If you think Canadian cuisine begins and ends with poutine, maple syrup and back bacon, Derek Dammann and Chris Johns are here to happily broaden your horizons. True North: Canadian Cooking From Coast to Coast is part cookbook, part travelogue and part love letter to the ingredients, landscapes and people that make Canada’s food culture so wonderfully diverse.
What makes True North stand out is its refusal to define Canadian food by a single tradition. Instead, Dammann, a Montreal chef who grew up in Campbell River, B.C., and food writer Chris Johns organize the book geographically and agriculturally, exploring regions and ingredients from Atlantic seafood and Newfoundland cod to prairie grains, wild game and Pacific spot prawns. The result is a delicious argument that Canada’s culinary identity is rooted less in one national cuisine than in the extraordinary ingredients available from coast to coast. Purchase it at https://www.harpercollins.ca/9781443431736/true-north/ or win it in our Giveaway section.
And what ingredients they are. The recipes venture well beyond the familiar, embracing moose, caribou, grouse, hare, wild mushrooms and an impressive array of fish and shellfish. There are sophisticated dishes such as Cod à la Nage and Wild Boar and Rosemary Ragù alongside more approachable pleasures including a wedge salad, Swiss chard gratin and salt-and-pepper squid. Some recipes demand patience and serious kitchen commitment, but the authors provide shortcuts and alternatives that make even the ambitious dishes feel possible for an enthusiastic home cook.
Beans are in season and we all struggle to come up with innovative ways to serve them. If you’re making fish and chips, try Beer-Battered Beans for the vegetarians at the dinner table in our Recipe section. The batter can be used for both the beans and fish making different dishes for one meal easier.
The book is particularly appealing because food is never presented in isolation. Johns’s essays introduce fishermen, farmers, chefs and winemakers, while stories from Dammann’s childhood illuminate the traditions behind his cooking. His memories of family fishing, hunting, preserving and gathering give the book an authenticity that no collection of recipes alone could achieve.
Visually, True North is a feast before you even reach the kitchen. The photography by Farah Khan captures both the food and the Canadian landscape, from rugged coastlines to forests and farms, giving the book the feel of a culinary road trip. The photographs and stories make you want to pour a drink, invite friends over and start cooking immediately.
There is also plenty of personality. A wonderfully irreverent foreword from Jamie Oliver sets the tone, while Dammann’s dry humour appears throughout the recipes. This isn’t a precious cookbook obsessed with culinary perfection; it feels like a chef enthusiastically showing you the best things he has discovered and saying, essentially, “Trust me—this is delicious.”
True North is ultimately more than a cookbook. It is a celebration of Canadian terroir and the people who work incredibly hard to bring it to our tables. For anyone curious about how Canadian food is evolving—or simply looking for a cookbook that inspires both cooking and travel—this is a memorable and deeply appetizing journey.
Come for the recipes; stay for the stories, scenery and serious Canadian food inspiration.
Content and images used with permission from True North by Derek Dammann and Chris Johns ©2015. Food photography by Farah Khan. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. https://www.harpercollins.ca/9781443431736/true-north/