Cuisine of the Maritime Provinces (Canada)

The Maritimes have some unique foods partly because they have some foodstuffs that grow only in their area and partly because of cultural phenomena that have brought foods with them. Much of what is local food or regional cuisine there could be found in the foods of the Native Peoples or indigenous people, sometimes called Indians, whose cultures preceded those to be found in the Maritimes today. Fiddlehead greens (fiddlehead ferns, fiddleheads) [http://www.fiddleheadgreens.com/faqs.php] are unique to Canada and to the Maritimes and can be served in various ways. [http://www.fiddle-heads.com/recipe.htm] Poutine rapee [http://www.recipezaar.com/123966] , an Acadian pork-potato dish, and rapee/rapie pie [http://www.acadian.org/recipes.html] , an Acadian poultry dish, are Maritime-based. (Acadia, or Acadie in French, is the French Canada different from Montreal, based in the Maritimes, and known to those in the United States chiefly because Longfellow's Evangeline and the Cajuns of Louisiana originated there.) Seafood is of great importance in the Maritimes and it is prepared in many ways, probably limited only by the number of cooks. [http://www.travel-library.com/north_america/canada/prince_edward_island/trip.lunny.html] Lobster rolls are to be found wherever tourists go, but the locals love them too; these can be found in the United States as well, particularly in Maine, which adjoins the Province of New Brunswick, the only province with two official languages, French and English [http://www.gnb.ca/Cour/Languages-e.asp] , which is an indication of the cultures one will find in this province between Quebec and Nova Scotia. No one who has visited the homes of Maritimers who go back a few generations is likely to forget dulse; dulse is seaweed of a certain type and grows along the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia coasts. Maritimers crunch on dried dulse, a reddish-purple-to-black salty-tasting snack, rather as others would munch potato chips and one usually sees a small dish on a side table somewhere near where family members are sitting. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel&res=9B0DE4DB113AF935A3575AC0A961948260] Maple sugar, in many forms, from syrup (tire d'erable) to little maple-leaf-shaped crunchy candies is an important sweet in Eastern Canada, [http://www.canadianmaplesyrup.com/maplehistory.html] where sugaring-off excursions (involving 'tire d'erable sur la neige,' when the hot syrup is poured onto snow to crystallize) are one of the better winter activities. It is also an important export, economically. [http://atn-riae.agr.ca/supply/3310_e.htm] [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0005095] . On Prince Edward Island, Cow's Ice Cream [http://www.gct.com/gcc/general/default.aspx?oid=202404&linklocation=trip_leftnav] is an important purveyor of a local favorite, and dairy products in various forms are important to residents of the Maritimes. Wild blueberries grow in abundance in the Maritimes and are there for the picking for anyone willing to take the time, which is considerable because they are small. [http://www.nationalpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=a0a273ec-5f79-48db-bd7f-d11b50441045&k=20811] They can be made into the Acadian dumpling dessert called blueberry grunt, [http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/357/Acadian_Blueberry_Grunt47999.shtml] among others. Seal flippers and seal flipper pie, various bean dishes, usually flavored with pork, any fish found in the many rivers, and many other foods are not to be forgotten.

References

See also

* Acadia
* Maritimes
* Local food

Categories

* Food and drink
* Snack foods