Forest gastronomy
Forest gastronomy
Forest gastronomy
at its best
A hike with Marcheur des Bois is first and foremost an experience for your taste buds!
In her culinary creations, chef Josée Miller invites you to discover unexpected flavors. Her secret: she reinvents well-known or traditional dishes by adding one or more of the spices she gathers. After all, we’re pickers first and foremost!
What makes Marcheur des Bois cuisine so special is that the basic preparations are made in our commercial kitchen.
What sets us apart:
- We make our stocks (white or brown) with forest spices to create our broths, sauces and soups. We don’t use bouillon powders or sauce sachets!
- We make our homemade mayonnaise from fresh local eggs.
- For certain vegetables, whenever possible, we buy from an organic producer right here in Saint-Côme, Aux Jardins d’Éric.
- We produce our own forest spices from our own pickings in the Lanaudière region. We pick all our own mushrooms. If we need a larger quantity for a specific dish, we can turn to a local producer.
- We are constantly exploring and innovating to offer our customers new, refined flavors. In 2024, we began using wild carrot seed in our preparations, notably in the quiche forestière.
What does it taste like?
It's a question that comes up again and again, and one that's sometimes difficult to answer. We can give you a vague idea, saying that it reminds you of cinnamon, nutmeg, etc. We can make you smell them. But the best way is to let you taste them..
When you enjoy a hiking experience with us, you also taste what chef Josée has lovingly cooked with what we've picked. For we are gatherers first and foremost. And it's our greatest pleasure to help you discover the treasures of the forest.
Did you know?
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- Some boreal spices, such as pine spikenard, lend themselves to both savory and sweet preparations?
- Almost every part of the traveler’s comptonia can be used? In fact, the leaves, nucules (fruit) and catkins (pine spikenard) are highly aromatic and can be used for a variety of purposes.
- Dune pepper (speckled alder) is not a “real” pepper? It’s actually a bud that, when still green, is very resinous. If you bite into it, you’ll get a numbing sensation on your tongue! Picking it makes your fingers very black and sticky, but what an incredible aroma it gives off!
- The sumac vinegar that grows here in Quebec is a “cousin” of the sumac used in Middle Eastern cuisine. It is the large red spike, which is a cluster of small hairy fruits, that is used. Some people make “sumacade”, a kind of pink lemonade, by soaking the fruit in water. We use it mainly as a spice, on its own or in our blends. It adds a little acidity when needed (think “umami”).
- Wintergreen lives up to its name! It stays green under the snow, and that’s how it’s found in spring, when you can still pick it, with its little red fruit. If you bite into it, you won’t notice a thing, but after ten seconds or so, you’ll recognize the characteristic taste of pink “paparmanne”. As for the little wintergreen, it produces an oblong white fruit with a lemon-mint taste. A real delight.
- Sweet clover is a small, highly fragrant flower known as “false vanilla”. We prefer to call it wild vanilla. We use dried sweet clover (white or yellow), especially to flavor desserts, because of its delicate fragrance. A liquid essence of sweet clover is also available.
- Balsam poplar leaves, just out of bud, are a real marvel for flavoring almost any dish. Extremely aromatic, its resinous scent is enchanting. A must in Marcheur des Bois cuisine.
- The balsam myrtle is a shrub that grows along the banks of lakes and rivers. Its leaves and fruit are used. Balsam is tricky to use: too much and the dish becomes bitter, so you need to calculate the dose carefully! Its scent is reminiscent of passion fruit.
Monard, whether didymous (red) or fistulous (mauve), is a flower with a scent reminiscent of lemon sage. It’s so practical, you can literally use it in any sauce! We love the flower for its coloring power, which makes summer vinaigrettes very appetizing with its beautiful fuchsia-pink color!
- The root of benoite is the perfect substitute for the four spice used especially at Christmas. We dare you to tell the difference!