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.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Full of Acadian nostalgia and culture." -- Portland Press Herald, Maine
"Not just a how-to-do-it cookbook but an Acadian history encoded in foodways." -- The Island Magazine
"Not just a how-to-do-it cookbook but an Acadian history encoded in foodways." -- The Island Magazine
From the Back Cover
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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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Culinary tradition, an imaginative response to the land and the sea",
By
This review is from: A Taste of Acadie (Paperback)
There's something evocative about the food your grandmother cooked; you may not have enjoyed all of it in your childhood and you may not dare to eat it now, but when you become interested in your cultural roots, the old dishes gain flavor in your memories. I didn't learn to cook the old Acadian dishes from my memere, so I was delighted to find A Taste of Acadie while traveling in Prince Edward Island. This fascinating book by Marielle Cormier-Boudreau and Melvin Gallant is much more than recipes. The authors researched the cooking (and culture) of the Acadian people of Maritime Canada: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The Acadians settled in this area from mid-central France in the mid-1600's and were ousted and dispersed by the British a hundred years later, civilian casualties of war between France and England. They gradually resettled up and down the Eastern seaboard, and many who had been repatriated to France eventually came back. These hardy people lived a hardscrabble life of fishing, agriculture and animal husbandry in the unyielding climate, and their cooking reflected the ups and downs of their existence--as cooking always does. The book is arranged in sections--soups, fish, shellfish, vegetables--and each section is prefaced with some general, grounding remarks and basic techniques. The recipes reflect the simple ingredients available, largely cod, potatoes, small game birds, and pork. Pork and pork fat were highly valued, and consequently, the authors note, "...pigs were raised with great care and were often a source of personal pride. Older generations of Acadians told us that a farmer's reputation rested on the thickness of the pork fat that his pigs produced." Some of the recipes hold a distinct lack of appeal; for example blood sausage and "head cheese" made by simmering the meat off a pig's head and hocks. Yet these dishes were great delicacies to my father and uncles, when their mother indulged them with a cooking spree. The family favorite among the old "recettes" (recipes) was poutines rapees, baseball-sized dumplings of grated raw potato wrapped around chunks of salt pork and simmered in salted water. There are more congenial recipes in the book by all means: the popular buckwheat pancakes (ployes), seafood fricots (chowder-like concoctions), dandelion wine, simple homemade bread, and the hearty desserts and puddings sweetened with apples, berries, molasses, honey and maple syrup. I was particularly interested in the Acadian version of pate a la viande (meat pie), since this was another family favorite from the older generation. Even though the Acadian heritage is strong throughout Maine, nowadays the Quebecois version of meat pie (tourtiere) holds sway in the area and though I make tourtiere every year, it somehow fails to fully satisfy my memory; this winter we'll have the meat pie of my childhood. I'm not sure how many dishes I'll actually make from a cookbook that lists "lard or butter" as possible substitutes for salt pork. But there are a few things I wish I had cooked for my father with his "French-Canadian" palate, since my mother (who was Scotch-Irish) never would. I'm glad to have this beautifully-presented book on my shelf to browse through when I'm struck with an urge to explore my cultural heritage through cooking. Linda Bulger, 2009
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Acadian Recipes from New Brunswick Canada,
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This review is from: A Taste of Acadie (Paperback)
I looked for a long time for an authentic recipe cookbook from New Brunswick Canada that was written in English. These are the recipes that my Grandmother, Aunts and Mom use to make and still make. The recipes are really good.
If you are from the area of Moncton or the Acadian Trail this is the cookbook for you. Yummie food.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Tast of Acadia,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Taste of Acadie (Paperback)
I have learned a whole lot about acadien cuisine in this boob,and like every reciepe that i tried.One day i made a full acadien meal for friends and they told me its was the best meal they had eaten.
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