The Acadian Kitchen

"The history of the Acadian culinary tradition, with recipes from the past and present."--

"What is Acadian food? It is humble, homey, and comforting. It is made with love and devotion from a larder that is small but mighty, and holds history within itself. And it is made to be eaten. In Pantry and Palate, journalist Simon Thibault explores his Acadian roots by scouring old family recipes, ladies' auxiliary cookbooks, and folk wisdom for 50 of the best-loved recipes of Acadians past and present. Recipes run the gamut, from the art of pickling beets to old-fashioned foodways such as rendering lard and cooking with head cheese, to Acadian staples like Classic French Canadian Tourtière and Seafood Chowder, and a delicious roster of desserts from Rhubarb Custard Pie to Acadian Panna Cotta. Including essays celebrating the stories behind the recipes, a foreword by bestselling author Naomi Duguid (Taste of Persia), and photos by noted food photographer Noah Fecks (The Up South Cookbook), Pantry and Palate is magnifique from page to plate."--

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.

Now an established regional classic, Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens was first published in 1970 and became an instant hit, selling more copies than any cookbook ever published in the province. A collection of traditional Nova Scotia recipes, the book remains extremely popular today and has proven to be a practical guide as well as a delight for armchair cooks. Besides providing easy-to-use recipes for the province s traditional dishes, Marie Nightingale also tells the stories of the people who prepared this unique cuisine.This fortieth anniversary edition includes an updated look throughout, a foreword from Chef Michael Howell at Tempest Restaurant, and a new introduction from the author on the book's incredible and long-lasting success."

Stuffed with 125 Creole and Cajun inspired dishes, Acadiana Table gets to the roots of everthing you need for Louisiana cooking and regional cuisine.

"Despite the increased popularity of Cajun foods such as gumbo, crawfish etouffee, and boudin, relatively little is known about the history of this cuisine. Stir the Pot explores its origins, its evolution from a seventeenth-century French settlement in Nova Scotia to the explosion of Cajun food onto the American dining scene over the past few decades. The authors debunk the myths surrounding Cajun food - foremost that its staples are closely guarded relics of the Cajuns' early days in Louisiana - and explain how local dishes and culinary traditions have come to embody Cajun cuisine both at home and throughout the world." -- from the publisher.

"Altogether superb; a worthy memorial to the victims of two and a half centuries past."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review In 1755, New England troops embarked on a "great and noble scheme" to expel 18,000 French-speaking Acadians ("the neutral French") from Nova Scotia, killing thousands, separating innumerable families, and driving many into forests where they waged a desperate guerrilla resistance. The right of neutrality; to live in peace from the imperial wars waged between France and England; had been one of the founding values of Acadia; its settlers traded and intermarried freely with native Mikmaq Indians and English Protestants alike. But the Acadians' refusal to swear unconditional allegiance to the British Crown in the mid-eighteenth century gave New Englanders, who had long coveted Nova Scotia's fertile farmland, pretense enough to launch a campaign of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. John Mack Faragher draws on original research to weave 150 years of history into a gripping narrative of both the civilization of Acadia and the British plot to destroy it.