As a dental hygienist, Jennifer Innis knows her way around ultrasonic scalers, polishers and the x-ray machine. But she’s also pretty handy with a knife and rolling pin in her other line of work, cooking for three girls at home.
Her daughters, 10, three and one, can often rely on a home-cooked meal, and we’re not just talking about meat, potatoes and three veg on their plates.
Innis, 34, can roll dough into delectable pastry – used as the base in her sweet and savoury pies filled with fresh, locally grown ingredients – and she has no trouble cooking up a gourmet meal while under the gun.
She did just that when her coworkers at Dr. David Regehr and Arek Siwoski’s dental office surprised her during their Christmas party, handing her an apron and then timing her to cook up a meal in one hour.
That might seem beyond the scope, but it was all part of supporting Innis in her ultimate cooking challenge. She is one of the six home cooks from B.C. and 50 from around the country chosen to compete in season two of the televised cooking competition, MasterChef Canada.
Innis, who moved to Vernon two years ago from her hometown of Leduc, Alta., was one of thousands of home cooks from across the country to apply for MasterChef Canada. She competed in the first audition in Vancouver back in the summer, and made it as far as presenting a signature dish to the judges in the MasterChef kitchen in Toronto this past fall.
“It was like culinary bootcamp and built my confidence in my cooking,” said Innis, who admits she can remain pretty calm under pressure. “The only thing that was really tough was that I had only one outfit to wear and I was on my feet for about 14-to-15 hours a day. Each audition is about an hour and a bit, and then you are talking to the judges for about an hour each. What you see on TV is definitely the edited version.”
At the Vancouver audition, Innis opted to make three different mini pies. She had to bring all her own ingredients to the kitchen, and as she was one of the few participants living away from the Lower Mainland, had to reconsider bringing perishable products such as proteins.
She ended up making a fresh strawberry pie, with berries from a Vernon farmer, with a Grand Marnier orange glaze, as well as a pear, fig and goat cheese pie topped with candied pecans. But it was her blueberry, basil and Gournay cheese pie that she decided to present as her signature dish to the judges, Michael Bonacini, Alvin Leung, and Claudio Aprile, at the Toronto auditions.
“I wanted to satisfy all the cravings: sweet, salty, chewy and crusty,” she said, adding she had to substitute the Gournay (plain Boursin-like cheese) for goat cheese in Toronto as she couldn’t find any before her audition.
“My style of cooking is like burlap and lace in that they are two contrasting items that shouldn’t work, but make something beautiful.”
Innis obviously succeeded through her auditions, however, she is not allowed to say whether she was able to proceed any further into the competition until the episodes air.
This also isn’t the first time Innis has participated in a competition-style reality series. A few years ago, she was on CBC’s Recipes to Riches as a savoury snack finalist with her chicken Cornish pasties, again showcasing her dough making skills.
That ability to knead and chop came at a young age, however, Innis didn’t really become a gourmet home chef until more recently.
“My mom is a chef, so I grew up with that sort of thing. Although my grandmothers couldn’t cook to save their lives, my grandpa could and everything he made was really great – gourmet style. We had budget-style meals, Kraft Dinner, some days, but Grandpa would cook chicken grilled in Brandy. He stockpiled recipes, and my mom wrote a cookbook 10 years before she did her apprenticeship as a chef,” said Innis.
“I started to experiment with cooking on my own. I liked food, but as far as cooking for myself and the kids, it was pretty simple. I really took an interest in my late 20s after my divorce. (Innis is now remarried.) I started dating and going to nice restaurants. One in particular took me to a fancy restaurant and I tried foie gras. Trying new things introduced me to new flavours and stuff in general.”
After moving to Vernon, and working on-call at various dental offices before being hired full-time at her current place of work, Innis spent a year preparing for the MasterChef Canada auditions. She even got in touch with former contestant Dora Cote, who lives near Innis’ hometown in Rocky Mountain House, Alta.
“She thought I nailed it,” said Innis, in regards to the auditions.
Innis also bonded with and learned from her fellow contestants, some of whom include a retired pro-football player, rural veterinarian, recording artist, bus driver, and Canadian military veteran.
Her roommate happened to also be a mom, with three boys.
“At the auditions, it was interesting seeing what people were making. I sometimes don’t know what I’m actually doing, in that I didn’t know what sous-vide was until the show, although I had already been doing it,” she laughed. “I am the pie girl, so it was fascinating watching the proper way of doing Wagyu beef. I didn’t even know what Wagyu beef was before this… In the end it doesn’t matter how much money you spend on a dish or how fancy it is, it’s about the taste. There are so many factors in what constitutes a good dish.”
Challenged through a series of mystery box ingredients, pressure tests, and team challenges, the contestants’ ultimate goal is to don the white apron with his/her name on it and win the $100,000 cash prize and the title of the next Canadian MasterChef.
If she succeeds, Innis plans to open a food truck that would serve comfort foods such as gourmet grilled cheese.
“It’s something I could grow with my family and have some flexibility with,” she said. “That was my goal going into this and $100,000 would be good start up cash.”
See if Innis gets to wear the white apron and makes it to the Top 16 of MasterChef Canada when it premieres Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. on CTV.
