‘She had me at lynx chow mein’: Introduced collectively by wild meals and Fb, N.W.T. cooks pen recipe ebook

If you happen to sit down with Barb and Richard Mercredi for dinner in Fort Smith, N.W.T., you would possibly end up tucking into any kind of wild meals.

The duo has been baking, frying and stewing meals they’ve harvested from the land for ages. That rooster chow mein? It is really lynx — however you would not realize it, says Richard, given the gentle style of the animal.

The Mercredis share their creations lavishly, typically posting them to the CBC’s Arctic Kitchen Fb group. It was there that that lynx dish (amongst many others) caught the attention of Melissa Sangris, one other wild-food connoisseur, and gave her the push she wanted.

Sangris, who has posted earlier than about bannock and klik sandwiches, whitefish and potato patties and moose kebabs (to call just a few), has written a cookbook earlier than. Now, she needed to do it once more with Barb.

“Though we hadn’t even met, she had me at lynx chow mein,” mentioned Sangris, who’s from Yellowknife.

“I had needed the assist and motivation to maintain transferring ahead with the cookbook, as a result of life will get busy and I might are inclined to procrastinate and possibly have it printed in 5 years — if it wasn’t for Barb.”

That assist and motivation went each methods. For Barb, the expertise was a model new one.

“I went into it completely blind, virtually,” Barb mentioned. “It was nice having Melissa, as a result of Melissa knew the method and guided us by means of every thing.”

The cookbook, Welcome To Our Northern Kitchen, is now in print. In it, you’ll find the aforementioned lynx chow mein alongside dozens of different recipes: wild grouse penne, buffalo stew, pike fish truffles and extra.

After which, in fact, there’s Barb’s bannock recipe.

“Even earlier than the cookbook was being written, I might at all times go to the [Arctic Kitchen] and search for the recipe,” Sangris mentioned. “I have been cooking her bannock for, what, three years now?”

The facility of social media

For Sangris and the Mercredis, the Arctic Kitchen group grew to become a spot they visited often because the COVID-19 pandemic dragged on.

Sangris mentioned that grew to become much more necessary as restrictions stopped folks from gathering.

“Being from Yellowknife and from the Northwest Territories, the way in which we’re introduced up is to share with others,” she mentioned. “So once you’re capable of share your recipes with others, it simply feels good and it feels proper … It brings a way of group.”

Wild meals has at all times been part of Richard’s life, as he was raised on the land and has eaten it since he was a baby. By way of looking, trapping and fishing, he offers a lot of the meat he and Barb cook dinner up.

Posting it on-line is a option to share their love of untamed meals, mentioned Richard, and be taught new issues themselves — like the best way to cook dinner Chinese language meals (with a twist).

“We took a number of delight in that,” he mentioned.

The suggestions they’ve obtained from the group about their recipe ebook has been overwhelmingly constructive, Barb added — they’ve obtained messages from throughout Canada.

“It is actually encouraging, from all people, to do that,” she famous.

For Sangris, that outpouring of suggestions has helped settle the fears she had once they had been engaged on the ebook.

“I am not a chef by any means, I simply like to cook dinner,” she mentioned. “The messages that I get … it sort of builds your confidence and makes you cheerful you really went by means of the method.”