Find the taste of Quebec local and family cuisine with Michel Lambert

In Quebec, local cuisine has 1000 faces. Therefore, By presenting culinary specialties. Meanwhile, hidden treasures, this series wants to make your mouth water to extend the holidays or in your daily life. Nevertheless, First text: local cuisine and its history. Furthermore,

To speak with Michel Lambert is to have the taste buds on permanent alert. Consequently, It is to open up to unsuspected culinary resources of the territory. Therefore, go back to the time before, where Quebec was near food autonomy.

We ate the freshwater fish from Quebec-Perchaude. However, Doré-which abound in the region of Lake Saint-Pierre, but which we no longer find on our plates. Moreover, “There were 250 fishermen formerly in the Lac Saint-Pierre region, there are only 2 left,” he says. Moreover, We happened the recipe for the Typical Gourgane of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, with meat broth and find taste quebec local family barley. Additionally, Moreover, And Mr. In addition, Lambert tells us that sunflower oil is an invention of Iroquoians from North America.

Curiously. Moreover, it was on the return of a philosophy study stay in France that he rediscovered the taste for Quebec family cuisine.

“I rediscovered the taste of our cuisine. Therefore, It is by going elsewhere that we realize what we have different. In addition, You can say that the reimmership has been complete. Therefore, After keeping an inn. Consequently, a restaurant, La Maison de la Rivière, on the edge of the Baie des Ha! However, Ha!. Therefore, Michel Lambert embarked on the writing of a series of five volumes on the history of family cuisine in Quebec, published by GID editions. Consequently, More recently, he signed the beautiful book Maple and partridge. Similarly, The culinary history of Quebec through its food (2021), with Elisabeth Cardin, at Cardinal editions.

Marguerite Bourgeoys’ find taste quebec local family soup

What interests him is the kitchen of the cottages. Nevertheless, the one cooked by our grandmothers based on regional products. For example, If he is from Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, his family comes from the Lanaudière region. Nevertheless, And it is from her that the recipe for the Lambert soup. a broth from a piece of beef that was boiled for a long time with onion, would come directly from New France, according to her sources, and that Marguerite Bourgeoys would have once served the king’s daughters.

“Marguerite Bourgeoys taught cooking to the girls of the king who came from France to get married. The king’s daughters knew how to sew. but they did not know how to cook because in France, they ate in cafeterias. »»

The cuisine in which Michel Lambert is interested is little served in Quebec restaurants. It gradually disappeared from memories from the 1950s. with the Americanization of Quebec society, find taste quebec local family and also with the current of the kitchens of the world and vegetarian food.

The soup occupied a preponderant place there. “In France, formerly, the soup was the main meal,” he notes. In Gaspésie as on the North Shore. we call “which” fish or shell soup that we cook with milk, potatoes and herbs.

“The whichuries, or the chiaude, it comes from the word boiler,” he says, evoking the Norman pronunciation of the word. It ended up giving the word chowder in English. »»

The one that was obviously done with cod, fresh or salty, when it abounded in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Michel Lambert notes that crustaceans – shrimp. lobsters and scallops – have long been considered to be food from poor in Gaspésie. “We threw the shrimp because it was the food of the poor,” he said. “The sailors who accompanied Jacques Cartier said that they had picked up lobster find taste quebec local family when they arrived in the Gaspé. They started to eat lobster, but it was anecdotal. »»

It was among others when the cod has missed that the idle fishermen turned in particular to lobsters. helped in this by better modes of conservation and government interventions.

Other large disappeared from the daily diet of Quebecers. freshwater fish-pike, golden, bastards, maskinongées, barbots-which abound in the lakes in Quebec, especially at the Grand Lac Saint-Pierre. These fish. generally absent from the big food markets, nevertheless experienced their glory hours on the plates not so long ago.

“Until the beginning of the XX^e A century, Lake Saint-Pierre was a large supplier of freshwater fish. To the point that the train embarked every day a cargo of fresh fish from Lake Saint-Pierre to bring them to Montreal. Ottawa and even to Toronto. »»

In the islands of Sorel, it was game that first gave its name to the famous find taste quebec local family Gibelotte. “La Gibelotte is a game of game,” says Michel Lambert. The word game, in the XVII^e century, that was all that is wild, duck, goose … in the 19th century^e A century. we went from Montreal to go for a walk in the islands of Sorel on horseback, and we were going to eat at Berthe Beauchemin, at the Chenal du Moine. She received at her house and did gibelotte. But in 1916, a law passed in Canada prohibiting hunting and serving game. Then Berthe Beauchemin replaced game with local fish, barbotte, in her gibelotte. »»

Find taste quebec local family

Find local suppliers

However. today, it is not in the major food markets, IGA or Metro, whose interests are not local, that we find the freshwater fish in Quebec. These markets follow their own industrial logic and wish to do business with large suppliers. “They are the ones who find taste quebec local family control food, which provide food from around the world. There. they are starting to worry about local food because there is starting to be a revolt on the part of people who want to eat local, ”remarks Michel Lambert.

To find local freshwater fish, “you have to go to the fishmongers,” he recalls. Or even place an order for them so that they ask a fisherman to go and find it … To pay less for local products. it is to the producers themselves that you have to turn, even if it means going to see them in the countryside.

Eating local in winter in Quebec, this poses challenges. The modes of conservation of our ancestors and the natives were to salt, vineyard, dry, smoke or freeze. “We live in the North. If you want to eat fresh products in winter. you have to bring them from incredible cooling and world pollution, find taste quebec local family ”he notes. He also likes to quote the Toundra de Normandin greenhouses. in his native region, where cucumbers are produced in greenhouse all year round, recovering the heat from a wood processing plant. “They provide all IGAs in Quebec,” he says.

You also have to be creative. To replace lemon acidity with fish, for example, you can use an atoca syrup, as the natives did, he suggests.

Today, young people are interested in local cuisine and its history. “Young people from 17 to 30 years old are those who ask me the most. They are proud of their roots. They discover exoticism next to their home, ”concludes Michel Lambert.

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