When my mom was visiting us, on any given day you could find her sitting on the couch, with her laptop on the TV tray, watching Chef Roger Mooking stirring up amazing meals. She is so proud to share his birthplace of Trinidad, and she loves his style of cooking.
I’m sure she’ll be pleased to know that Roger is returning to the Cooking Channel for a new season of Man Fire Food premiering Tuesday, June 3rd at 8:00pm ET/5:00pm PT.
Roger is always on the go, but he took some time out from his super busy schedule to chat with me about how he keeps his children connected to culture, and how he manages his busy life as not only a musician and celebrity chef with multiple shows, but as a husband and dad of four girls aged 8 months to 7 years.
Eva: We know that you are a recording artist, celebrity chef, TV personality, cookbook author, and just an all around multi talented guy. Tell us how you fit being a dad into all of that.
Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Roger: It is quite simple. The family is my key priority, so even though I travel a lot for work, it’s really because I need to work, to pay the bills of the family. I am fortunate enough to love what I do in all these endeavors, so it hardly feels like work. Most importantly, when I schedule my year, the first thing I put on the calendar for the entire year are all the kids’ birthdays, mother’s day, the wife’s birthday – everybody’s personal landmarks land on the calendar first, and everything else is scheduled around that. So it’s quite simple.
Eva: So you put in all of the big things first and everything else has to work around that?
Welcoming Baby #4 – Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Roger: You know the family things are the most important. I vowed to myself and my family, the kids, that as much as possible, unless it is extenuating circumstances, that I would never miss a birthday or any major landmarks like that. I make it a point to be able to be around for those times. Sometimes I fly in for 24 hours and then fly out, but I’m there.
Eva: Tell us a little about your kids.
Roger: I have four girls, ages 7 to 8 months.
Eva: Are there any sayings or traditions that your wife and children have had to become accustomed to with living with a Caribbean dad?
Roger: (laughs) Right now my parents are visiting. They just came in for the summer months – they are retired – so right now they are visiting the house where I live in Toronto. When they get up in the morning, they say, “How yuh goin’?” All the kids and my wife are picking up, “How yuh goin’?”
Eva: So one of my favorites is learning plurals from Caribbean parents – have they figured out “a pants” and “a shoes”?
Roger: (laughs) They think I’m crazy anyways, so they just know. They get the gist of what I’m trying to say and then they gather it all up, you know?
Eva: So they kinda translate…
Roger: For sure, for sure.
Little Roger – Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Eva: You were born in Trinidad and you are raising your kids in Canada, how do you keep them connected to Caribbean culture?
Roger and His Grandfather – Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Roger: It is interesting because I have a very dynamic cultural background. My grandfather came from China, and ended up in Trinidad, from my dad’s side. My mother’s side is Dutch, Spanish, African, Creole… As you know, Trinidad is a very diverse island in terms of the cultures that are specific on all of the different islands. It is very common for us to have dim sum for breakfast, roti for lunch, and perogi for dinner. It is always different.
Dim Sum – Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Roger: I love to take them out and show them the dim sum, show them the different kinds, when it’s Chinese New Year. They go and the dragons are dancing in the restaurant. We go out for pholouri and roti. Now they are deciphering, “You know Daddy, this is a better roti skin than the other one.” They kind of have their favorites and they understand what’s going on. I just try to expose them to as much things in the world [as possible] because that’s how I was raised. I also think that the world is becoming a small, dynamic place, and by the time they are older, and adults, their understanding, and appreciation, and acceptance for everything in the world is going to be of paramount importance.
Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Eva: I love when I go visit my dad and he cooks for all of us, my kids, my husband. He cooked for us when I was growing up, and hands down, my favorite food that he makes on the grill is corn, and off the grill, fry bake. What are your kids favorite Caribbean inspired foods on and off the grill?
Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Roger: They definitely love corn on the grill. Off the grill? I made some saltfish bouljol the other day, they really liked that. They loved it – I didn’t know if they’d like it or not, but they loved it.
Starting to make saltfish – Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Eva: Everyone knows that one of the best foods to come off of an outdoor grill in the Caribbean is Jerk chicken. Are there any other foods like fish or crab that we can throw on the grill and give it a Caribbean flair?
Roger: Definitely, you know fish is a common thing – obviously the Caribbean [we are] surrounded by ocean so there’s lots of fresh fish all the time. Fish is a really really good option. Sometimes I’ll wrap stuff in banana leaves and put it on the grill. It gives it a little bit of that char, the smokiness coming from the banana leaves and from the fire, but also gives it that tropical element as well. You can do chicken like that, you can do fish like that, you can do root vegetables like potatoes like that, plantain, sweet potato, yams.
Eva: So you pretty much will put anything on a grill, right? Because that’s what it sounds like. You just named fruit, fish, chicken…
Roger: The thing is, inside of a packet like that, you’re basically steaming it, but you are also roasting it with the direct heat permeating the leaves. It is a really nice way of accomplishing a couple of things at the same time. Really diverse.
Eva: I love spicy Caribbean food, are there any spices other than jerk that work particularly well on an outdoor grill? Are there any that we should steer clear of?
Roger: I think spices are really great for grilling to be honest… smoking… grilling. Whether you are smoking, let’s say, sausages, it tastes really good with the smoke. The flavors open up if it’s on the grill, they get a little char that can change the flavor just a little bit. I can think of any spices that I would stay away from.
Spices – Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Eva: So that means that I could put curry on the grill if I wanted to? I could just go for it.
Roger: Absolutely! You have to be careful of the cooking temperature because curry could burn, so you want to cook that over a low or medium temperature.
Eva: What is the best way to get strong spicy flavors out of the cast iron so that it can be ready and not interfere with the next item going on the grill?
Roger: I just do different things. I put one thing on the cast iron and I’ll have a pot on the side. I’ll have something directly cooking on top of the grill surface, so that everything is happening independently, but on the same cooking area. Some people are vegetarian and they don’t want their food to be cooked on the part where there’s meat. I’m fortunate. I have three different barbeques in my backyard, so I can cook different things on each barbeque.
Eva: So you can control your temperature and things like that.
Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Roger: Yeah, so I can do chicken, let’s say – low and slow on one barbeque. I can have another one that is really hot and I can be searing steaks, and another one that has a tray on it that’s caramelizing onions on one side that’s a medium depth, and on the other side of the grill I’m doing something else like hamburgers and hot dogs. A little while ago for one of my daughters’ birthdays, I had all of them going doing different things just like that. I keep it centralized to one line so that it is all very efficient and I’m in one place.
Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Eva: My husband is American, and in our house, the grill is Dad’s domain. How do we let him relax on Father’s day, and cook for him, when we aren’t allowed near his precious grill? We share a lot around here, but that is one thing that seems to be off limits.
Roger: I kind of eschew that whole notion of it being gender specific. I just came from a location and the woman I met, she’s an archeologist, she’s an author, she’s a chef, and she loves food. So she’s in the middle of a long history, 35 years, of cooking with fire. She does it professionally, she knows about the food history of cooking with fire. She has a long history of understanding from digs, okay this is how they did an oven in this region, and she has a whole backyard full of all cooking equipment that she’s built based on different cooking techniques. There’s twenty different barbeques and grills and fire setups there, and her husband doesn’t touch anything. She controls the fire. Just get up in there! Kick him out! Strap him to the table (laughs)!
Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Eva: So if something goes down, I can call YOU right? I can say, look, Roger said…
Roger: (laughs) A lot of times it is a bonding thing – really they’re just standing in front of the fire drinking the beer and talking trash. You can get in there and talk trash! It’s all good!
Eva: Okay, well I got the talkin’ trash thing down to a science – I got that. Whether he wants me to talk trash near his grill? We’ll see how that goes.
Roger: (laughs)
Eva: It is evident that you really LOVE music. You love listening to it, making it, you really study it. What is your favorite music, other than your own, to listen to when you are cooking?
Roger: I listen to music a lot – usually in the car. If I’m cooking its always a different scenario. Sometimes I listen to the radio, sometimes I listen to news. I’ll listen to my ipod on shuffle, which has everything from Duran Duran, to kids music, to Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre… I’m kind of open with it when it comes to that. Sometimes it is just best to be quiet, especially if I’m developing recipes. I need to focus [to be sure] I’m documenting things properly, so I really need to pay attention. Sometimes the music is really distracting because unfortunately, after so many years of doing music, I can’t listen to music passively anymore.
It is a very active, engaged experience for me and I’m listening to how it’s mixed, and the tones, and the performances, technical things as well as creative and artistic things. I’m no longer a passive listener [when it comes to] music. I wish I could listen to music and just put it on like background noise or something like that, but it is a very active experience for me. Sometimes it is just too difficult to be working on recipes and listening to the music at the same time. A mind can only take so much.
Eva: You do so many things, I’m just imagining that you are writing songs and writing recipes – doing everything.
Roger: When I am just cooking, that’s when a lot of ideas come to me. I’ll be singing, and a verse will come – some words – a string of words will come. Usually when I’m just cooking casually is when those kinds of things come – and yeah it is very dynamic. But if I have to do recipes for work, I want to make sure that when people do my recipes, they actually turn out – so I’m really focused on that.
Photo Credit: Roger Mooking Instagram
Eva: Your show title is very telling, and it isn’t too hard to guess what the show will be about, but you are always full of surprises. What surprises can we expect on this season of Man Fire Food?
Roger: There’s lots. Our premiere day is June 3 at 8 pm EST. It is really cool – we start out doing a location in Centerville, Tennesee called Papa Kayjoe’s. This guy is a part time preacher, part time restaurant owner/operator, and he makes these amazing pulled pork sandwiches on ho cakes – which are like griddled cornbread basically – cooked in lard. He sandwiches [the pulled pork] between that – so delicious. We also go to another place with an old fine dining chef who’s decided he wants to make some really good simple smoked foods.
Roger: So he’s doing a bunch of things – we featured a couple of sandwiches, one called heaven, one called hell – one’s really spicy, one’s really open with open flavors. It’s really dynamic. We are traveling to the furthest reaches of America to make sure we find this batch of really good locations and interesting personalities, interesting contraptions, and cool ways of cooking with the wood – different types of wood, and really dive in. It is becoming increasingly difficult to continue to find super engaging places but the team does a really good job of [not only] being really picky about making sure that it’s going to be a really spectacular, engaging episode, but also making sure that it’s going to be fun as well.
Eva: Can the recipes be found on a website so that [the viewers] can duplicate them, or is it more of just the experience of watching the different people create meals with fire?
Roger: We try to make it a very wholistic experience, especially in today’s world where so much is online and on the internet – people are tweeting, and it’s really dynamic in crossing the boundaries between online space and the traditional television space and interactive media as well – it’s an experiential thing. We try to make sure that, for instance, right now you can go and look at season 1 and 2 episodes online on the Cooking Channel website. For every episode that we shoot, every recipe that we feature is posted on the website as well. Sometimes a secondary recipe is featured on the website, so you can go and get a lot of that information and it continues to live online. The home of [it is] on Cooking Channel. It’s driving and feeding the whole thing. So if you want to see new episodes you’ve got to tune in and check them out, but you can see old episodes online.
The third season of Man Fire Food premiers Tuesday, June 3rd at 8:00pm ET/5:00pm PT.
Roger Mooking is the host and co-creator of his own internationally broadcast television series Everyday Exotic and host of Man Fire Food on Cooking Channel. Over the course of thirteen episodes, Roger uncovers the most unique cooking contraptions that produce mouthwatering recipes utilizing the most ancient cooking elements – fire. Along the way he not only indulges in delicious grilled dishes and barbecue but also meets the individuals cooking up the innovative recipes. He is the co-host of the hit show Heat Seekers on Food Network. To add to his growing plate, Roger’s highly anticipated first cookbook Everyday Exotic: The Cookbook hit shelves in 2011. Additionally, Roger is a Juno award-winning recording artist whose album “Feedback” was released summer 2013. For Roger, music and the epicurean world are seamless. One feeds the body, the other the soul; it is all food in all its various forms.
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