Martin Picard’s TV Sugaring season, which was meant to last only one season, finally comes to an end in Spring, at the end of its 11th seasone season ofA cook in the cottage.
• Also read: an 11e and last season for a cook in the cottage
With a clear conscience, the renowned chefs at Le Pied de Cochon in Montreal and the sugar shack Au Pied de Cochon in Mirabel bid farewell to the airwaves of Télé-Québec. “We were walking around the garden and I think we had finished that show,” he said in an interview with QMI agency in late February.
“We had a huge impact on maple syrup, between Day 1 and the last episode. I feel like we’ve brought a lot of people the taste of sugaring and brought pride [au milieu]. Maple syrup is a huge industry and we were a small cog in it that helped others a lot,” the chef said belligerently and, above all, very gratefully. .
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This season, which will be dedicated to maple syrup, Martin and his entire team have traveled to France, where the chef was a chef at the beginning of his career, and to Germany, the second largest importer of maple syrup in the world.
Only the final episode is dedicated to nostalgia and the path the people of the Cabane have traveled through the years. “It was a great adventure. It is a significant period of life that will accompany me to the end of my days,” Martin Picard said at the end of the line.
“Never in my life would I have hoped to play 11 years with the same show and with a team that was basically the same from start to finish. […] It’s a beautiful ending to this story that I never thought I would live,” he continued, his voice laced with emotion.
Authenticity above all
When the program “Un chef à la hut” went on the air in 2013, the hut was already doing quite well and Martin had just won first prize in the category “Best Cookbook of the Year” with his work “Cabane à sucre Au Pied de pig”. prestigious annual gala of the Paris Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in France.
The show obviously helped increase the enthusiasm for maple products and maple syrup production, but it was important to Martin Picard that the show primarily reflect the reality of the environment, with the good years and the less good years, but also to show the underside of his kitchen, from the design of a plate to the finished product.
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“It was a requirement from the start. I don’t have the qualities or talent of an animators. I could just be myself. Building things or hiding things… no, I wanted it to be who we are. And I think that’s what made people try it [à l’acériculture] and make their first cuts,” he said.
Today, 11 years later, when the film crew comes to the hut, they know exactly what to do and are part of the environment, emphasized the chef. “It was honestly a privilege for me to be able to do a show like this.”
- The final season of A Chef in the Cabin airs this Friday at 8 p.m. on Télé-Québec. The show can also be viewed simultaneously online or in catch-up on video.telequebec.tv and the Télé-Québec app.