Cooking-show host known as the Urban Peasant dies
TOM HAWTHORN
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 3, 2007
VICTORIA -- James Barber, the charming host of television cooking shows and the author of several best-selling cookbooks, has died at his farm on Vancouver Island.
Mr. Barber, 84, died at his home on Thursday of natural causes. He was found at the dining room table, where he had been reading a cookbook.
A pot of chicken soup was simmering on the stove.
As a self-proclaimed "urban peasant," Mr. Barber championed rustic dishes made with ingredients at hand. A show of the same name aired on CBC television for 10 years and later appeared in syndication on Food Network Canada. The Urban Peasant became a staple in more than 80 countries.
He had come to the kitchen himself only at mid-life, so it was with a sense of joy and wonderment that he cooked. He shared with his many fans his surprise that food preparation had been hidden behind a wall of jargon and false expertise.
"Cooking, like sex and dancing, is a pleasure best shared," he insisted, luring a generation of novice chefs into the kitchen.
His message was as simple as his dishes: cooking was easy, it expressed your love and it brought love in return.
If the concept was seductive, so too was the effusive host. Mr. Barber's saucy banter hinted at the sensuality of food, yet he always respected the boundary between teasing and causing offence.
Women wished to join him at the table, while men wanted to cook with him.
Born in Dover, England, Mr. Barber served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He first learned of the delights to be found in the kitchen while doing intelligence work in France. It was during this period that he discovered vegetables could be crisp (and not boiled to mush) and meat succulent (and not roasted to death).
Mr. Barber emigrated to Canada in 1952, working as an engineering consultant and, later, as a theatre critic in Vancouver. He did not take up cooking seriously until after a ski accident and subsequent infection left him in a body cast for almost a year. His marriage collapsed and he discovered the pleasures of preparing and eating basic foods.
An inveterate doodler, he combined whimsical cartoon sketches with recipes in a 1971 volume entitled Ginger Tea Makes Friends. This was followed by Fear of Frying (1978) and Flash in the Pan (1981), the first of what would be a dozen cookbooks. The most recent was One-Pot Wonders (Harbour Publishing, 2006), which describes meals easily cooked whether on land or at sea.
He did not succumb to trends in food preparation, so his volumes never felt out of date. Many of his books found new audiences in revised editions, including the popular Cooking for Two: The Urban Peasant, which was first released in 1998 and reissued this year.
A long-running television campaign in the 1980s for Money's Mushrooms, wholesale mushroom suppliers, made Mr. Barber a household figure.
A prolific writer, Mr. Barber was a restaurant reviewer for The Georgia Straight weekly newspaper and a contributor to many newspapers, including The Globe and Mail. His work appeared regularly in such magazines as Western Living and Pacific Yachting. His other credits included a children's book (Once Upon Anne Elephant There Was a Time) and two paperback guides to the restaurants of Vancouver.
Six years ago, Mr. Barber and his long-time partner Christina Burridge moved to a 12-acre farm at Duncan, B.C. The couple were married soon after, following a 20-year courtship.
Mr. Barber leaves his wife, two daughters, three sons and two grandchildren.
