Armstrong - Made in Quebec : a culinary journey

A CULINARY JOURNEY

JULIAN ARMSTRONG

To the chefs and cooks of Quebec
whose generosity with their recipes made this book possible

The story of Quebec food is a love story

Baker James MacGuire with his French country loaves.

Quebecers love to eat. They talk enthusiastically about the best foods and where to find them, they recommend recipes, and they turn misty-eyed remembering their food traditions. In North America, Quebec is distinct in language and culture, distinguished by its obsession with good food and drink, lively restaurant scenes, bustling food shops and markets, and interest in the latest food trends and loyalty to heritage dishes. So its not surprising that one of Montreals top restaurants is called Toqu!, which means infatuated, crackeda little crazy.

T ravellers to the province can experience the French culinary tradition, adapted long ago to native foods. They soon notice the preoccupation of Quebecers with whats for dinner, and their belief that cuisine is a vital part of life. Quebecers eagerly share tips on the best or newest restaurants, yet home cooking is also alive and well. So is fast food. Quebecers dont mind some teasing over their celebrated poutine, and they are always happy to argue about where to get the best bagel or smoked meat sandwich.

I have called Quebec home for most of my life and have been lucky enough to work as a food reporter for my entire career. Ive had the opportunity to take regular tasting trips around the province, venturing far off the beaten track to country restaurants and to cheesemakers, wild-food foragers, specialty livestock breeders, and fishermen maintaining centuries-old practices and organic gardeners using the latest agricultural techniques. Its a newspaper beat to beat all others, and one of my great satisfactions is the encouragement Ive always been given by native Quebecers, who have never stopped providing me with tips, recipes, background, and referrals to specialists I should consult on my travels. Quebec, to me, is a region of generosity, at table and in every other way.

My findings have sometimes surprised my Quebec-born friends because, not having grown up in the province, I have spotted the distinctive and unusual in the food of one region after another. These differences have been right under their nosesor forksfrom birth, but I made stories out of them, and native Quebecers seem to have enjoyed the tales.

Everywhere I travel in the province, I find that French cuisine is alive and well. Sure we like Italian and Asian, Middle Eastern and American, but, as chefs will state, the mother cuisine is French.

The 17th-century settlers came to New France with their cast-iron pots and pans and their simple country recipes for tourtires and ragouts, pts and terrines, tarts and galettes. Those dishes continue to be part of todays cuisine, particularly at holidays and family gatherings. Year-round, the tourtire is the most-sold ready-made dish in Quebec food stores. Pts and terrines are part of any cocktail reception; pies and cakes, regulars in pastry counters. And, on Christmas Eve, the finer ptisseries are jammed with shoppers picking up their bche de Nol, the Christmas sponge cake rolled up with chocolate buttercream and iced to look like a yule log.

Quebec has not forgotten the medieval cooking of its original settlers, country folk from northwestern France who were still cooking in the style of the 1400s. Those long-ago cooking practices still in use in Quebec family cooking include seasoning meat dishes with spices such as cinnamon and cloves; using salted herbs; boiling bones to make stock; using bread and crumbs as frugal ingredients in recipes; making stale bread into bread pudding or French toast; using browned flour as both a seasoning and a thickener; making boiled dinners and chowders; using dried legumes to make pea soup and baked beans; combining dried fruit with fresh in such desserts as apple-raisin pie and spiced date cake; and flavouring desserts with honey and nuts.

Q uebecs cooking maintains its past in part because a small group of Montreal chefs realized in the 1970s that traditional dishes were in danger of disappearing. Ready-made products were proliferating, and pasta appeared to be becoming Quebecs number one ingredient. The chefs launched a province-wide study with the Institut de tourisme et dhtellerie du Qubec, Montreals government-run professional cooking school. Student researchers conducted interviews with home cooks throughout Quebec about traditional family cooking. They talked to senior citizens, farming groups, regional cooks, and tourist associations. The students and chefs collected vintage recipes from every region, some 30,000 in all. The institutes research centre tested thousands of recipes and selected 630 of them for a cookbook, Cuisine traditionelle des rgions du Qubec. Its a remarkable record of simple, homey, regional dishes that reveals how the original French cuisine was adapted to foods and ingredients found in the New World.

More encouragement was given to making Quebec cuisine distinctive in 1990 when top chefs all over the province started a movement called La Cuisine rgionale au Qubec. The chefs went to work encouraging producers in their areas to turn out more of their regions best fruit and vegetables, meats and cheeses, and the chefs, in turn, committed to replacing as many imported ingredients as they could in their cooking with these products. They began to name their suppliers on their menus, a practice you still find in restaurants as prestigious as Toqu!, in Montreal, and Laurie Raphal, in both Quebec City and Montreal.

Montreal bagels are trimmed with either poppy seeds or sesame seeds.

Chefs regularly say that the best Quebec cooking starts with the best foods, and they have long encouraged improvements in livestock-farming techniques, crossbreeding of fruits to extend their season, automated harvesting systems for vegetables, and even streamlining of wild-food foraging for such delicacies as fiddleheads and mushrooms. Even some wines, ciders, and liqueurs come with a Quebec flavour, like the wonderful ice cider from winter-chilled apple orchards, and the liqueur known as chicoutai, made from the wild northern cloudberry.

The perpetual newsmaker among Quebec foods is cheese. Winning prizes throughout North America has become an annual event for Quebec cheesemakers. Again, the French influence reigns. Cheesemakers have developed an array of soft and semi-soft cheeses in every corner of Quebec, some succulent on a cheese tray, others adding zest to a recipe. Many are so popular that they are sold across Canada and in the United States.