Description:
A celebration of British Columbia through a cook's palate and a photographer's lens, this cookbook highlights the province's diverse edible landscape, from the Pacific Ocean's seafood to Okanagan fruit. The seasonal layout pairs an eclectic collection of made-from-scratch recipes with evocative images, paying tribute to wholesome unprocessed foods and the skilled farmers who grow them.
Seafood lovers will find plenty of ideas for enjoying the Pacific's bounty with recipes for halibut, salmon, oysters, mussels, clams and spot prawns. B.C.'s prized fruits are featured in summer pies, tarts, meringues and ice cream while fall and winter recipes showcase local pears, apples and cranberries. The Fraser Valley's meats appear throughout the book, as do the region's vegetables that make up vegetarian dishes like the award-winning Ratatouille Pie.
There's even a section for getting back to basics with everything from stocks, to pasta, to honest-to-goodness real mayonnaise. British Columbia from Scratch features the province's most commonplace market ingredients, making this book as practical as it is beautiful.
Brief description: Denise Marchessault; photographs by Caroline West
Review Quotes:
With its gentle coastal winters and sun-baked summer valleys, choosing what to cook from British Columbia's cornucopia can stump the most imaginative home chef. Approached with a French touch, this book combines seasonal fruits and vegetables -- think asparagus and apricots -- with Pacific seafood and pasture-raised meats. Pork and shrimp dumplings, smoked duck and sesame dressing are a nod to the province's Chinese and Japanese cuisine, in this beautiful, tip-filled book that allows Mother Nature to take the lead.
-- The Globe and Mail