Acadian Cuisine

There's a surprising shortage of images on this subject - and even fewer images that show both the outside and inside of the potato dumpling.

While I grew up in Moncton (I spent nearly 18 years there), I never once in that entire time tried Acadian food. What a shame. But then, it’s not really surprising. Dad will freely admit he has a limited palate, and Mom, while she has greatly expanded her food choices, never had a big appetite for foreign cuisine. And, being Anglophone, Acadian food was foreign, plain and simple.

But now I have an Acadian belle-mère to match my desire to find new foods. Junkii and I challenged her to help us find a reasonable facsimile of two Acadian staples: Poutine râpée – a boiled potato dumpling made with a mixture of grated and mashed potato and a salted pork filling – and Rapûre – a similar dish broken out into a casserole and baked.

We thought it would be easy to find an Acadian restaurant in Dieppe, and the three of us planned to head out for lunch on Friday. Evidently, people make this stuff at home and have no desire to eat it when out on the town. There are no Acadian sit-down restaurants in Greater Moncton. .

To her credit, Louise did find us some Poutine – made fresh in Bouctouche – but it was take-away only. So we threw it in the trunk and treated her to clams and chips at Deluxe – a local fast food chaine that makes their own fries and serves up yummy deep-fried fruits-de-mer. Mmmm.

Rapûre - AKA Rappie Pie, AKA Râpée - has a yummy cruchy crust.

While at the Dieppe Farmers Market, Junkii and I also stumbled across a locally-made Rapûre, so we picked that up too and, next day, we made ourselves an Acadian breakfast.

Just fyi, this food is nothing to look at. Poutine is basically a grey pasty potato ball, and rapûre is essentially potatoes browned under the browiler – but they both taste yummy. While I was eating, I thought it was good, but that I would never really need to try it again. But as I sit here typing this, I’m kind of craving a Poutine râpée.

Tres unexpected.

Not sure why we didn’t take photos of this stuff, but it definitely slipped our minds. These ones from the web will have to do.