This text is part of the special Pleasures notebook
Janette Bertrand will be awarded the Laurier Hommage at the next Lauriers de la gastronomy québécoise awards ceremony, on May 27. An award aimed at highlighting his remarkable contribution to Quebec culinary culture and our recipe heritage. Thanks to a single recipe book, she managed to cook ham in hay, chuck roast and trout in jelly for several generations of Quebecers.
What was your reaction when you found out that you would be honored at the Lauriers de la gastronomie québécoise?
First of all, I didn’t expect it at all. And then, when you’re old, you go to funerals. You hear the tributes people pay to the deceased and you wonder why didn’t they say that while the person was still alive? They tell me while I’m still here. I’m happy, although I don’t bother with it.
When did you become interested in cooking?
When I was young, it was for one reason: I wanted to be loved by my father. He really enjoyed playing baseball and hockey with my brothers. I quickly realized that if I wanted to get his attention, I would have to make him something to eat. It’s sad, but that’s it. I did a lot of cooking only to get him to tell me that my sugar cream, for example, was the best he had ever eaten.
You only wrote one cookbook, Janette’s Recipes and Jean’s Grain of Salt, published in 1968. It was republished in 2005 and you added 165 new dishes. Where did the idea of publishing this book first arise, 56 years ago?
At the time, I was doing radio with my former husband, Jean Lajeunesse. We hosted at CKAC My husband and us live from our home in Westmount. At lunchtime, my children came to dinner and during the show, my husband asked me: “What are you making for them today?” » And, like crazy, I cooked food during the broadcast! I described my dishes on the radio. At one point, an editor approached me and told me that his wife always made my recipes. He asked me why I didn’t publish them. I told him that they were not all my creations, but rather my own repertoire! All that to say that we made a book out of it… And it worked so well!
How can you explain that your recipes have stood the test of time and that we still prepare them?
Because they were extraordinarily easy recipes. Before, they were often written by men whose job it was. But I was a working woman, who had three children and who co-hosted a show every day on the radio. So I cut corners when I prepared meals. This book could also have been called “Cooking for Working Women”. This explains its success.
Which recipe do we still talk to you about the most?
My blade roast. It was the one that made sales of the book take off. I don’t really know where I got that, maybe I made it up. It was beef with a packet of Lipton onion soup, cooked in foil. At the time, all the young people who moved to an apartment cooked this.
Why not have other collections of recipes been published?
I didn’t have time anymore. My interest shifted to other things. I still continued to write down recipes in a very small book, all written by hand. There are a lot of shortcuts in it, I’m not explaining business… I’ve never done anything with it, I don’t know what I’ll do with it. These are recipes for me. Besides, it enrages me, my little book! I have to go through this to find a recipe!
In short
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