GREAT WINTER COOKBOOKS
Six local picks that go well beyond the recipes
Few pastimes are more alluring to me than finding myself lost in a book, carried into another world on the wings of an engrossing story, lyrical language or evocative images. I read more fiction than non-fiction but count books about food, cooking and entertaining among my favourites. I read them for comfort, for inspiration, for escape. The late, great writer Laurie Colwin said she liked to read cookbooks like novels. So do I: they make excellent bedtime reading. Some people say they find cookbooks unnecessary because so many recipes can be found online. It’s true that there are excellent websites, fine food and entertaining blogs. But there are also plenty of mediocre ones. And not everyone can tell them apart. Cookbook authors provide more than recipes: they’re curators, who develop and test and, in turn, share the recipes they like best. Cookbooks make wonderful presents because, really, you’re giving someone the gift of inspiration. How great is that? With that in mind, here’s a roundup of new cookbooks I think are terrific. I have limited my choices to books with Montreal connections and have omitted from the list two new books I have already written about and recommend highly: Josée di Stasio’s sublime À la soupe (Flammarion Québec), available in French only for now, and Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse — Another Cookbook of Sorts (Penguin Random House Canada), by Meredith Erickson, David McMillan and Frédéric Morin, published in English and French editions. Montréal l’hiver (Les Éditions Cardinal), by Montreal food writer, writing teacher and artist Susan Semenak, is a cookbook about what we want to eat in winter — and then some. It features inventive, accessible recipes for everything from lemon chicken stew with artichokes and olives, to a rustic vegetable tart, pasta al forno with tomato sauce and meatballs, and roasted cauliflower and brown rice with green goddess sauce, along with all kinds of other foods to keep us sated through the cold weather. But it is also a moody meditation on winter. Semenak, who was a longtime Montreal Gazette staffer, draws on her reporting skills to describe everything from the geometry of a snowflake to the ways in which Montrealers perceive winter — the way they see and hear and feel and smell it. The book is available only in French for now, but to anyone who lives in a climate in which winter is as deeply experienced, their impressions seem to transcend language. Cindy Boyce’s food photography is at once sharp and artful, and her shots of Montreal in winter are dreamy and evocative. The book is a treat for anyone who loves Montreal, from near or from far. Trois fois par jour — Desserts (Les Éditions Cardinal), by Marilou and Alexandre Champagne, is the third cookbook by the Montreal co-creators of the popular Trois fois par jour food blog; the brand now encompasses a lifestyle magazine and an online boutique. The format is the same as that used in the first two books, which sold more than 300,000 copies in French and English: stellar photos by Champagne, lovely styling and recipes by Marilou approachable enough for beginners, all bound together in a coffee table-worthy hardcover volume. I can’t get the recipe for chocolate mousse cake on a hazelnut praline crust out of my mind. The title of Uncomplicated: Taking the Stress Out of Home Cooking (Penguin Random House) says it all. Author and Montreal native Claire Tansey says her goal is to empower people to cook food that is healthful, simple and quick to prepare, and delicious. Her recipes are indeed uncomplicated — think grilled chili-lime shrimp, saucy pot roast and spicy peanut and lime noodles with chicken — and there are really helpful sections on uncomplicated shopping and uncomplicated dinner parties. Tansey, who grew up in Senneville, apprenticed at an Ottawa restaurant when she was starting out and cooked in Halifax before moving to Toronto, where she was food director at Chatelaine magazine for years. She then decided to strike out on her own as a recipe developer, culinary teacher and food writer.
From congee to kedgeree by way of pastéis de nata, Petits déjeuners autour du monde (Éditions Les 400 coups) provides 72 recipes from 32 countries on six continents. One recipe from each country is accompanied by an arresting photo of a child seated before a plate of food, surrounded by food and dolls or games. Very arty. The pretty little hardcover volume, from a Quebec publishing house specializing in children’s literature, is a translation by Marie-Andrée Dufresne from the 2016 book Little Tables: Breakfasts From Around the World, written, styled and photographed by talented New Zealand-based food photographer Vanessa Lewis. A fine gift for a child or a family, this book is less about the recipes than it is about encouraging readers to make an occasion of a meal. When Anne Fortin and Émilie Villeneuve’s slim and elegant new book Rollande Desbois: la gastronomie en heritage (Les Éditions de l’homme) crossed my desk, I wondered whether its appeal would be too limited for the general reader. I was wrong. The book is about food, but it is also about love and about a woman finding a place for herself. And it’s a fascinating journey. Desbois, born in Montreal in 1927, has had a long and illustrious career as a gastronomy journalist and teacher, and she was an influencer way before social media was a gleam in someone’s eye. A pioneer on our gastronomy scene, she has been dubbed Quebec’s Julia Child. The book is a fascinating account of a peripatetic life, the story of a woman who picked up with five children and moved from Montreal to London because of her husband’s work, then back to Canada, then to France and back to Montreal again. All the while, she was carving out a niche for herself in the gastronomy world, learning, teaching and writing. Desbois holds many honours, including the Order of Canada, and the book combines her personal story with recipes. Each chapter of her life is illustrated with recipes from that period — ones that are reflective of a particular time and place. The book features prefaces from three heavy hitters in Quebec’s food world: Josée di Stasio, Normand Laprise and Christine Lamarche. In the epilogue, the two authors describe the profound influence Desbois has had on their own lives. Queer Eye: Love Yourself, Love Your Life (Clarkson Potter/Publishers) is not, strictly speaking, a cookbook. It’s more a motivational/inspirational work — but couldn’t most of us use a bit of both? Besides, Antoni Porowski, one of the five men involved in the Netflix reboot Queer Eye, spent his childhood in Montreal. The show’s premise is that he and four others advise people in need of lifestyle makeovers; Porowski is the food and wine specialist. The others on the show are interior designer Bobby Berk, culture expert Karamo Brown, fashion designer Tan France and grooming consultant Jonathan Van Ness. The book features a good section on entertaining, each of the five contributes a recipe, and Porowski is especially interesting on the subject of cooking and food. “When you start cooking and prepare something every day, you realize that you become knowledgeable in the kitchen pretty quickly. It feels amazing to say, ‘I can make that!’ and to feed someone you love,” he writes. “Feeding someone else is a service. It’s the ultimate act of love and care you can pass on to another person.”