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Michele Genest -- Book SIgning

Sunday Oct 26 2014 2:00 pm, Saskatoon, Main Floor
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The Boreal Feast: A Culinary Journey through the North (Harbour Publishing)

Adventurous northern gourmand Michele Genest is back with a new book of recipes and stories celebrating the northern boreal forest. In this cookbook--which focuses on seasonal feasts--Genest explores how various northern cultures, from the Yukon to Scandinavia, use wild and cultivated boreal ingredients like lingonberries, wild mushrooms, herbs, flowers, game and fish in their traditional and contemporary feasts and celebrations. The book also doubles as a travelogue of the experiences that inspired each feast. Genest relates eye-opening moments from her recent journey to Sweden, Norway and Finland alongside memorable tales from twenty years of life in the Yukon. The result is a beautifully layered cookbook, an irresistible culinary journey through northern cultures near and far, and a reminder of the importance of conserving the boreal forest.

Michele Genest has lived in Whitehorse since 1994, where she moved from her hometown of Toronto in search of winter. She has written about food and culture for the past twenty-five years, and cooked ever since she can remember. Her previous book, the national bestseller The Boreal Gourmet, received silver in Taste Canada's Food Writing Awards in 2011. Michele's past experience includes a four-year stint as dining editor of enRoute Magazine, and another as chief dishwasher and fish-gutter in a restaurant on a small Greek island. She writes a regular cooking column for Yukon, North of Ordinary magazine, and her print credits include the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Montreal Gazette, Up Here, enRoute, Flare and Geist.

See:

The Boreal Feast

- Michele Genest

Trade paperback $28.95
Reader Reward Price: $26.06

From the author of The Boreal Gourmet comes another irresistible tribute to foods of the North, and this time she devotes special attention to feasts. Michele Genest's feasts cover the whole spectrum--for small groups or large, extensively planned or spontaneous, as elaborate as a 12-course tasting menu or as simple and satisfying as a pot of Labrador tea and a piece of bannock on a hillside during a berry-picking expedition.Genest takes the reader on a journey to Norway, Finland and Sweden to discover what other northern peoples do with the same wild ingredients that live and grow in the North American boreal forest. Part travelogue, the book includes stories of hunting for cloudberries on the Dempster Highway, throwing a birthday party on the Kaskawulsh Glacier, and harvesting trumpet chanterelles in Nordland. Featuring prized northern ingredients, like morel mushrooms, birch syrup, coho salmon, spruce tips and blueberries, The Boreal Feast is a celebration of boreal food and forest. With creations like Solstice-Cured Lake Trout Gravlad Lax and Birch Syrup Panna Cotta with Rhubarb Compote, northern and southern dwellers alike will be inspired.

The Boreal Gourmet

- Michele Genest

Trade paperback $26.95
Reader Reward Price: $24.26

"Bring me moose meat! You will not be sorry!" So says Whitehorse author and cook Michele Genest to the hunters in her circle. Wild is wonderful when it comes to Genest's creative treatments for northern viands, with exciting ideas such as moose cooked in Yukon-brewed espresso stout and finished with chocolate, lime and cilantro, Arctic char marinated in grappa and then hot-smoked, or roasted spruce grouse draped in a sour cream and Madeira sauce. As much culinary adventure story as cookbook, The Boreal Gourmet combines a portrait of northern life with an exploration of wild or "country" foods in gourmet recipes for the home cook. These recipes are inspired by a diversity of countries, traditions and kitchens, and spring from a love affair with the indigenous foods that flourish in the boreal forests and river valleys of the Yukon.Whitehorse author and chef Michele Genest has recipes for every season supported with information on such northern plants as Artemisia frigida, or pasture sage, and its effect on the flavour of the wild Dall sheep that graze on it, the mysteries of morel mushrooms and tips on where to find them, and advice from Dawson City's Uncle Berwyn on the proper use of birch syrup.Taking us from salmon, spruce tips and gourmet greens to recipes for artisanal sourdoughs and festive solstice menus, The Boreal Gourmet is an unprecedented collection to inspire both the serious gourmand (who will want to search out wild ingredients in his or her own backyard) and anyone with an appreciation for the culinary delights available north of sixty.