A Taste of Acadie

For A Taste of Acadie, Melvin Gallant and Marielle Cormier-Boudreau travelled all over Acadia, from the Gaspé Peninsula to Cape Breton, from the tip of Prince Edward Island to the Magdalen Islands, and around northern New Brunswick and southern Nova Scotia. They gathered the culinary secrets of traditional Acadian cooks while there was still time, and then they adapted more than 150 recipes for today’s kitchens.

First published in 1991, A Taste of Acadie, the popular English translation of the best-selling Cuisine traditionalle en Acadie, is available once again. The indigenous cuisine of Acadia is a distant relative of French home cooking, born of necessity and created from what was naturally available. Roast porcupine or seal-fat cookies may not be to every modern diner’s taste, but the few recipes of this nature in A Taste of Acadie hint at the ingenuity of women who fed their families with what the land provided. Most of the recipes, however, use ingredients beloved of today’s cooks. Here you’ll find fricot, a wonder of the Acadian imagination, pot en pot, a traditional Sunday dinner sometimes called grosse soupe, and dozens of meat pies.

For those with a sweet tooth, Gallant and Cormier-Boudreau include recipes that use maple syrup and fresh wild berries. A Taste of Acadie is traditional cooking at its best, suffusing contemporary kitchens with country aromas and down-home flavours. Decorated with evocative woodcuts by Michiel Oudemans, it is a pleasure to look at and a charming addition in its own right to contemporary country-style kitchens.

AUTHOR

Marielle Cormier-Boudreau

Marielle Cormier-Boudreau is a folklorist who teaches at the Université de Moncton. She is the author of a book on traditional Acadian medicine.

AUTHOR

Melvin Gallant

Melvin Gallant has authored more than a dozen book-length works including volumes of poetry, collections of stories, books for children, and historical works on Acadian culture.

Reviews

If you’ve never heard of fricot or poutine râpée, it’s not surprising. You won’t find these words in most French dictionaries or in traditional French cookbooks. But travel thorugh what was once Acadie and you’ll discover that these savory dishes are a central part of an original North American French cuisine.

In A Taste of Acadie, Marielle Cormier-Boudreau and Melvin Gallant take their readers on a culinary tour of Acadie, sampling dishes from the Gaspé Peninsula to Cape Breton, from the northern tip of Prince Edward Island to the Magdalen Islands. Here you’ll be encouraged to savour a hearty pot-en-pot or one of dozens of variations on the meat pie (called pâte à la viande by the Acadians). The adventurous will want to sample pâte à la râpure with a crust made of grated potatoes or the ever-popular poutine râpée, one of the few French dishes to survive the transition to the New World.

For those with a sweet tooth, Cormier-Boudreau and Gallant feature desserts which use maple syrup and fresh wild berries including favourites such as poutines à trou, a tart mixture of cranberries, nuts and apples in a sweet pastry sleeve, and pets de soeurs, a simple biscuit with a puckered middle and a spicy Acadian name. Complete with information on the many natural ingredients favoured by the Acadians and now available in many city markets, A Taste of Acadie offers a delectable glimpse of a unique culinary tradition.


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For A Taste of Acadie, Melvin Gallant and Marielle Cormier-Boudreau travelled all over Acadia, from the Gaspé Peninsula to Cape Breton, from the tip of Prince Edward Island to the Magdalen Islands, and around northern New Brunswick and southern Nova Scotia. They gathered the culinary secrets of traditional Acadian cooks while there was still time, and then they adapted more than 150 recipes for today’s kitchens.

First published in 1991, A Taste of Acadie, the popular English translation of the best-selling Cuisine traditionalle en Acadie, is available once again. The indigenous cuisine of Acadia is a distant relative of French home cooking, born of necessity and created from what was naturally available. Roast porcupine or seal-fat cookies may not be to every modern diner’s taste, but the few recipes of this nature in A Taste of Acadie hint at the ingenuity of women who fed their families with what the land provided. Most of the recipes, however, use ingredients beloved of today’s cooks. Here you’ll find fricot, a wonder of the Acadian imagination, pot en pot, a traditional Sunday dinner sometimes called grosse soupe, and dozens of meat pies.

For those with a sweet tooth, Gallant and Cormier-Boudreau include recipes that use maple syrup and fresh wild berries. A Taste of Acadie is traditional cooking at its best, suffusing contemporary kitchens with country aromas and down-home flavours. Decorated with evocative woodcuts by Michiel Oudemans, it is a pleasure to look at and a charming addition in its own right to contemporary country-style kitchens.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

186 Pages
9in * 7in * 0.5in
356gr

Published:

January 01, 1991

Publisher:

Goose Lane Editions

ISBN:

9780864921093

Book Subjects:

COOKING / Regional & Ethnic / Canadian

Language:

eng

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