Eat your way across Canada

Enjoy a cross-country tour of our culinary home. From east to west, get a taste of what each great Canadian province has to offer.

Newfoundland and Labrador
Despite its rocky terrain, Newfoundland and Labrador has a surprisingly large harvest of wild berries every year. Not only do they produce and market wild blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, but they are home to the native bakeapples (cloudberries) and are North America's largest producer of partridgeberries, which makes way for an array of homemade and commercial sauces, preserves, fruit wines and fruit brandies.

Try our Wildberry Sauce recipe.

Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island's cultured mussels grow tender, sweet and plump in long mesh stockings suspended in the water above the ocean floor. Now that mussels are supermarket-available and virtually pot ready, they make a fuss-free summer supper. The bonus? You can cook the bivalves right on the barbecue.

Try our Barbecue Mussel Bake recipe.

Nova Scotia
Lobster is the must-try meal for visitors to Nova Scotia, and the most valuable catch for the province's fishers. Nonetheless, lobster from Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Quebec and New Brunswick is equally delicious.

Try our Lobster Salad recipe.

New Brunswick
Although it grows all over the North Atlantic and Pacific Northwest, dulse, the red seaweed that takes root on the rocks at the low tide line, is best known in the Maritimes. Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick is famous for the large amount of dulse it harvests out of Dark Harbour, and dulse has now found its way onto menus across the province as a result. You can include dulse in sauces, and soups, sprinkle it onto salads, fry it as chips and add it to bread dough, but most often you'll find people eating it, dried, as an alternative to other salty snacks, such as popcorn and pretzels. You can find it in many health food stores.

Quebec
Oka Cheese and Ice Cider
For dessert, or a cheese course before dessert in the French tradition, why not serve one of Quebec's oldest and most famous cheeses with a glass of one of its newest products, ice cider? Modelled after Canada's world-famous dessert ice wine, ice cider is pressed from late-harvest apples picked frozen from the trees, concentrating the sweetness and flavour of the fruit. It is sold in 375 mL bottles ($15 to $45) and, like most dessert wines, is best appreciated in a 2 oz (1/4 cup/50 mL) serving.

Oka cheese was first produced more than 100 years ago by Trappist monks in Oka, near Montreal, who based the cheese on an old-world French Trappist monastery cheese, Port Salut. A washed-rind, semisoft cheese with a pungent aroma and fruity, lightly nutty flavour, oka is sold in three varieties. Regular oka is made from pasteurized milk and is slightly milder than Oka Classique (Classic), which is unpasteurized and aged a further 30 days. Oka Lèger (Light) is a lower-fat, pasteurized version.

Ontario
The most treasured of Ontario's wines is ice wine, which is currently produced by more than 45 Ontario wineries. The cold winter climate ensures that ice wine can be consistently made every year. Temperatures must fall to -8°C or lower before the grapes are handpicked to guarantee that the grapes are naturally frozen solid during pressing.

Icewine Martini
• Thread 3 green grapes onto toothpick. Freeze until solid, about 2 hours.
• In martini shaker, stir together 1/4 cup (50 mL) vodka, 2 tbsp (25 mL) icewine and a few ice cubes. Strain into martini glass and garnish with toothpick of grapes. Makes 1 serving.

Page 1 of 2 -- What delicious dishes represent the best of the West? Check out page 2 to find out.