Gay Cook (1930-2024) championed Ottawa’s culinary community through her columns

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When Gay Cook was well into her 80s, she jumped at the chance to harvest grapes in a Prince Edward County vineyard.

“I invited her,” recalled her friend, Robin Duetta. “She’d never had the experience before.”

That Cook had not checked grape-picking off of her bucket list seems hard to believe. The Ottawa native, who was born into the celebrated Morrison bakery-business family, was for decades a tireless food columnist, cookbook author and champion of the capital’s culinary community.

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Duetta, a longtime producer of culinary events, remembers a white-knuckle excursion to the county, about 300 kilometres west of Ottawa. Cook, he says, “was a crazy driver. I feared for my life.”

But when the drive was over, Cook had the best time, crawling about on her hands and knees to clip grapes. Of course, when their exertions were over, Cook and Duetta enjoyed a meal replete with great food and wine.

Cook died Sept. 11 at the age of 93. A beloved figure in Ottawa’s culinary community throughout her life, she was the Ottawa Sun food columnist starting in 1989 for six years. In 2000, she published a cookbook, Mrs. Cook’s Kitchen, Basics and Beyond, and that year she began her warm-hearted food column in the Citizen, which ran until 2009.

Her passions for food and the community around her sprang from her earliest days and the family in which she grew up.

Cook’s father, Cecil Morrison, co-founded Standard Bread in 1915 and later, in 1933, he co-founded Morrison Lamothe with his brother-in-law, Richard Lamothe. Decades later, Morrison Lamothe became Ottawa’s largest bakery and eventually a modern, multimillion-dollar, frozen-food manufacturer.

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Cook was the youngest of the three Morrison sisters. Her eldest sister, Jean Pigott, ran Morrison Lamothe from 1967 to 1978, was Ottawa-Carleton’s MP in the late 1970s and chair of the National Capital Commission from 1985 to 1992. She died in 2012 at the age of 87. Businesswoman and philanthropist Grete Hale died in 2022 at the age of 93. Both sisters received the Order of Canada for their public service and community work.

The remarkable sisters were remarkably close. In their last three decades, Grete and Gay, after they were widowed, lived together, first in the Morrison family home near The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic campus, and then in a retirement residence suite during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Gay’s given name was Grace, “Gay” stuck because that was what Grete, who was slightly older, called her when they were small children. Grete’s name was in fact Marguerite, but, because young Gay couldn’t pronounce that, it was shortened to just Grete.

Cook had fond, long-held memories of the power of food and hospitality. She once told this newspaper that during the Depression, her mother, Margaret, would make egg-salad sandwiches from the bakery’s day-old bread that she gave away every afternoon to transients who rode trains that went along tracks where the Queensway is now.

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“We grew up working in the business,” Cook said in 2015. “I made sandwiches in the catering end of things. I always chose to go to the country weddings; we all loaded up in a truck and headed out of town. I didn’t want my friends from Glebe High School to see me. We wore these black uniforms and lacy hairbands.”

Cook was eventually a part-owner in the family business. But before that, in the early 1950s, she attended the first hotel, resort and restaurant administration program at what was then the Ryerson Institute of Technology in Toronto. After graduating, she travelled around Europe, South America and the United States, catering and cooking.

While working in Tucson, Ariz., she met Bob Cook, a fellow Canadian from Edmonton. “My heart just flipped,” she said decades later. They eventually married in 1966 at Parkdale United Church and had two children, Donald and Kelly Ann.

“Gay was an awesome mom who taught (us) with every breath and every action,” the siblings wrote in an online tribute to Cook. “We cooked and baked at her elbow, we camped and canoed with her and our dad, we learned to ski and skate with them, and we built a log cabin with them.

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“Her love and partnership with our dad never wavered. They were a united front who revelled in embarrassing their teenagers with expressions of affection. They threw countless dinner parties, teaching us to value friends, and threw excellent birthday parties for us. We were the only kids in our neighbourhood who got Baked Alaska as their birthday cake.”

Bob Cook died in 1994, but Gay said two decades later that she still spoke to him every day.

Although relatives recall Cook as a quintessentially modest person, she consulted for cookware companies, freelanced for the cooking magazines Gourmet and Epicuria, appeared on TV and radio cooking shows, ran her own cooking schools and launched her Mrs. Cook’s Foods business.

She served on culinary advisory committees and councils for Algonquin College, Savour Ottawa, Canadensis, Canada’s future National Botanical Garden and was a founding director and a governor of the National Capital Sommelier Guild.

In Ottawa’s two newspapers, she wrote hundreds of weekly columns filled with every kind of food-related tidbit.

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She attended to emails and calls from readers who asked her where they could track down particular ingredients. “Your intriguing questions have kept me on my toes and I’ve loved it,” she wrote in her farewell column, which she penned at the age of 79.

Perpetually curious about all aspects of food and the food industry, she delighted in cheerleading for Ottawa’s culinary stars, from chefs to caterers to cooks to farmers to produce wholesalers to food manufacturers.

“Gay loves to be that person who discovers talent — she’s like a kid, she gets so excited,” restaurateur Stephen Beckta said in 2009.

He recalled how Cook introduced him to Ottawa’s established chefs when he returned to town before he opened his first, eponymous restaurant here. Later, Cook would call Beckta to ask if he could help a promising cook get a work visa or advise a restaurateur who needed marketing tips.

“She made me feel great about myself and my future,” Beckta said. “She always sees the good in everyone.”

“She was everywhere and people loved her,” Duetta said.

When Cook wrote her final Taste of the Town column in 2009, she said that writing for the Citizen for nearly a decade “was among the most rewarding and rich experiences of my life.”

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She lauded the positive changes she saw in Ottawa’s culinary scene, including the rise of restaurants where chefs cooked fare from scratch for customers who appreciated local produce.

She gave kudos to Ottawa’s culinary schools at Algonquin College, La Cité collégiale and Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa. For her 75th birthday, Cook’s friends had created a bursary in her name, awarded annually to culinary students at Algonquin College. In 2015, Cook’s 85th birthday was a fundraiser for the Gay Cook Bakery that is part of Algonquin’s culinary program.

“Her pastry skills were extraordinary,” Duetta said. “She made the best pie crusts you could imagine.”

Also in 2015, Cook told this newspaper that her favourite thing to teach was breadmaking. “It goes to the soul,” she said.

A visitation with Cook’s family is to be held on Sept. 24 from 5 to 8 p.m. at Beechwood, Funeral, Cemetery and Cremation Services. All are welcome. A celebration of Cook’s life is to be held at Beechwood on Sept. 25 at 3 p.m., with a reception following from 4 to 5:30 p.m. The reception is to be livestreamed by Beechwood as well.

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To watch a video of Gay Cook making dinner rolls, and for the recipe for the rolls, find this story online at: ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/gay-cook.

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GAY COOK’S DINNER ROLL KNOTS

Makes: 3 dozen small rolls
Preparation time: about 3 1/2 hours, but 2 1/2 hours rising time

2 1/2 tsp (12.5 mL) dry yeast (1 package)
Pinch sugar
1/4 cup (60 mL) warm water
1 cup (250 mL) warm milk
2 eggs, at room temperature
3 tbsp (45 mL) soft butter
1 1/2 tsp (7.5 mL) salt
1 tbsp (15 mL) sugar
4 cups (1 L) unbleached all-purpose flour or bread flour
1 egg, lightly beaten, for glaze (or a few spoons cream)
2 tbsp (30 mL) sesame seeds or poppy seeds (optional)

1. In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water. Let the yeast bubble for 5 minutes. In an electric mixer with a dough hook, or using a mixing bowl and wooden spoon (or your hands), combine the milk, eggs, butter, salt, sugar and 2 cups (500 mL) of the flour. Mix in the yeast and 1 3/4 cups (430 mL) of the flour, reserving 1/4 cup (60 mL) for later use.

2. Beat or knead the dough by hand until it is soft and smooth, 5 to 6 minutes. Cover the bowl of dough loosely with a plastic bag and leave it to rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, about 1 1/2 hours. Punch the dough down and sprinkle the work surface with reserved flour. Cut the dough into 3 equal portions. Roll one portion into a 12-inch (30-cm) cylinder. Cover the remaining portions with a plastic bag or towel, or wrap and freeze. Cut the cylinder into 12 equal pieces.

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3. With lightly floured hands, roll each piece into a rope about 5 inches (12.5 cm) long and tie into a loose knot. Place the knots on a buttered baking sheet and slightly flatten rolls. Leave rolls at room temperature to rise until they have tripled in volume, about another hour. For a shiny crust, brush the tops of the rolls with cream or beaten egg. Ten minutes before baking the rolls, preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C). Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly golden.

phum@postmedia.com

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