The Award-Winning
Flavours of Canada
 Review by Joanna Jenkins
Anita Stewart, The Flavours of Canada: A Celebration of the Finest
Regional Foods (Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2001).
Anita Stewart's The Flavours of Canada: A Celebration of the Finest Regional
Foods is an exploration of the provinces of Canada and their cuisines.
It is also sumptuous cookbook with wonderful photos to tempt you to create the
flavours of Canada at home. Recipes were contributed by both leading chefs
and home cooks. The Flavours of Canada is not for those who don't like
to read menus with descriptions of the dishes and infinite detail of exactly
what each ingredient is and where it comes from. But then this is the mark
of regional cuisine, I suppose, that the place of origin is the most important
defining characteristic of the dish. I wonder, then, how useful it is to follow
recipes which call for very particular ingredients such as balsam fir shoots
or anise hyssop (a type of edible flower) or huckleberries on the other side
of the world where they cannot be obtained. Of course, I can adapt recipes,
use a different cheese of the same style or different varieties of the same
fruits and vegetables but then, without regional ingredients, I am not creating
regional cuisine. So as yet, I haven't attempted any of the recipes but then
I wouldn't have to do much adaptation of the "Utterly Decadent Brownies",
one of the easiest looking recipes (and perhaps the most gratifying!).
For readers who, like me, know nothing of Canadian cuisine The Flavours
of Canada provides a wonderful introduction to the similarities and differences
between the foods and food practices of the peoples across this vast country.
Stewart traces the evolution of Canadian regional cuisines and the influences
of different areas, from the Brentwood box method of cookery (the only indigenous
form of Canadian cooking) to the colonial French and British foodways and to
the multicultural influences of today. Brentwood box cooking developed well
before European settlement. Rocks were heated in the fire and then placed in
a cedar box filled with water. When the water came to the boil seafood was
added and cooked until tender. The English and French influences are seen in
many forms; the types of cheeses produced, beer brewing and winemaking methods
and recipes for many dishes from hearty pies to rich foie gras. Many other
ethnic groups have now made their homes in Canada – many Ukrainians live in the
Prairies, especially Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and Toronto has the largest
Italian population of any city outside Italy – and these groups have had their
own influences on regional cuisines.
Throughout the book, Stewart provides information about ingredients particular
to certain areas or unusual and unfamiliar. For me, there were even revelations
about common ingredients – I learnt that the cranberry, an ingredient with which
I thought I was familiar, grows in watery marshes. Stewart also highlights
particular producers and characters of the food industry such as Ted Mascka,
the Garlic King, who has proclaimed his life's mission to be making Canada self-sufficient
in garlic.
The Flavours of Canada does not cover the far north of the country – because
it is too expensive to travel north of the Arctic Circle – but Stewart has made
an admirable attempt to travel far and wide to produce a thorough picture of
Canadian regional cuisine. Despite being unable to travel to the far north,
she visited many remote locations, such as the oil rig Hibernia located
315 kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland. Here Stewart found a dedicated
chef, Gerard Aucoin, whose recipe for "Hibernia Halibut Parcels with Newfoundland
Savory and Green Onion Stuffing with Dill Hollandaise" looks far more delectable
than the meals many of us in less isolated places would eat on a daily basis.
Stewart brings together the recipes, the stories of ingredients and the people
who produce them and the stories of Canada's cooks to produce an enlightening
and full picture of the regional foods and foodways of Canada.
Joanna Jenkins has recently completed her Graduate Diploma in Journalism at the University of South Australia.
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