there was a couple little things that were missing. Like if you keep on drinking and doing drugs, it'll catch up to you in a certain sense. So I think now most people go to cooking school to learn the craft. They're more knowledgeable. They have more books. They have Instagram. They have. So as kind of my generation is people that were thrown into it because they didn't really have a choice.

And if you could get ahead, well, you were a rock star and it was amazing. And, you know, now it's the work is still hard and it's not easy, but there's a level of wanting to, you know, have a good life and cook as a real career and not just as something that's just going to burn you out. And I think, you know, I don't have the answers and I don't, I can't speak for every kitchen and for every city, but, you know, in my own little restaurant, I can see the diversity in the kitchen that's completely changed the way we interact. There's, you know, there's a lot more respect and, you know, it used to always be with yelling and kind of this, you know, the chef is always right. And, you know, all that's really, really changed. You know, you still have kind of a chain of command and you still have, you know, a chef and a sous chef. But it's a lot more mixed in terms of who works in the kitchen and, you know, how those kitchens are run.

Before you go, I'm wondering what what's a song you might name that's on your playlist that gets you going in the kitchen? I have a song I can't stop listening to. It's called Stockholm's V by Haynes and Water Baby. There's something about this song. It's like the perfect song to cook at home. It's chill and it's got a good vibe to it. Chuck, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

I spoke with Chuck Hughes from Montreal in October. His new cookbook is called Home Cooking, Family Favourite Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours. And from his playlist, this is Stockholm's V. Yeah, and if we're talking, I'm gonna tell you the truth.