What does Canadian summer taste like?

The calendar and the rotation of the sun and moon might deem the Summer Solstice as the official beginning of summer, but if you ask most Canadians, I think they’d tell you that summer begins on the May (Victoria Day) long weekend… at least the idea of it does.

This week, I want to talk about what the season tastes like. In a time when we are banding together as loyal Canadians and supporting each other, maybe we’ll share some more favourite regional foods? Local specialties might be hard or expensive to duplicate, but let’s see what we discover.

Our traditional cuisines across the country have been influenced by the original Indigenous population, as well as the largest groups of immigrants, namely the English, Scottish and French. In certain parts of the country, other influences were added as people travelled further west, and our country grew.

Over time, new influences have been added of course, and innovations have combined flavours from unique cultures to create exciting fusion dishes. I like to highlight the traditions to give us some connection with our past and to recognize the efforts of the pioneering forces that created our wonderfully diverse country.

I hope you’ll indulge me for a slightly longer missive this week so I can include something from each region.

The North is a place many of us don’t know much about. It is rich with game and seafood that differs slightly from further south. Arctic char and cod, even caribou and moose we might have tasted but have you had foraged flavours, like morel mushrooms, spruce tips or birch syrup?

If you haven’t been to the Atlantic coast, you might not have tried dulse, a type of seaweed. It is a popular snack and flavour enhancer in that region, as in Ireland and Iceland. It is highly nutritious with protein, vitamins and trace elements. You can have dulce crisps (similar to kale chips) or use it powdered or flaked in all kinds of dishes.

Fiddleheads are another summer specialty from the east coast – the young shoots of a type of fern plant. They must be boiled first to be enjoyed, but I think they are a delicious fresh early taste of summer.

Quebec of course gives us maple syrup and other maple products (the Indigenous communities first froze the sap to extract the syrup). There is not just poutine (which by the way translates to “mess”) but many other dishes with a French twist. Tourtière (a ground pork meat pie with cloves) is one of my favourites.

Oh, and Montreal bagels are a unique item too – not the same as New York bagels (Montreal bagels are denser and a bit sweeter with a chewier crust, being boiled in honey water and then baked in a wood-fired oven.)

Ontario is an agricultural powerhouse so there are many local foods. The traditional ones most known are quintessential items for many tourists—peameal bacon (called “Canadian bacon” outside Canada. This is pork loin rolled in cornmeal and cooked in slices) and butter tarts. The recipe for butter tarts was first published in Ontario but they are said to have been invented in Quebec and are popular with bakers across the country (with and without raisins and/or nuts).

Across the Prairies, the influence of immigrants from Eastern and Northern Europe shaped the cuisine. Manitoba has the greatest population of Icelanders outside Iceland (of which my family is part). Many Icelandic pastries and vinarterta (a layered fruit-filled torte) are common in bakeries. Ukrainian and Polish families shared pierogies alongside English and Scottish families with their Yorkshire puddings and roast meats.

German, Belgian, Czech, Dutch, Mennonite, Jewish and even American families settled in our Midwest as the railway expanded and farmland was cultivated. Local ingredients like Saskatoon berries and Winnipeg smoked goldeye added to the innovations.

In Alberta, of course we know meat is the specialty with beef and pork. I think we could include pancake breakfasts as something common too, not just from wagon trains but still today as a Calgary Stampede tradition.

Many Chinese families opened restaurants in towns across the country, giving generations of Canadians a sort of re-invented Chinese food as they cooked for a new audience. Canadian Chinese cuisine has its own regional specialties. Did you know the “Chinese buffet” first started in Vancouver’s Gastown when restauranteurs started feeding the Scandinavian lumberjacks working at the mills there?

Here in B.C., salmon is a signature food, prepared in many ways. Spot prawns are also a regional feature this time of year. Certainly, the influence of Asian immigrants has created opportunities for new dishes and flavours to become popular, like a B.C. roll at a sushi restaurant (made with cucumber and BBQ salmon with the skin on). Our Okanagan fruit is world-renowned. Lesser known, but also part of our immigrant culture, is Doukhobor borscht. The Doukhobor communities provided an early vegetarian influence in many interior communities.

Phew, what a bunch of creative, community-minded folks we seem to be, sharing recipes of all kinds as we built a nation. No wonder we are called a cultural mosaic.

I’ll finish with one last signature item, an anomaly as it’s not like most of the homegrown foods featured but it speaks to a time when church suppers and coffee klatches were a common way of building bonds.

The Nanaimo Bar was the result of various women’s recipes during the 1940s and 1950s, many submitted to community cookbooks and local newspaper recipe contests.

It was known as a “dainty”, a rich, sweet treat one could easily transport and once cut in squares, hold in one’s hand and nibble. It features five different brand name products that would simplify the process of baking the recipe.

It seems even when we first fell into the commercial side of convenience foods, our traditional tendency was to create something polite and at least a little elegant in its understated presentation.

That sounds quintessentially Canadian to me.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.