East Coast feast that hits all your senses
Newfoundland artisans have a range of talents for making their own fun
BROAD COVE, N.L.— No doubt, it’s a lovely seaside scene. But a place of harvest? I simply don’t see it. A portrait straight out of a Newfoundland postcard — all hard edges, big rocks and crashing waves and brambles and froth, it looks like a good place for a hike, not a meal. But Lori McCarthy? She sees a vast, natural buffet. Leading me across the Technicolorgreen grass that rings to the rough beach, she points out — and picks — all sorts of little tiny plants which, she promises, will be delicious.
“These are the plants that we get excited about,” enthuses the founder of Cod Sounds, a culinary excursion company. “You’ll never see your lawn the same way again.”
I’m near the village of Broad Cove on Newfoundland’s Artists’ Trail.
Part concept and part reality, the trail traces the byways of the Bay de Verde Peninsula, winding roads where creativity abounds in the slowest corners of this big province. I’m exploring this area’s art, wherever it may be found — whether culinary, literary, marine or otherwise.
And things get started with an ugly stick.
Driving the 90 minutes up from St. John’s, I’m greeted warmly by Susan Rose, who owns and operates Coastal Cottages, parking my suitcase in a lovely three-bedroom home and making my way to the shed, which sits right on the water.
There, I meet Reg King, a real Newfoundland character, a dynamo of a man well up in his 80s, who fished the Labrador shore and actually built the house where I’ll be staying, living there with his family for 47 years, before selling it to Rose.
As I begin the process of pounding nails onto a broomstick to create this colourful, percussive piece, Rose explains that the first explorers and fishermen to arrive on this island didn’t travel with instruments, so they had to improvise. Typically capped by a wig, with a boot on the bottom, we work away at attaching bottle caps to the body, formed by a mop stick.
“In the past, you only had what was in your shed — beer caps, jam jar rings and old tin cans,” Rose says.
King adds, helpfully, “And you can only play it if you’re half drunk.”
I see this kind of down-home creativity wherever I go, here on the northern reaches of the Avalon Peninsula.
In the multi-hued, historic village of Brigus, I make the hike up to Kent Cottage, which was once home to controversial, early 20th-century artist Rockwell Kent (when he showed a little too much sympathy to the Germans in the First World War, the locals invited him to leave and the house is now maintained by a non-profit trust).
Up in Grates Cove, I walk the village’s famous rock walls, now designated a national historic site, and then chow down on some Cajun at Grates Cove Studios, which is equal parts restaurant, gallery and performing arts space. And in Carbonear, I browse at Dozen Odd, where locals artists paint their dramatic environment and display their work.
And across the way in Winterton, I encounter art in its most practical form, at the Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Guided by Jerome Canning, a master boat builder, he says he grew up in a lobster fishing family.
“I handled hundreds of pots every day, it was hard work, but I never thought about it,” Canning remembers. “I just thought, ‘There’s never enough lobsters.’ ”
Going on to study naval architecture, he explains that, decades ago, building boats was far from industrial and uniform — in fact, individual towns boasted their own distinctive styles and builders took creative license wherever possible.
“When I started, everyone was building boats, but when fibreglass replaced wood, we lost not just the boats, but our independence, our freedom to use local designs and local woods,” he observes. “And all the skills and knowledge went out the door, too.”
But Canning and others at the mu- seum are seeking to bring these back, going beyond mere materials and employing three staff folklorists to tell the stories of these boats. He walks me through the museum, and I learn altogether too much about stages and doreys and Rodney keel boats, and we finish in the studios where he teaches people from the around the world to build boats.
“We have programs from one hour, to one day, to one week,” he smiles.
And back in Broad Cove, I continue my own workshop in culinary arts and foraging with Cod Sounds.
“You can pick a whole salad here. It’s a clean beach, and a long way from civilization,” McCarthy explains, as she hands me green after green.
I munch on everything from spruce tips (which taste a little like rosemary) to juniper berries (good to cook with wild game) to sorrel (which has a strong citrus bite at the end), finishing with a sit-down amongst the rocks, right on the beach, where McCarthy makes a fire.
She serves up tea made from all the ingredients we’ve gathered, then a savory, tender moose tenderloin and smoked mackerel and diver’s scallops, spiced with more of them.
Later, back at the shed, it all seems to come together.
As the light fades and the winds pick up, a giant, ancient iceberg creeps by, out in Conception Bay. But it’s warm and cosy inside, a fire crackling, heatinga nice pot of moose stew. People slowly gather, both locals and visitors from abroad. We listen to series of stories told by Stephen Lush, who shared his “Sunday Dinner with Briany Newell” on CBC Newfoundland for more than a decade.
Conversation (and Newfoundland beer) flows easily, and it’s not long until the music picks up, guitars and mandolins and the tin whistle and ugly sticks, which are distributed throughout the crowd.
I see that King has gone ahead and put the finishing touches on mine and I try and play it, pounding the boot down on the ground as the beer caps jingle and jangle.
There’s no doubt about it — my beat is bad and mostly out of sync with the incredible music emanating all around me. Maybe I need a couple more stubby bottles of Blue Star, to get me half drunk. But still I play it, with all my heart, as evening turns to night, and moose stew disappears, just like that iceberg, into the gloaming, out on the bay. Tim Johnson was a guest of the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Tourism, which did not review or approve this story.