"Okay, quite a lot of it's about the poutine" Hostelworld
Indeed it is - it appears at the top of most top ten lists, but I have written about it before, not too long ago, so I'm not going to say any more on the subject today. Though I will give it the honour of lead photograph because, yes, it is officially I believe, Canada's national dish. And no I'm still not tempted.
I have travelled to Canada twice - once with English friends and once to visit my son who was living there at the time. I don't count the couple of hours I spent on the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls way back in 1962 when my friend Carole and I were doing the American thing in our summer break. What I do remember about that however, is how different Canada was to America. It was such a relief to go over the bridge and get away from American flags everywhere, although Canada compensated with portraits of the Queen although not quite so in your face as American flags. Also in some indefinable way Canada was more relaxed. We didn't experience the tension that was somehow always in the air in the USA.
I would say the same things about the general atmosphere on my subsequent visits, although I should qualify a bit by saying that both of these subsequent trips were to Vancouver and British Columbia. West coast mountains where the landscape is definitely the thing. And although we ate well - although with the exception of a couple of meals in Vancouver, not exceptionally well, I could not say that I was aware of a particular local dish. In America there are indeed local specialities, and also national specialities that you cannot help but be aware of and which are distinctly American - albeit with an obvious influence from elsewhere. It's sort of fusion food that has become distinctly American.
So why hasn't the same thing happened in Canada - or doesn't appear to have? One of Canada's previous Prime Ministers - Joe Clark has famously said of Canadian cuisine:
"Canada has a cuisine of cuisines. Not a stew pot, but a smorgasbord."
Canada, like America and Australia - where the immigrant population has dominated the indigenous one, does not seem, however, to have created new dishes in the spirit of their immigrants, or fused them together in quite the same way. Well not at first sight anyway. Why is Canada so different to America? The same two colonial powers - Britain and France dominated initially and later had the same two major waves of immigration - the first from Europe and the second from Asia. And yet - except perhaps for the French influence in French Canada - and paarticularly when it comes to those later immigrants there doesn't seem to have been the same fusion. They brought their food and it is still definitely there, but it has not been transformed in the same way, although Wikipedia almost says that it has:
"Canadian cuisine privileges the quality of ingredients and regionality, and may be broadly defined as a national tradition of "creole" culinary practices, based on the complex multicultural and geographically diverse nature of both historical and contemporary Canadian society."
A Canadian ambassador (Ping Kitnikone) to, I think Thailand, said in an interview:
"The main theme of Canadian cuisine is locally sourced ingredients applied in recipes brought forth by immigrants to Canada. While there is no key food for which we say, ‘This is a Canadian dish’ – we do have key ingredients that make something our own"
Which is a tiny bit different to two different cuisines merging together - it being more of a case of the incoming cuisine adapting to local ingredients, not cuisines.
So what are those ingredients? Well today Canada is a major, major exporter of beef, wheat and canola apparently but, of course, add to this the products that we know as Canadian - seafood - particularly salmon, maple syrup and ham. And then of course, there are others, some of them more local - such as game - which may in fact no longer be used because of legislation against hunting. There are berries and grains and vegetables no doubt. And Indigenous cuisine as well as Indigenous culture seems to be beginning to be experimented with. I suspect the relationship with the Indigenous peoples is more akin to our own than to the American relationship with the North American Indians - but I shall not be delving too much into that here.
A website called Hostel World had a list of 17 'got to try' dishes and I would have to say that when I checked out various other such sites they mostly lined up - virtually all of them with poutine as number one. The order of the rest may have varied somewhat but the dishes were almost always the same. So herewith the order of the Hostel World list.
Bannock - - it's a very Scottish name, to me, and indeed the first colonialists were the French, the English and the Scottish, according to most accounts. However, this bread has indigenous roots, in spite of the Scottish name although the grain used is wheat, which was imported. It was a staple food of the Indigenous people although they would have used ground corn and nuts. It's a kind of damper I guess, but flat in shape and fried.
Butter tarts - a simple mix of butter, sugar and egg in flaky pastry tarts, which date back to the early 19th century. There are arguments about these centring on two different qualities. The first is whether the filling should be solid, semi-solid or runny, and the sceond is whether there should be raisins - the most common controversial element, currants, sultanas ... and/or nuts in the mix. A rather less argued over difference is whether maple syrup should be included. Which all comes down to a matter of taste.
Nova Scotian Lobster Rolls - Over on the east coast is Novia Scotia, famous for the quality of its seafood and here is it's most famous Canadian manifestation - the lobster roll, which includes a dressing of mayonnaise, chives, dill, garlic and lemon zest. This one looks to be served in a French baguette. Well, wherever the French have been their baguettes linger on. Possibly even take over.
Montreal-style Bagels - Yes, as in America they were brought to Montreal by Jewish immigrants, but in Montreal they are sweeter, denser, and thinner. There is no salt, and after they are boiled in hot water, the finishing - and unique touch is that they are baked in a wood-fired oven. Although of course, you can bake them in an oven at home. I wonder how that came to be, or rather, why didn't the same thing happen in New York City, which is famous for its bagels?
Saskatoon berry pie - the Saskatoon berry is a native berry, which somebody described as a cross between a blueberry and almonds in taste. They became so famous that the city of Saskatoon was named for the berry - not the other way around which is what usually happens with this kind of thing. There's not a lot to the pie filling other than the berries - but it does look good.
Montreal-style Smoked Meat
Sort of the Canadian pastrami I suppose. Brisket, cured in spices (and salt) - spicier than the American version - peppercorns, coriander, mustard, marinaded/cured for a week, then hot smoked, before finally being steamed. It is then cut by hand, so that it doesn't all fall to pieces and served in a sandwich with mustard. The cut is brisket, because the cut the Americans use is not available in Canada which means that:
"The use of brisket means that smoked meat is "not fattier throughout the cut, but it has a larger cap of fat, and it has a stringier texture, more fibrous. American-style pastrami is more marbled with fat and has a denser texture" Wikipedia
Again it was the Jews who imported this one - probably from Romania.
Peameal Bacon - Canada is famous for its bacon, although we don't seem to get a lot of it here. Well I guess we have more than enough pigs to make our own. This particular bacon is made from wet cured pork which is then rolled in cornmeal. It's called pea meal bacon because originally it would have been crushed yellow peas not cornmeal in which it was rolled. And it's not smoked either.
Beavertails
This is a hugely popular treat invented at the 1978 Killahoe Fair near Ottawa by Pam and Grant Hooker, using a recipe from Grant's German grandmother - fried dough, stretched by hand, and shaped into a beaver's tail - Pam's idea, topped originally with sugar and cinnamon - nowadays with almost anything - and then fried. Well the toppings are probably added after the frying. It proved to be so popular that it is now a company with franchises all over Canada. They appeared on just about every list of top Canadian dishes.
Montreal split pea soup - I have to say I'm not quite sure why this is on the list, other than it's very popular in Canada. I have so far, however, not seen anything that tells me what makes it uniquely Canadian. Ingredients? The usual - ham hock, leeks, onions, garlic and it looks like the odd bit of carrot as well. I will say that it appeared on virtually all of the lists I looked at however.
Tire d'erable sur la neige (Maple taffee)
This, however, is uniquely Canadian and moreover derived from the Indigenous inhabitants. Over a layer of snow - or nowadays crushed ice, is poured a line of hot boiled maple syrup, , which of course immediately starts to set. It is then rolled up in the snow and eaten like a popsicle. Often made and served in the rustic sheds where the maple syrup is boiled down to a syrup before packaging.
Ketchup Chips - well just ketchup
It seems that the Canadians, like the Australians have an obsession with tomato ketchup - well not quite like the Australians because they seem to prefer tomato sauce, which is slathered on everything. This particular item apparently dates back to the 1970s and includes these ketchup flavoured chips.
Increasingly, I have to say, I am getting the impression that most of these favourite Canadian dishes are not good for you. So maybe they do have more in common with the Americans than I thought.
Nanaimo Bars - Now these were on everyone's list, so I'm not sure why they were not higher on this particular list. A simple treat which at its simplest is a crumb base, a layer of custard and a thin layer of melted chocolate on top. Modern day pastry cooks doubtless fiddle with them endlessly. Nanaimo is a small town on Vancouver Island, which once had mines. The first recipe for this appeared in the 1952 Women’s Auxiliary of the Nanaimo Hospital Cookbook, and although there are other stories about its origin this is the only one that people seem to agree on. Amazing in a way is it not that something made by an ordinary housewife can end up on top ten lists of things to eat in Canada.
Pouding chômeur which translates as unemployment pudding - so a poor family's treat when they were feeling down. A bit like vinegar tart, that I wrote about some time ago. It consists of a simple baked cake batter with syrup poured over it - and if you were lucky a few sultanas or currants too.
Caesar Cocktail
On the left is a particularly extreme version of a favourite Canadian cocktail, which is similar to a Bloody Mary but made with Clamato - a tomatoey juice that contains clam juice, plus vodka, Worcestershire sauce and tabasco and with a celery salt rim. More usually the extras are lime and celery, but apparently these days you could end up with something like the one on the left. A rather more refined version is on the right - and there is kimchi somewhere in that one, so obviously this is still in an evolutionary state. It was created in 1969 at the Calgary Inn (now the Westin Calgary) by its bartender in response to a request for a signature cocktail for their new Italian restaurant. It took him months to perfect it.
Tourtière - the last one on the Hostel World list. It's just a meat pie with potato - or it could be fish even because the meat is not specified. It depends where you are and what is available. It's spiced, but I do not know with what. And the name - obviously French - is from the name of the dish in which it is made. Nevertheless it appears on virtually all of the lists.
The also rans
Many people mentioned the fact that these days because of the greater English influence in Canada - again why? - English style pubs are springing up in Canada, particularly on the Eastern side, and therefore English pub food such as fish and chips is becoming increasingly common.
Other dishes that were sometimes mentioned were Donairs - a variation of Greek gyros; Sweet and sour pork - from the Chinese immigrants; Uramaki a particular kind of sushi which originated in Vancouver; Ginger beef - another Asian dish from Calgary which is made with deep-fried battered beef, covered with a spicy sauce; Cedar plank salmon, which is marinated salmon cooked on a cedar plank and finally perogies - a variation of the Polish pierogi.
Of course like most of the world today, probably most Canadians eat tacos, pizza, pasta, stir fries, ramen and hamburgers all the time, and there would be restaurants cooking food from just about everywhere on the planet, even Michelin starred chefs who live in a world of their own invention.
Poutine though. Not a good ad I would have thought for your national cuisine.
OTHER YEARS
October 22 - was it hot then I wonder?
2023 - Chowder - well sort of coincidental - it's American
2021 - What about smoked salmon? - another almost coincidence - salmon
2020 - Bakewell tart and pudding
2018 - Cruising Nillumbik's vineyards - oh dear - I do keep repeating myself
2016 - Nothing
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