A celebration of British Columbia through a cook's palate and a photographer's lens, this cookbook highlights the province's diverse edible landscape, from the Pacific Ocean's seafood to Okanagan fruit. The seasonal layout pairs an eclectic collection of made-from-scratch recipes with evocative images, paying tribute to wholesome unprocessed foods and the skilled farmers who grow them. Seafood lovers will find plenty of ideas for enjoying the Pacific's bounty with recipes for halibut, salmon, oysters, mussels, clams and spot prawns. B.C.'s prized fruits are featured in summer pies, tarts, meringues and ice cream while fall and winter recipes showcase local pears, apples and cranberries. The Fraser Valley's meats appear throughout the book, as do the region's vegetables that make up vegetarian dishes like the award-winning Ratatouille Pie. There's even a section for getting back to basics with everything from stocks, to pasta, to honest-to-goodness real mayonnaise. British Columbia from Scratch features the province's most commonplace market ingredients, making this book as practical as it is beautiful.


Denise Marchesault is a classically trained chef with a particular love of French food. A firm believer in cooking from scratch, Denise’s soups and sauces are created with fresh, quality ingredients. She received a Grande Diplome from Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa where she studied both pastry and cuisine. She lives in the Lower Mainland, British Columbia. Caroline West spent years as a magazine art director in Sydney, Australia and London, England and has been working as a photographer since 2001. In 2009 Caroline moved from Sydney, Australia and now resides in Vancouver Island with her husband, Marco.