Cookbook review: Touque! by Normand Laprise

Hot on the heels of the Canada Day celebrations, it seems the patriotic thing to do to talk about my latest favorite Canadian cookbook,  Toque!  by Normand Laprise.  The book is named after one of Quebec's most lauded and long-standing restaurants and Chef Laprise is credited with being at the forefront of Canadian cuisine with his incredible creativity and dedication to producing a quality product from start to finish.

We always hear talk of regional and seasonal cuisine now, but these are some of the key philosophical points the restaurant was founded on over 20 years ago.  Toque!  has recipes for dandelions, stinging nettles, and wild berries you may not have even heard about.  You wonder if they even use suppliers for some things or do they just head out into the open country and do a bit of foraging.  With their emphasis on quality organics, you can bet they have done a lot to encourage the local suppliers to patronize those small, local farmers who work so hard and with so much love to bring a great product to market.  Attitudes like this are what really help the often overlooked areas of our regional economies.

Creativity?  It's all here.  Plates are splashed with colours and textures that make you want to eat the pages.  Paints and chips of any vegetable and fruit you could hope for are possible and thrown around with the precision and seeming randomness of an abstract painting.  I saved the best part for last - it has been a long time since a cookbook has absolutely stunned me with a recipe.  If you are brave enough, Chef Laprise will walk you through making caramelized soil.  Soil!  SOIL!  CARAMELIZED DIRT!  I had to read it twice back to back.  It's pure insanity and by the end you'll want some.  Chef Laprise even goes as far as to guide to sourcing out the best dirt to start with - none of that store-bought crap, you need to head out into the woods for this.  Unbelievable.  CHECK IT OUT HERE.

note:  the link above is for the French edition