Canadian food favorites?

Oh wow. Thats a tough one as many foodies debate what real Canadian food is aside from poutine and maple syrup. The problem with poutine is that something similar can be found in the southern USA, and the problem with maple syrup is that its also found all over Vermont.

My choice for a chocolaty yummy dessert is the Nanaimo Bar. They're no bake bars that kids would love. I tend to make them around holidays, and they're uniquely Canadian, not found in any other countries. Graham crackers, chocolate, coconut, peanut butter..yummy. I tend to omit the nuts in this recipe, as some people are allergic to them.

http://www.grouprecipes.com/29744/no-bake-peanut-b...

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Canadian Meat Pie is well known throughout Canada. I have the recipe served at a famous restaurant in Old Quebec call Aux Ancien Canadiens. You can use pre-bought pie shells to make it easier on yourself if you like.

Aux Anciens Canadiens Meat Pie

Meat Pie:

3.3 lbs pork

2 onions

2 potatoes

small pinch of ground clove

1/5 tsp. savory

3 ml salt

Small pinch of cinnamon

3.70 cups water (just under 3 ¾’s)

1 cheesecloth holding 1 tsp. whole pepper and 1 tsp. whole cloves

2 rolled-out pastry

Preheat oven at 350o F (180o C). Ground together pork, onions and potatoes, place them in a casserole. Add spices, water and cheesecloth containing whole pepper and whole cloves. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes. Remove cheesecloth. Spoon the meat mixture between 2 rolled-out pastry. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour.

Well french fries with cheese curds smothered in gravy (Poutine) wouldn't travel very well.

Or you could make baggies of dried blueberries, cranberies, cherries, nuts and seeds.

Or you could try your hand at Pemmican, an authentic Aboriginal. You could make this into much smaller portions by shaping them into patties.

Pemmican is a nutritious, high calorie food that can be prepared in quantities and stored. The French and English explorers, trappers, and traders, bought large quantities of pemmican from the Aboriginals, and even learned to make pemmican. Pemmican would be sealed inside an animal skin or stomach cavity to preserve it. Europeans carried these pemmican stores on long fur-trading expeditions.

Pemmican Cakes

Ingredients

1 package beef jerky

1 cup dried berries, such as dried blueberries, cranberries, or cherries

1 cup chopped nuts or sunflower seeds

¼ cup beef suet or vegetable shortening

Honey to taste (1 to 3 teaspoons)

12-cup muffin tin

Procedure

Line muffin cups with paper liners (or grease cups well).

Grind or chop beef jerky into confettisize pieces to make about 1 cup. Melt suet or shortening in a saucepan.

Remove from heat, stir in beef jerky, dried berries, and seeds. Stir in honey.

Spoon about ¼ cup of the pemmican mixture into each muffin cup. Press down firmly to make a cake, smoothing the top.

Refrigerate until well set.

Serves 12.

Here are some Canadian Classics:

Poutine

Maple Syrup

Pemeal or Back Bacon

and of course SEAFOOD.

Maple syrup pie or mouse or cookies. You can make chocolate chio cookies and add maple flavor to it and real maple syrup. Poutine would be great AKA Fries with gravy and cheese on top. Poutine is huge in Canada.

I feel sorry for Canadians, not because it’s cold up there, or because their main claim to fame is that they’re just north of America. I think Canadians are used to bad weather, and actually enjoy being North America’s hat or, as they say in Quebec, chapeau.

No, I feel sorry for Canadians because they don’t have a national food to call their own.

Every other country I can think of has a dish that’s unique to their country. In America, it’s the hamburger. England, fish and chips. France, wine and cheese. Switzerland, chocolate. Mexico, the burrito. Japan, sushi. Italy, pasta. India, Tandoori chicken. China, Chinese food—or as they call it there, food.

It’s not that you can’t get great food in Canada. I’ve been there many times, and enjoyed terrific Greek and Italian meals, and wonderful French pastries. Canada’s most cosmopolitan cities—Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec—are famous for their international cuisine, including French, Indian and Chinese food. I once ate a couple of English sausage rolls at a market on Granville Island in Vancouver that were second only to my moms. You can even get a decent hamburger in Canada, which is more than I can say for England. The English are wonderful people, but they utterly fail to understand the hamburger.

Nevertheless, Britain’s much better off than Canada, which has no dish to call its own.

A good friend of mine says Canada’s national dish ought to be mayonnaise. He spreads out a compelling case: Canadians serve mayonnaise with everything—sandwiches, French fries, grilled chicken, omelets and pancakes. It’s so popular there, I’m surprised they don’t sell soft-serve mayonnaise cones at Dairy Queen (come to think of it, maybe they do, I’ve never visited a Canadian Dairy Queen).

But mayonnaise isn’t Canadian, it’s French.

Mayo was invented in 1756 by the personal chef of the Duc Louis-François-Armand du Plessis de Richelieu, who not only had a very impressive name and a voracious sexual appetite (even for a Frenchman), but also an insatiable hunger for condiments. According to legend, after the Duc beat the British in a battle at Port Mahon, his chef created a victory feast that was to include a sauce made of cream and eggs. Realizing that there was no cream in the kitchen, the chef substituted olive oil for the cream and a new culinary creation was born. The chef named the new sauce “Mahonnaise” in honor of the Duc’s victory, then promptly moved to Canada and launched a very successful chain of sandwich shops called Mayo Moi!

Even if a Canadian had invented mayonnaise, though, I don’t think a condiment can qualify as a national cuisine.

President Reagan tried to declare ketchup a vegetable back in the early 1980s as part of his effort to reform school lunch programs. But he met stiff resistance—even ridicule—from the American public, who quickly dubbed it the president’s “Ketchupgate.” It remains the single biggest stain on President Reagan’s administration to this day, and I can only imagine what would have happened if he’d had the audacity to try and declare ketchup our national dish.

So condiments are out.

To solve Canada’s cuisine crisis, which only gets more embarrassing with each passing day, I think the government there should select 10 of the country’s top chefs—one from each province—to create a national dish. They could lock them in a test kitchen until they come up with something that’s distinctively Canadian. Maybe something like braised moose served with a maple syrup reduction, or smoked Northern pike and sweet Saskatoon berries on a bed of roasted pine needles. Even a chilled glacier water martini with fresh snow and shaved ice might be appropriate.

Clearly, I don’t have the answer; I’m American, not Canadian, and I’m a student, not a chef. But I’m tired of feeling sorry for our northern brethren. It’s time for Canadians to quit relying on everybody else to make the international potluck a success, and bring their own casserole to the table.