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Canadian cuisine

One might be forgiven for thinking that Canadian cuisine is basically English and French due to the many settlers from those two countries. But as with many other new countries attracting immigrants from across the globe, the cuisine now consists of many other nations’ dishes.

Eastern Europe, Southern and Central Europe and China have all had an influence in the now diverse Canadian food.

One thing we all know is that Canada produces Maple syrup - a sweet molasses that is often served with pancakes, waffles and ice cream.

The traditional food of the provinces prior mass immigration was wild game and Inuit cooking. Once immigration got under way there was a strong influence in the areas that settlers settled. French settlers in Southern Quebec, Dutch in the western regions of Ontario, Polish, Ukrainian, German in the western provinces.

It is entirely understandable with such a sparsely occupied land that the indigenous food would have been, in many cases, never sampled by settlers, so naturally they kept to their own recipes.

In the late 1800’s Jewish immigrants arrived and introduced amongst many other foods, the Montreal-style smoked meat and bagel both now very popular.  Chinese food varies from region to region and is thought to be influenced by Canadian or North American recipes. It is thought also that the Chinese Buffet so popular in western countries originated in Canada in 1870.

Canada is a country rich in wild game and you can expect to see some or all of the following on menu’. Venison, Seal, Partridge, Ptarmigan, (a member of the grouse family) and Caribou. The variations will be due to which wild game is present in that location and the influence of the immigrants that settled there.

It would be almost impossible not to find Poutine somewhere in any city, town in Canada as this is now widely thought to be the number one national dish.

Poutine consists of medium size French fries topped with fresh cheese curds and then covered with either a chicken, turkey, or veal gravy.

The sweet national dish is a butter tart which is a flaky pastry tart filled with butter, sugar, syrup and egg and has a yummy crunchy top.

Whatever cuisine is in the area you go to work in you can be assured of a wealth of wonderful dishes made from the abundance of crops that are found in Canada. These include many wild mushrooms such as, chanterelle, pine, puffball. Fruits such as: gooseberries, strawberries, pearberries cranberries.

Lastly one should not forget that Canada make many very fine beers and also their famous ‘ice wine’, so if you enjoy a varied cuisine, good beer, then you are defiantly in  for a treat.

 I also want to urge you to visit a Chinese Buffet. They are truly magnificent. The variety of dishes, the unique recipes is something I have not experienced anywhere else.