· CBC News ·
Musician Michael Pendergast taught students traditional Acadian dances that were accompanied by accordion music. (Aaron Adetuyi/CBC)
Traditional Acadian food involves a lot of potatoes. There’s usually meat, salt and pepper, and animal fat.
“When I describe Acadian cooking to kids, I say there’s probably a total of seven ingredients in all the dishes put together,” said Jean-Paul Pendergast. “And that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.”
Growing up in western P.E.I., the Pendergast family may not have your stereotypical Acadian family name, but they embraced the culture.
“We all participated in the cooking when we were kids,” said chef Robert Pendergast. “We’d haul up 30 or 40 pounds of potatoes, wash them, peel them, shred them and we’d learn how to make the dish.”
So when Pendergast had to teach a group of Colonel Gray students how to make Acadian food like fricot and râpure, he wasn’t sure how it would go.
Read the full article here.