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Simon Thibault

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Everyone has their own version of the chocolate chip cookie—their own ratio of brown to white sugar, the amount of chocolate chips and cook time. And just like “the best chocolate chip cookie” recipe, every cookbook is an archive of inspirations, tweaks and perseverance. 

Just like those sugar ratios, every cookbook has its own mix of ingredients as inspiration. A pinch of social media sharing, a dash of luck, sometimes a connection in the book industry. Always a whole lot of recipe testing.  

Each food author has to figure out the ratios that work for them. As shown by a recent surge in East Coast food books, there is plenty of room on the shelf for more. 

Journalist, food writer and cookbook coveter Simon Thibault just finished a one-year tenure as Developmental Editor-at-Large with Nimbus Publishing. As the owner of more than 300 cookbooks (and more than 100 other food-related titles), and author of Pantry and Palate: Remembering and Rediscovering Acadian Food, published by Nimbus in 2017, Thibault knows how to spot a good idea. 

“My job was to help people develop their ideas and stories into fully fledged book proposals to pitch to Nimbus, and to help them gain an understanding of book publishing in general,” says Thibault. “It was a lot of getting potential authors to understand why their story mattered, and how to best present it, while understanding the amount of work necessary in writing a book.” 

Cookbooks aren’t just recipe collections. They have stories to tell.  

Thibault emphasizes that knowing your story, and why you should be the one to tell it, is the basis of all good cookbooks.  

“Confidence in your material, as well as being able to back it up by knowing your market. A publisher wants to know you have an understanding of what is necessary to write, publish, and promote your book.”   

Once you’ve solidified the angle, the recipe gets more complicated: you have to make sure the cookbook is persuasive.  

“A real understanding is of what a book asks you to do: change the way you think and act in a kitchen. Anyone can pick up a cookbook and follow a recipe, and if it’s well written and explained, you end up with a tasty dish,” explains Thibault.  

When it came to Thibault cooking up his own book, it took more than two years to transform his ideas on food, history and Acadian cookery into Pantry and Palate, and get it on the shelves.  

For holistic nutritional consultant Jessica Mitton, her cookbook stemmed from personal health issues and re-learning to cook for health. Some Good, which was published by Breakwater Books in 2018, is a compilation of Newfoundland recipes—healthified.  

“Being from Newfoundland, I decided to base my first cookbook around traditional Newfoundland dishes made more healthily, along with new recipes inspired by native Newfoundland ingredients and tastes,” says Mitton. Partridgeberry jam and Jiggs Dinner get an update in Mitton’s work. Her upcoming work Some Good: Sweet Treats focuses on dessert.  

Mitton says devotion to a food idea is the basis for cookbook success.  

“It starts with a true passion. Creating a cookbook is not easy. It is a labour of love. Pour yourself into the project and it will stand out as being uniquely you in what is a very saturated marketplace.” 

Bobbi and Geoff Pike got the inspiration for their big idea from their social media following. They are the authors of East Coast Keto. The husband-and-wife duo founded the Facebook group East Coast Keto in late 2017, as a means to support themselves and others in converting to a ketogenic lifestyle (based on the low carb, high fat Keto diet).  

The East Coast Keto Facebook group now has more than 5,000 members. The Pikes channelled that energy into creating a cookbook filled with explanations of the Keto diet and more than 120 recipes.   

If a good story is the mirepoix upon which to develop a good cookbook, it should be no surprise that Atlantic Canada is producing so many quality works. “The humble East Coaster is learning to take their place at Canada’s table, and I think that’s wonderful, and important,” says Thibault.  

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Pantry and Palate is more than a cookbook. It’s a story. A story thoughtfully told through prose and recipes. Author Simon Thibault’s painstaking interpretation of decades of ink smudged, handwritten family notes, and imprecise formulas, reveals the essence of a cuisine. Acadian cuisine. Unique, because it was largely shaped by 18th Century French culture, the imagination of a maritime people and ingredients of the Maritimes.

Although the book contains less than fifty recipes, each has been lovingly excavated like the individual fragments of a shattered, ancient serving bowl, and reconstructed or reinvented thanks, in large part, to Thibault’s intuition and culinary knowledge. Each recipe is easy to follow and understand.

Thibault is nothing if not passionate about his subject, and, like a culinary Sherlock, appears dogged in his pursuit of answers to perplexing questions of how and why. I enjoyed being taken along on these sleuthing adventures. The author’s curiosity is infectious.

Most dishes will be familiar to Atlantic Canadian cooks: pickled beets, boudin noir (blood sausage), meat pies and molasses cookies. Others employ unusual ingredients, like tamarind from the tropics, along with explanations of how and why such things became ingredients in Acadian recipes.

Thibault displays a predilection for classic techniques that might be thought too labour intensive today. Yet, how to render leaf lard, making head cheese from a pig’s head, and other traditional methods, used through generations, are some of the most interesting parts of Pantry and Palate. Even if pig heads aren’t that easy to come by nowadays. (At least, not in my neighbourhood.)

Heartwarming admiration and deference is shown frequently towards mothers and grandmothers in Pantry and Palate. Thibault understands that without their dedication, ingenuity and skill, it’s doubtful Acadian cuisine would have become the varied and delicious cuisine celebrated in this fine collection of recipes and stories.

 

A RECIPE FOR FRING FRANGS / POTATO PANCAKES (SERVES 2–3) FROM PANTRY AND PALATE

6 large potatoes

1 tablespoon flour

butter*

3 tablespoons minced onion, or a 1/2 tablespoon salted onions** (optional)

salt and pepper to taste

  1. Grate potatoes using the largest holes in your grater.
  2. Remove the excess liquid and starch by placing the grated potatoes into a muslin bag or kitchen towel. Squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
  3. Place the potatoes into a large bowl, and sprinkle in the flour. (If you’re adding onions, this is where you do so.) Mix it in by hand, so that you can feel when all the potatoes have been well covered with the flour.
  4. Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat. Using your hands, fashion pancakes that are about 1/4 inch thick, and about 2–3 inches wide. Add butter to your skillet, and fry the pancakes in it.
  5. Once the ends have turned golden brown, flip the pancakes over and cook for another minute or so.
  6. Serve immediately with pickles, more butter, or whatever suits your fancy. Keep any extras hot in a warm oven.

Pantry and Palate
Simon Thibault
Nimbus Publishing

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Photo by Noah Fecks

An Acadian pantry is incomplete without molasses. I found many versions of this cake while digging around. It is a very simple yet dignified cake that can easily be eaten out of hand or as a quick snack when you’re headed out the door on a cold winter’s day. At the end of a meal, it’s a great little finish and can be jazzed up with some maple whipped cream or, as one test-baker suggested, a caramel sauce.

The original recipe would have been mixed by hand, but I find that mixing the batter with a hand-mixer or standing mixer yields a better result. I did have to do some playing around with this recipe, as the original version did not state what kind of cake pan was used. The recipe here suggests using a 10×10-inch cake pan, with a baking time of 45 minutes. If you don’t have a cake pan big enough to accommodate that space, a couple of loaf pans used for baking bread, or a bundt cake pan may be your best bet. Be sure to adjust your cooking times if you use another cake pan size. The molasses and baking soda reacting together will give the cake its rise, so be sure you have enough room for the cake to do so, with at least a 3/4-inch space. Otherwise you’ll find yourself with cake batter splattered all over the bottom of your oven. Be sure to grease your cake pan very well, otherwise the cake will stick to it; I tend to grease the pan as well as add parchment paper, to make sure it doesn’t.

2 cups molasses
1 cup lard or shortening
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon all spice
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon fresh ginger (optional)

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Grease a 10×10-inch cake pan, and then dust generously with flour. Alternatively add greased and floured parchment paper and place into a cake pan.

Using the paddle attachment on your mixer, fold the flour and lard together on low speed until completely combined, about 4-5 minutes.

Add the molasses, cinnamon, fresh ginger (if using), and allspice, and mix on low. Make sure to occasionally stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure all the molasses, lard, and seasonings are blended.

Add the baking soda and salt, then the milk to the batter, and stir until well incorporated.

Pour the batter into the pan, and place into the oven.

Bake for 50 minutes, or until the cake has receded from the edges of the pan and a toothpick placed in the centre comes out clean. Depending on the size of your pan, it may take a bit more or less time. Just keep checking until it comes out nice and clean.

Leave cake in pan for about 20 minutes, and then invert onto a rack. Serve on its own, or as a dessert with Maple Whipped Cream (see page 176 of my book, Pantry and Palate), Easy Caramel Sauce (page 177, Pantry and Palate), or Brown Sugar Sauce (page 202).

Pantry and Palate: Remembering and Rediscovering Acadian Food
Simon Thibault
Nimbus Publishing

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Jason Lynch

Chef Lynch often he’d never write a cookbook, but when the right publisher came along he knew it was time to craft a book that connects home cooks with local ingredients


Jason Lynch’s book is called Straight From The Line: Recipes and Reflections From a Chef at Work (Able Sense Publishing), but it could easily be called “Straight From The Hip”, thanks to his straightforward style. The book opens with an essay by Lynch, explaining his ideas on what matters to him when it comes to cooking. Atlantic Books Today caught up with Lynch to ask him about how writing a cookbook can change perceptions, from the chef/author, to the public.

Tell me how this book came to be.

A couple years ago, I was approached by a couple publishers, but I said no. I didn’t want to do a cookbook because growing up on a farm, and supporting local suppliers, I didn’t want to have a book shipped off in Asia to be printed, and not have any say on editing, and all that. Able Sense Publishing popped up and asked if I would be willing to do a book, and I told them what I needed and they agreed.

Straight from the Line Jason Lynch Able Sense Publishing The first thing you say in your book is that you’d “been reluctant to do a cookbook.”  Has your opinion changed now that you’ve written one?

I think the landscape for cookbooks has changed from where it was when I started out 20 years ago. Now it is driven by the big publishing houses and unless you fall within their model it is hard to put out a cookbook that you have control over. At the end of the day, the game is to sell a book. So there are things they want and you have to follow their formula. I buy a lot [of cookbooks], and they’re garbage. They’re not tested, nor do they relate to the average individual.

A lot of cookbooks these days are focusing on the idea of food as much as its execution. Your book starts off not with recipes, but with ideas: ideas on how to cook, when, with what.  Was this your idea or your publisher’s?

It was mine. I thought it important to show people some of the things I have learned over the years. I need to talk about actual cooking and how to evaluate and use a cookbook. That’s the way we teach in restaurant kitchens, but no one talks about that in a cookbook, which is unfortunate. They tell you, “you have to follow this recipe,”and most of the time it doesn’t work properly. Why not talk about substitution? That’s how chefs make their living. We are taught the classics, then tear them apart and make our own.

Did having to put down into words, let alone in a public fashion, your ideas, theories, and ethics around food make you think hard about why you do what you do?

It did. Luckily the editor I had was fantastic and was able to help me with a lot of that. Being verbal is a lot easier than writing, that’s not what I do, and I think a lot of chefs fall into that category. I had someone who understood that, even though I did struggle with it. It’s a fine line to walk.

It used to be rare to have a chef write a cookbook. It was written by cooking professionals, mostly teachers. Chefs have a shorthand that lives among them. Did you find it hard to have to explain that shorthand, over and over again?

I certainly did. There were spots in the cookbook where I didn’t explain enough, but I did try to keep it simple and use few ingredients for that very reason. It was a challenge at times. But I feel like I didn’t write a cookbook, more of a combination cookbook and general thoughts around cooking and procurement. A lot of people aren’t connected to where their food comes from.

Jason LynchDid people treat you, or your ideas about food, differently after your book was published?

There are certain people who think that if you’re able to publish a book, you’re not really cooking anymore. You’re not behind the line. That’s not true for me.

I guess the only thing is that it’s hard for a lot of people to understand how books come to be. Some books aren’t written by chefs at all, they are put together for them. But some chefs take a lot of time and effort, to do it.

[With a book], you also open up to people who wouldn’t know your cooking. It did give me more exposure. The book sold better than I expected, especially in the way we went out doing it. We stuck with small independent stores, and away from large stores as much as possible.

Did writing this book change who you are as a chef?

It was a two-year process, and since I was in the kitchen every day, it was a lot of work. It made me even more passionate about what I do. In a sense it reminded me of what I do, and why. It cemented for me that I do have a lot of pride in what I do. I am not using what I talk about in the book as a marketing idea, I live it. It helped galvanize that for me. It just made me more passionate.

Top image: Citrus Crusted Scallops from Straight From the Line

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The Chowder Trail CookbookTravel to any restaurant in Nova Scotia worth its salt, and you will probably find a chowder of some sort on the menu. And with good reason: Nova Scotia is a province comprised of seafaring villages and towns, and hundreds of miles of coastline. With The Chowder Trail Cookbook, Virginia Lee and Elaine Elliott have curated a warm and hearty collection of recipes from some of Nova Scotia’s finest chefs found in those very same restaurants.

The collection includes tasty recipes that range from classic to contemporary. Chef Craig Flinn’s Smoked Yukon Gold Potato Chowder is counterpointed by Trout Point Lodge’s Haddock Chowder, while the Old Orchard Inn gives up its recipe for a Chipotle Mussel Chowder. The book separates the recipes into seven regions, from Yarmouth and the Acadian shores all the way to Cape Breton Island. Some regions yield more recipes than others, but the flavours found in their recipes are no less than stellar.

The Chowder Trail Cookbook
A selection of the best recipes from Taste of Nova Scotia’s Chowder Trail
by Elaine Elliot and Virginia Lee
$16.95, paperback, 96 pp.
Formac Publishing, June 2014
Food/Cooking

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Bookmark Halifax opened its doors in December 1989. Michael Hamm has been manager since 2001.

 Bookmark Halifax celebrates a milestone anniversary

When it comes to bookstores, let alone independent bookstores, twenty-five years is a major milestone. Something to not only celebrate, but to praise. Bookmark started in Charlottetown in 1972, and went on to open the doors of its Halifax location in 1989. Since then many things have changed in the world of publishing and retail, but this Halifax-based bookshop is more than just a place to buy books, it’s an institution.

Michael Hamm has been the manager at Bookmark’s Halifax location since 2001. Before we sit down to have a chat about the store, the selections, the current climate in book publishing and retail, he starts talking about his customers, and what they mean to him and his staff. He mentions how one of his customers, a European ex-pat, told him what the store means to her. “One of the reasons why she wants to remain living in Halifax is that we are here,” he says. “And that really underlined it for me. People have that much goodwill for us. It kind of amazed me.”

Tell me how you got into working at Bookmark.

I started selling books in 1981 after university. I was working for a chain called Readmore. I applied to work at Bookmark as a bookseller in 1998. Later on in 2001, there was a long-term manager who wanted to move on and I was fortunate enough to get his job.

A customer just walked into the door. Describe them for me, and what their experience at Bookmark should be like. 

Our average customer is a resident who lives close by. They are usually very well read which is why our store has become a niche subject store. Sure, we sell the blockbusters too, but it’s all about the hidden gems. We do a lot in sales with history, philosophy, poetry – things that in a general interest bookstore would be neglected. We do really well with them. We draw on university students and faculty, as well as downtown residents, and the people who are our core shoppers. They love the fact that we have that mix. They love the fact that they know us, and we know them.

We have people who tell us they get a different vibe from our store than any other store. They know that we want to treat customers as if we were on the other side of the counter. We want to present them with knowledge, be respectful and polite, and I’m sure that’s the case with other independent stores in the country.  What few rules we have in the store, we bend them at will to help people who shop with us.

Tell me about the selection process of what goes onto the shelves. Bookmark is known for the sheer diversity of titles, without seeming like it’s trying to pander to everyone.

True. There have been some stores that I have known who wouldn’t stock the Twilight series, because it wouldn’t fit their profile. But we have no qualms with that or other blockbusters. However, we don’t feature them in our windows. That’s for local books, because thats what helps us pay the bills, and people want them. When I sit with sales reps, I kind of know overall what people would want, but there are also individual titles for individual customers that I will put on the shelf. I know a certain fellow who loves musicals, dramatists, and classical composers, so anything in that range, I will bring in for him. I will bring in one copy. I don’t need ten, I only need one. Those are the decisions that come in stocking the store. And local books are a huge part of what we do. So companies like Nimbus and Formac and Goose Lane are very important to our store.

How so?

I have been at national conferences, and I would ask people from outside our region about regional publishing in their area.  And I see that Atlantic Canada has an incredibly strong publishing scene. Sometimes a locally published book is our best performing book of the year. It’s brilliant because you see Sue Goyette selling more than Jonathan Franzen. Or last year, the book on Dr. Goldbloom was our best-selling book. All those heavyweights have big celebrity, but our local readership supports the local authors.

You’ve mentioned your staff. You select the books that come into your store with care. Part of a successful store is its staff. Do you select them in the same manner?

It’s intuitive. People come in and apply, and they may think they are at a disadvantage because they don’t know about cash registers or stocking systems. But the fact that they love books and love to talk about books, those are the things I want to see in someone. We were all customers at Bookmark before we became employees.

Retail in 1989 and retail in 2014 are two very different things. On the book front, Halifax used to boast a lot of bookstores in its downtown core, both new and used. That number has dwindled dramatically. Why do you think Bookmark has stayed the course?

It’s the depth and mix of our inventory, and our staff. Even with a lot of the mainstream blockbuster books, our customers know they can get them elsewhere, and yet they choose to get them from us.

Everybody who works here is invested in the store: people who work full-time to part-time students who work a couple nights, they all become invested in it. It’s kind of like the British way of looking at bookselling: it’s a profession. You have to be an expert on so many things. I don’t cook, but I know about cookbooks. I don’t read philosophy, but I have to know about good philosophy books. The people who look at it as just as job, they move on. But the people who become Bookmark people, they stay.

And last but not least, what are you reading right now?

I’m reading a dystopian novel set in Toronto called Station Eleven. It’s by Emily Mandel and it’s about a global pandemic that wipes out almost all of Earth’s population. I have a pile of easily thirty books on my nightstand waiting to be read. My kitchen cupboards are full of books. There is a waffle mix sitting next to my Tolstoy.