Family cookbook serves up healthy, tasty and locally-sourced meals

Looking for ways to spruce up your goose? Nunavik Family Cookbook suggests a savoury stuffing and bacon wrap. (IMAGE COURTESY OF AVATAQ)

You just came through the door after a long day of work and you’ve got a hungry family to feed.

So what to do with that frozen fish or meat in the freezer? A new cookbook compiled for families in Nunavik has some homegrown suggestions.

The glossy 250 pages of the newly-released Nunavik Family Cookbook offer recipes for comfort food staples like caribou macaroni or fish filets smothered in melted cheese. For fancier tastes, try marinated seal ribs or an artfully-arranged stuffed goose wrapped in bacon.

Each recipe is designed to be healthy and to feed families using country food and other locally-sourced products, said Julie-Ann Berthe, assistant director of the Kativik Regional Government’s sustainable employment department, which oversees Nunavik’s 19 childcare centres.

In the mid-2000s, the KRG began working alongside Laval university to develop a nutrition policy for the region’s childcare centres. The cookbook grew out of that project.

“During the cooks’ training, that’s where they started collecting recipes,” Berthe said. “It was the ones that were the most popular in the childcare centres [that we kept].”

Each of the recipes has been developed to feed children in the region’s childcare centres, Berthe said, and recipes can be adapted to feed groups as large as 30.

But the book translates well into the home kitchen, she said.

Before the book was released earlier this year, Berthe’s department made sure the recipes had a practice run by sending home a recipe and all its ingredients for families to test out at home.

Berthe’s favourite? The Nordic Fish and Cheese is a simple meal to prepare for a large family, she says, describing the dish with a simple “Mmm.” (See recipe below.)

And the cookbook’s vivid photography, prepared by Nunavik’s Avataq Cultural Institute, brings each recipe to life.

The book has had a welcome reception so far, Berthe said.

“It took seven years and it’s finally completed,” she said. “We’re very proud of it.”

But if you’re looking for a copy of the book though, you’ll have to wait a bit. “We’re still trying to figure out how we can sell it,” she said.

In the meantime, here’s one to try at home.

Nordic Fish and Cheese

Ingredients:

– one onion
– two filets or one fish (Arctic char, trout or salmon)
– mayonnaise
– five crumbled crackers or three tablespoons of breadcrumbs
– Parsley and curry power, to taste
– a pinch of salt and pepper
– half a cup of grated cheese

Serves four to five people, but can easily be adapted for a larger group.

1. Peel and finely slice onion. Set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 350 F.
3. Cut fish into filets and place on an oiled cookie sheet or cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil.
4. Spread a small amount of mayonnaise on top of each fish filet.
5. Sprinkle onions over the filets.
6. Mix crumbled crackers or breadcrumbs with spices, salt and pepper in a bowl and spread over fish filets.
7. Bake for 15 minutes and remove from oven.
8. Sprinkle grated cheese over fish filets.
9. Return to oven for five minutes, or until cheese is golden brown.

Serve fish with vegetables and rice.

Recipe courtesy of Nunavik Family Cookbook