FOR SOUTHERN COOKS who sense north of 60 must be a drab and dreary place, devoid of flavour and freshness and fun, shuttered for most of the year in a state of suspended frostiness and reliant on foodstuffs shipped up from the south to survive, Yukon cook and writer Michele Genest has produced in The Boreal Feast, a second book to debunk that.
The introduction begins with a working definition of ‘feast.’ Genest reckons a feast, particularly where she lives, may be allowed liberties. It can have many meanings, take place in many places, in all sorts of ways. A multi-course banquet planned months in advance is unquestionably a feast. But so too is a thermos of Labrador tea and a cranberry scone shared with a friend on a break from berry picking a northern hillside. Community is crucial for northerners and “hauling something out of the dirt” — their own dirt — is worthy of celebration. This book is a celebration of those celebrations, in the Yukon, and in the other norths she seeks out.
