The people of Newfoundland have their own very unique tastes.
SEAL AS A MEAL
At one gourmet restaurant in Montreal, customers pack in to try a seared dark red loin. Diners describe the flavor as similar to beef but a bit gamier. The meat is not beef, but seal.
While there are no seal burger chains open in Canada, seal has experienced a small resurgence in popularity. Top chefs are preparing seal steaks with caramelized onions and cranberry sauces. Some make a seal sausage that resembles pepperoni and can be used as a pizza topping. Cooks in Montreal are making seal mousse, seal tartare, and smoked seal, which some compare to brisket.
Seal hunting is controversial but still legal in Canada. Every year, the Canadian government allows more than a quarter of a million seals to be killed. There’s a small seal hunt by the Inuits in the Arctic, but the big hunt takes place on ice floes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in March and April. The government wants to thin the herd, which is often estimated at about five and a half million.
Seals are either shot or hit over the head with a spiked club called a hakapik, which animal rights activists say is cruel. The European Union has declared sealing inhumane and has banned imports of seal products. All of Canada’s major political parties have said they are in favor of the hunt, and parliamentarians have staged events where they’ve eaten dishes such as double-smoked, bacon-wrapped seal loin in a port reduction to show how delicious seal can be.
THEIR LIPS ARE SEALED
Newfies have long been known for their seal cuisine. Many Sunday dinners in Newfoundland have featured roast seal—often with flippers still attached. The seal dish most well known in the province is a delicacy called seal flipper pie. Independent sealers still sail into St. John’s Harbor every spring and sell young harp seal flippers off the wharf. In April, community clubs all over the city hold flipper pie dinners. There has been debate in some religious circles about whether seal is meat or fish because devout Catholics may abstain from eating meat on Good Friday. The flippers are tender and delicious, but it’s said that few mainlanders acquire a taste for them.
The biggest ice cream sundae weighed 55,000 pounds and was created in Alberta in 1988.
Recipes call for dipping seal flippers in flour and pan-frying them in pork fat. Then you pour a gravy of Worcestershire sauce and flour over the flippers, cover with pastry dough, and bake.
MORE NEWFIE FOODS COMESTIBLES
Try these other odd eats for a good munch in the Maritimes.
Scrunchions: Small pieces of pork rind or pork fatback fried until rendered and crispy. They’re usually an essential ingredient in fish and brewis, a dish common in Newfoundland.
Bang Belly: A round, pungent molasses-and-salt pork cake that is often served on Christmas Eve. You can bake, fry, or boil it in a stew like dumplings.
Cod Tongues: The gelatinous piece of flesh from the cod’s throat is a local delicacy . . . and an acquired taste. The tongue used to be a part of the fish that most people discarded with the fish head. Poorer folks would gather the heads to feed their families. During the Depression, kids would head to the docks to sift through piles of discarded fish heads and cut out cod tongues. Back in the day, they were sold for 15 cents a dozen; now the local grocery sells them for $8.50 a pound. Upscale local restaurants serve them—sometimes lightly battered, fried, and topped with scrunchions. A common way to prepare them is to soak them in milk, dip in seasoned flour, then sauté in hot oil until nicely browned on both sides. Boiled cod cheek meat is also a big hit in Newfoundland.
Jiggs Dinner: This traditional meal is commonly prepared and eaten on Sundays in many regions around the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It consists of a roasted turkey or chicken stuffed with dressing and served with a combination of side dishes that would all traditionally be cooked in a single pot.
Figgy Duff: Often served as part of a Jiggs Dinner, this popular bag pudding is not so figgy any more. It’s commonly made today with raisins in place of figs. Typical ingredients are breadcrumbs, raisins, brown sugar, molasses, butter, flour, and spices. Ingredients are mixed and put in a pudding bag, wrapped in cheesecloth, or stuffed into an empty can and then boiled, usually along with vegetables.
Fish and Brewis: This stoical standard meal includes salted codfish and hard bread or hardtack (a cracker-like, dried biscuit). Brewis or brewes was the name for oat cakes.
Jack Graney of St. Thomas, Ontario, was the first person to pitch to Babe Ruth in the Major Leagues.