This text is part of the special book Plaisirs
Impossible to deny it: our local products are popular. The enthusiasm for our pantry is tangible, even if it is still necessary to reclaim a natural heritage whose wealth we have often forgotten. So where do you start when you want to add a bit of boreal spice to your daily dishes? Two professionals passionate about our territory have agreed to guide us.
When asked what the Quebec forest means to her, Ariane Paré-Le Gal is inexhaustible. It must be said that she grew up with a father to whom we owe the birth, more than 25 years ago, of the small company Gourmet sauvage, specializing in the democratization and processing of non-timber forest products. “The forest, she says, is our first home, where we all come from collectively. I am therefore campaigning very strongly for us to reconnect with it. In this sense, beyond a jam or a mustard, I propose a way of life, a way of bringing people back to the forest so that they can build a relationship with nature, just as they would do it with an animal or a human being. »
A huge taste playground
To serve her mission and perpetuate the legacy of her father Gérald, “who is still discovering things in the forest at over 72 years old”, Ariane left the city seven years ago with her family to settle in the heart of heart of nature, in Mont-Blanc, formerly Saint-Faustin–Lac-Carré. The Gourmet Sauvage brand now has a variety of products: herbs, dried mushrooms, syrups, jams, condiments, mustards, frozen wild fruits, etc.
Among what the expert considers to be spices, namely ingredients with a strong enough flavor and flavor to enhance dishes, we find the popular sweet clover (Quebec vanilla), juniper berries (used among other things in our local gins ), dune pepper (a kind of slightly bitter and lemony nutmeg… which is not really found in dunes), wintergreen and Labrador tea. But you can also add the sweet-scented fern (a fern which, once dried, is more bitterly reminiscent of Provencal herbs), balsam bayberry (a common plant whose catkins have a slightly peppery taste, with hints of nutmeg and conifer), sumac (a shrub with colorful flowers that can be dried and reduced to powder, with a sour and vinegary flavor) and bee balm, a pretty perennial whose chiseled leaves are reminiscent of oregano and Ariane Paré-Le Gal cheerfully uses winter in her soups and stews.
This list is only a glimpse of what our forests contain, including fragrant conifers that can also be used in the kitchen: fir, spruce, cedar, hemlock and even larch. As Ariane puts it so well, “our forest looks like a big green wall at first sight, but it is full of different identities. You realize the richness of this environment as soon as you start picking wild plants”.
The co-author of the sublime book Forest, in which are listed 100 wild references and as many ways to taste them, includes in all its menus the fruit of its pickings. “These are not always easy tastes to cook, she admits, but wild cooking allows you to explore, to think outside the box. So, the first thing I would advise people who want to use Nordic spices in their dishes would be: “Have fun and bet on simplicity”. The expert also always tests her natural finds with salty potential in a marinade or in a vinaigrette, and those that are sweeter in a meringue or in a white cake.
Head Picker Recipes
Of Maliseet origin (nation renamed Wolastoqiyik Wahsipekuk since 2019) by his paternal great-grandmother, chef Maxime Lizotte discovered the art of wild picking while studying cooking at the École hôtelière de la Capital city. “Thanks to Professor Éric Fontaine,” he says, “I understood that these ingredients constituted our Quebec culinary identity, and at the same time I reconnected with my own roots. »
Alongside his career as a chef, which led him, among other things, to work in the restaurants Saint-Amour and Légende par La Tanière, Maxime Lizotte began to market blends of Nordic spices and condiments, which are now brought together under the Wigwam’s name. Made with a variety of Quebec plants, roots, shoots and herbs, such as balsam poplar, agastache flowers or monarda, these products can accompany gravlax, fish, game or poultry.
The chef also regularly works with this natural pantry in his kitchen. He uses sweet clover, wild rose and wild carrot seeds (flavored with orange blossom and black pepper) in baking, combines artemisia with tomatoes in vinaigrette, makes salads with yarrow millefeuille, pastry creams by replacing vanilla with fir powder, and sauces for poultry by infusing tansy. Listening to it, the variations with these wild ingredients are endless. “And I see the marked interest that my products or the recipes that I make arouse,” he says. People ask questions, in turn try things. This makes me really happy, because I consider this success as a personal accomplishment. »