Feast!: Canadian Native Cuisine for All Seasons

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Feast! is both visually beautiful and intriguing in content. It takes a
fresh, sophisticated approach to cooking with traditional ingredients,
linking Canada’s rich aboriginal heritage to modern culinary artworks.
The results are beautiful and luxurious, yet acknowledge the spiritual
power of Native foods.

George, a member of the Canadian Native Haute Cuisine
gold-medal-winning team at the 1992 World Culinary Olympics, presents
recipes and menus that capitalize on the best of the many foods
prominent in traditional Native cooking (e.g., salmon, wild rice,
fiddleheads, berries, moose, rabbit, wild duck).

After an account of the high-energy Olympic experience, the authors
give a brief history of Native food traditions of the Pacific Northwest.
Next, a quick review of the many full-page color photos sets the stage
for the dramatic, innovative recipes.

While not all readers will have the opportunity to try Boiled Porcupine
or Smoked Beaver, many of the recipes—Troute Almondine, Salmon Soup,
Pan-fried Clams with Seaweed, Wildflower Salad, Rose Hip Syrup, Wild
Blueberry Cookies—call for ingredients that can be obtained at a
supermarket or large farmers’ market. For other recipes—Moose Chili,
Bear Steaks, Wild Grouse Soup—it will be necessary to befriend a
hunter.

Throughout the book, the authors link the recipes to traditions and
cultural conventions, making Feast! fun to read as well as a new
experience in the kitchen.