--- Watch Mary Makes It Easy on Sundays, 6pm from 19 June, with episodes available at SBS On Demand after they air. ---
If the kitchen has never been your happy place – or maybe it was, but you’ve lost your spark, Mary Berg wants to change that. And in the friendliest, perkiest (but low-pressure) style possible, judging from the vibe of her latest show, Mary Makes it Easy.
“I just want to help get you in the kitchen. I want to answer common kitchen issues that you have,” says the cook with the impish grin, signature big glasses and approachable recipes when SBS Food chats to her.
“Making delicious food for yourself and for your family, it's my favourite thing in the world to do and I want it to be yours too,” she tells us, talking from her Canadian kitchen.
A former winner of Master Chef Canada, Berg is these days a busy author, TV host (previously seen on SBS Food in Mary’s Kitchen Crush), and recipe developer.
Mary Berg: "This is where I love to be". Source: Mary Makes It Easy
In the new show, she’s tackling everything from how to cook chicken to great party cakes.
“One of the ingredients I hear complained about most in the kitchen is chicken. Chicken’s dry. Chicken’s boring. How do I not overcook it. How do I not undercook it,” she says in the first episode, titled, with a sense of fun that matches Berg’s quirky, happy presenting style, ‘What Are Ya, Chicken?’ But chicken, she says, is a great staple, and with some good recipes, nothing to be scared of.
So in that first episode, we get recipes including (“I think roast chicken is the thing people are most intimidated by”), and a .
Other episodes share recipes that answer common needs and questions: helping those short on time, cooking for special diets (look out for her allergy-friendly cashew chicken satay and her gluten-free apricot almond tart), making the most of leftovers, or looking to expand their baking repertoire.
Speedy chicken parm Source: Mary Makes It Easy
“We’ve all read that baking is a science and that can be kinda intimidating,” she says in one of the baking eps in the series. “All you need is someone to give you a few pointers and tell you what to do. So I have come up with a few amazing, super simple baking recipes to make you into the sweet and savoury magician I know you are. Get ready to astound yourself.”
Recipes include an easy brownie cheesecake, “amazing, ooey, gooey” – pictures show she’s nailed that description! – and a recipe “that anyone can master” for Irish soda bread. “Bread is, one of those things, that everyone’s 'oh gosh, I can’t bake bread. Kneading? Yeast?’ But, you do not have to use yeast, you do not have to knead the dough, to get delicious homemade bread.” Soda bread, she says is the perfect thing to make if it’s your first time attempting bread.
Mary's butter tart squares. Source: Mary Makes It Easy
Some recipes answer specific requests, after Berg put a call out on her Instagram account to see what else people might be having trouble with. There’s a that can be prepped and then cooked fresh or frozen, the answer to a request from someone who buys fish in bulk to save, but then finds that when she defrosts it, it falls apart when cooked. The crispy coating (held on with a mixture of egg and mayonnaise - “it makes it even stickier”, she explains) holds everything together and protects the fish in the freezer, making for moist, crisp fish when cooked.
Her (“Detroit style pizza is always rectangular, it is made on almost a focaccia-like, fluffy, delicious dough”) is in answer to someone looking for a homemade version of take-away food. This pizza, she says, is so simple to make at home. “This is a no-knead pizza dough. No-knead is fun ‘cause all you have to do is stir it for about a minute to two minutes,” she explains.
For those who hate Brussels sprouts, Berg is hoping her recipe for maple miso brussels sprouts with sweet potato and lentils, developed to try to convert a sprouts-adverse friend, might change your mind too. Brussels sprouts, she says, have recently become one of her favourite vegetables.
And then there’s a cake for a seven-year-old fan. “She reached out looking for an amazing cake recipe for her parents’ upcoming birthdays,” Berg says. Her answer: “my guaranteed crowd-pleasing birthday cake”, a sheet cake with “a wonderful cake-to-frosting ratio”.
Mary with her favourite sheet cake. Source: Mary Makes It Easy
Mary Makes it Easy is actually filmed in Berg’s home kitchen, so when you see her having fun goofing around, cracking jokes and sharing food with family and friends, it’s easy to believe her when she says the kitchen has always been her happy place.
“I hope to make the kitchen your happy place too. This is where I love to be,” she says.
