Here's the menu for our Boreal Feast New Year's Eve Dinner inspired by Michele Genest’s gorgeous and inspiring new cookbook, The Boreal Feast: A Culinary Journey through the North (Lost Moose, 2014). I bought a copy for myself and one each for two friends so we could all make something from it for our annual New Year’s Eve Celebration (this year, eight “grown-ups” and five teens). We were too busy eating, drinking and talking to take a photo of anything
but the tourtière, which tasted much better than the photo makes it appear. If you look closely, you’ll see a little maple leaf on top.

Appetizers

Modernist Celery and Olives:

Grilled Celery & Sauteed Green Olives with
Spruce Tips (pg.92)

(I was curious whether people would dig the celery dish -- it turned out to be was a huge
hit.  I substituted fresh rosemary from my backyard due to the lack of fresh
spruce tips. For the olives, I used cerignola. I was going to make the Parmesan Crisps as well, but ran out of time in my usual crazed-hostess style. 

Game patés (Hills Wild: rabbit & blueberry and wild boar & apricot) rounded out the appies.

Soup

  Wild Berry and Gewurstraminer (pg. 94)

(Yowza!  So crazily rich. We served in assorted tea cups. My friend Jillian (who I brought to
Michele's Books to Cooks session with me) is a most accomplished cook.

She had put away her own wild blueberries in freezer, so used those)

Salad

Endive, Daikon and Kohlrabi with Walnuts & Cranberries (pg. 27)

(Jillian substituted pomegranate seeds for lack of fresh cranberries)

Main

Tourtiere for 10 (pg. 175)

(My husband John (top chef!) was even going to render his own lard for the crust but
time-crunched -- next time!  If we'd decided on the dish sooner we could've
ordered up some venison or caribou for the moose (which is illegal to sell,

at least in Vancouver, as we discovered).

John used stewing beef, pork tenderloin, duck legs, and
free-range Alberta bison meat)  It was stupendous!

The big surprise here was how well the bottom, and especially the side, crust

 held up even as leftovers considering all that juiciness inside.

Sides

Honey-Mead Glazed Carrots (pg. 95)  ZZ

Turnip Gratin (pg. 97)

(In the tradition of Julia Child, my friends, including Janet,

who made this dish, never shy away from more cream and butter!)

Dessert was not from the book, but in the spirit of the theme my friend
Patty decorated her chocolate bundt cake with antique pewter woodland creatures (hares,
foxes) from Denmark, and drifted it with icing sugar and cedar sprigs to look
like a winter forest scene. Patty and Paul also found this Zubrowka “Bison Grass Vodka” from Poland that came in its own very fashionable jacket: http://www.wine-searcher.com/wine-226731-0001-zubrowka-bison-grass-vodka-limited-edition-nubuck-poland