Some Experiences With Acadian Food

During my early April trip to the Bouctouche area in search of a home for us I was intrigued by a dish listed on the menu of the B&B: Râpée. What I was served was a sort of potato pie and, to be honest, I did not like it. It tasted even worse than it looked. It looked and tasted burnt.



Much as I love potatoes I couldn't eat more than a bite or two; I took the remainder back to my room with me in case my stomach pangs eventually overruled my taste buds, but I ended up throwing it away, painstakingly wrapped to disguise it for fear that the maid would think that I was insulting Acadians by dissing their food. Later during that trip I heard of another Acadian dish called poutine râpée, not available on the B&B menu but said to be really tasty and much better than poutine québécois. I decided to wait to try this Acadian dish with Toad, if and when we moved to the area, which postponed a possible second gustatory disappointment. Our realtor had cautioned me to be sure to get fresh poutine râpée because if it is not fresh it is not good.

A week or so after our move Toad and I made a trip to the Service Canada office in Richibucto and found, also in the mall, a bakery called Cook Nook. We were exhausted and hungry, as we often are, and had been hoping to get a sandwich; we were dismayed to see only sweets and breads on the menu. The bakery has four small tables along the side windows that presented a welcoming spot to rest and have a goodie of some sort. We noticed two women being brought some unusual-looking spherical food and asked the waitress what the dish was. That was our first experience with poutine râpée in the flesh, so to speak. It turns out that the Cook Nook makes a limited amount of poutine râpée every Thursday and it is available first-come, first-served until they run out. We had had the good fortune to find the bakery on a Thursday, at lunchtime. Lucky us! We both enjoyed the dish, especially Toad. Not only is the poutine râpée tasty, it is fairly inexpensive at $2.75 a serving. Since that Thursday we have gone back to the Cook Nook several times for a bite and to buy baked goods or dried legumes from their bulk food section.

If and when we get a kitchen stove and once again have an oven I hope to try my hand at making a version of poutine râpée, modified a bit as far as the filling goes. I'm not really keen on salt pork. The recipe I intend to use as a base is here, along with some history of the dish. It is potato dumpling with salt pork filling, floured and simmered for 2 to 2.5 hours in salted water. The potato dumpling is made of mashed potatoes mixed with grated potatoes ("râpée" means "grated"). Last Thursday when we were in Richibucto for a medical appointment we stopped in at the Cook Nook and I took a few photos of Toad's poutine râpée for posterity.







The third time that we ate at the Cook Nook we split a different kind of Acadian poutine that my sweet tooth and I really enjoy: Poutine à Trou (recipe here). This is a dessert dumpling with a hole in the top ("trou" means "hole") full of goodies; diced apples, cranberries and raisins are placed in a pastry shell that is folded around them to form a ball, a hole is made in the top and the dumpling is baked. When nearly baked, brown sugar syrup is poured into the hole to make the dumpling nice and juicy within yet not soggy. Yum! These I will definitely bake for us when we get an oven! Here are photos of my scrumptious Poutine à Trou at the Cook Nook last Thursday.





And here are a few photos of the bakery itself. Their pies are delicious and are much in demand, as is their bread, in the Cook Nook and in the area co-ops. I highly recommend this bakery and feel very fortunate to have it fairly nearby.