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ANITA STEWART'S CANADA

The Food, the Recipes, the Stories

By Anita Stewart

HarperCollins, 322 pages, $34.95

My family emigrated to Canada from Scotland during a freezing winter more than 40 years ago. On our first foray to the supermarket, my mother bought strawberries. Strawberries in December I thought I had died and gone to heaven because in Scotland, you ate only locally produced food, and strawberries were a June fruit. Canada seemed like the land of milk and honey.

Today the emerging slow-food world is closer to my Scotland: local, seasonal, fresh, sustainable food that your grandmother would recognize. And this is where Anita Stewart comes in.

Anita Stewart's Canada is part cookbook, and part travelogue, with a history of Canadian cooking on the side. Stewart has travelled around the country for many years - collecting recipes, listening to stories, exploring traditions - and has now compiled this into a significant and unique work.

Stewart explains that there is "not one Canadian cuisine, there are hundreds, depending on ethnicity, climate and history. Our national cuisine is ultimately based in the land and the sea and it uses ingredients that speak volumes about the glorious culinary history of Canada."

It all starts with the early stages of our fare. She uses the immigrant stories and the celebration of the cooking of many cultures to demonstrate how our national culinary fabric has developed. Her chapters are arranged by product, including salmon, maple, honey, grains, cheese, eggs and more. They are filled with recipes gleaned from family, friends and neighbours, and chefs and many others she has met during her extensive travels throughout our land.

Some of the historical pieces - bentwood box cooking and rural life in Saskatchewan, for example - are appealing. Her profiles of many of the diverse personalities she has met are fascinating. We are also treated to sidebars on most of the significant immigrant groups that make up the Canadian melting pot. Unfortunately, Stewart missed her opportunity to provide more insight into these groups. There is basic information but not much else.

A book that categorizes itself as a cookbook must have recipes that work, and Stewart succeeds here. The recipes, particularly baking and desserts, produce food that feels homey and satisfying. The oat biscuits are superb, and the original recipe for Gateau Basque from Roger Dufau, the original owner of Le Petit Gourmet, which has never been printed before, worked like a dream - albeit a somewhat long and fiddly dream. The brioche, made using a non-traditional technique, was buttery and delicious.

The meatier dishes we tested did not fare quite as well. Although they worked and produced edible food, the dishes tended to lack depth of flavour. For example, Stewart's Osso Buco is an easy recipe, but without tomatoes, onions and spices in the sauce, the dish was without punch.

The book looks gorgeous and the cover is outstanding. You want to eat it immediately. Stewart is an accomplished photographer, and took most of the personality and scenery photos. The luscious food photographs were taken by Bob Wigington, with whom she has worked for many years.

One irritation is a sloppy, inadequate index, important in this kind of book. Page numbers did not always match the information, and there were gaps in the listings. Quebec, for instance, is mentioned many times throughout the book, but cannot be found in the index. Recipes are not listed under their origins, either, which would have been a great help.

As the food of Upper Canada, or Ontario, was greatly influenced by English immigrants, I was surprised that there was scant mention of the English influence on the Canadian food scene. There are a couple of recipes, but no real explanation of the English sway over our food choices. Stewart seems to prefer the coasts, the Prairies and the North, and she may be right; certainly the food seems more exciting.

I also missed learning more about the passion for food in Quebec and its deep roots in more than 400 years of French immigrant influence. In the Charlevoix region, for example, the dedication to excellence in both products and cooking is part of the wonderful charm. But perhaps that is my Canada, and this is Anita Stewart's book.

As our food is in transition, determining what is truly Canadian cuisine has proved difficult, but Stewart's tome represents an excellent start. She helps us understand the diversity of our food culture and succeeds in putting Canada squarely on the food map.

Globe and Mail food columnist Lucy Waverman's most recent book is Lucy's Kitchen.