Fantastic Feasts & Where to Find Them
Late afternoon, on a rocky point near Georgian Bay, Ont.’s Honey Harbour: as if on cue, the sun breaks through the clouds for the first time all day—just as Derek Blais’ fishing line goes taut with a serious strike. Within minutes, a two-foot pike joins the smallmouth bass already on shore, and the evening’s earlier dinner plan goes up in smoke. “I call this foraging for dinner,” he says.
His dad, D’Arcy, sizes up the fish. “I think it’s your biggest pike yet.” That’s saying something, considering that Derek, 34, has been fishing here since he was old enough to hold a fishing rod. The rocky point is part of a 2½-acre, water-access-only property that Derek’s great-grandparents bought in the 1940s, and the family cottage is just a stone’s throw away.
But Derek isn’t focussed on the fish’s size; he’s already planning how he wants to cook it. “I’m thinking whole, stuffed with lemon thyme and rosemary, over a fire with juniper branches.”
Back at the cottage, he presses some of that abundant juniper into more immediate service, clipping sprigs for an unconventional garnish for sundown G&Ts. Later, he’ll gather full boughs to add to the firepit, to create fragrant smoke once the fish has partly grilled over wood from a dead pine nearby. “I’ve tried throwing pine needles into the fire too, when I’m doing fish. But that doesn’t work; they’re too resinous, and the smoke is gross.”
That kind of experiment is common here. Derek has made flour from the inner bark of white pines; turned dandelion flowers into crunchy salad croutons; deep-fried the springy green lichen that grows on the rocks for a crispy snack; and created ice cream flavoured with hay. “Very earthy and grassy,” he says.
You’d be forgiven for thinking him a chef, but he adamantly refuses the title; in fact, he has no formal training. During the week, he’s a creative director at a Toronto advertising agency. On Fridays, he pulls the cord on what he calls his “ejection seat” and heads to Georgian Bay, and the laser focus of his creativity
