Made in Quebec: A Culinary Journey

Canada’s culinary treasure revealed in recipes, stories and photographs.

Canada has a culinary treasure in Quebec, one that is not perhaps as celebrated as it could be, at least outside of that distinct and gloriously food-obsessed region. Julian Armstrong, longtime food writer for The Gazette of Montreal, has spent her career eating, cooking, thinking and writing about Quebecois food. Made in Quebec: A Culinary Journey is the result of those years of delicious effort. Quebec has a cuisine firmly based on French foundations, but blended and enriched over the years by the cooking styles of a variety of immigrant groups, initially British and American, more recently Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern and Asian. More than in any other province or region in Canada, people in Quebec are passionate and knowledgeable about their food. The restaurant scene is robust, not just in Montreal and Quebec City―you can go to just about any small town in la belle province and have a splendid meal. Farmers, purveyors, chefs, casual and dedicated home cooks - all are poised in every season to produce or procure the perfect, seasonal ingredient. Not for them the out-of-season asparagus from Peru. Quebec is where you can truly experience what food tasted like before the industrial food complex. Here unpasteurized milk and cheese is commonplace; indeed there is a herd of cattle descended from cows brought from France by Samuel de Champlain producing milk just for this purpose. Imagine that in the rest of Canada! Of course, Quebec is big news in the global foodie world these days, with Martin Picard (Au Pied de Cochon), David McMillan and Fred Morin (The Art of Living According to Joe Beef), and Chuck Hughes (Garde Manger and Chuck’s Day Off) showing off the joys of dining in this great province. But there is much more still to discover about Quebec, from restaurateurs certainly, but also from farmers, foragers, artisanal cheese and bread makers, home cooks, and so many more. These people, their stories and recipes, comprise Made in Quebec. It is high time for a comprehensive celebration of Quebecois cuisine.

About the Author

Julian Armstrong is a writer whose specialty is Quebec: Quebec chefs, Quebec food and drink producers, and the latest developments on the Quebec culinary scene. She is the author of Taste of Quebec (Macmillan 1990, updated by John Wiley 2001). Julian writes a weekly column in The Montreal Gazette, and contributes to the production of a weekly summer-fall column called In Season that is based on Quebec products. She is extraordinarily well connected to the food world of Quebec.

In my mind this is the ideal cookbook presenting recipes home cooks can make in their own conditions focused on the diverse regional cuisines of Quebec. Also a beautiful book, photography is top notch. Compared to Montreal Cooks: A Tasting Menu from the City's Leading Chefs - which I also found to be a beautiful but not entirely practical book in terms of a cookbook. If I was looking for a cookbook on unique flavors of Quebec this book would be my choice. If I was looking for an overview of some of Montreal's incredible cooking talent I'd get Montreal Cooks - just don't expect to be making many of the recipes in that book unless you live in a very large city with access to ingredients. --Rhodyfreesh

My maternal grandmother was from Quebec, and I was looking for a cookbook that contains favorite recipes from that region specifically. This is a beautiful cookbook, well illustrated and containing many excellent and favorite recipes! --Gibs