Mont tremblant, the highest peak in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains, is a world-class ski resort. But come summer the popular alpine destination is transformed into a different kind of playground — with sparkling lakes,

leafy forest trails, quaint villages, and cafés bedecked in flowers. Hiking, biking and water sports take top billing in the summer months but with a bit of inside knowledge, there’s another way to enjoy the mountainsides.

Chef and forager Frédéric Baësa is a font of knowledge when it comes to the edible secrets of Tremblant. With me stumbling in his wake, he pushed through a thicket of wild chamomile and slithered down a hillside to a stream bed carpeted with leaf mulch and mossy fallen trees. This mixed-forest region of conifers and deciduous trees known as the North Woods is a habitat that blossoms and changes colour with the seasons. As my eyes adjusted to the chiaroscuro effect of sunlight filtering through the treetops, Baësa pointed his freshly honed machete to a cluster of miniature beige umbrellas clinging to a log. “Not good,” he said, “wrong colour.”

You need this kind of advice if you are a neophyte forager. There are many types of edible fungii, and a few that will kill you stone dead. Baësa learned to tell the difference as a child, foraging with his aunt, Odette, in the countryside around Paris. She taught him about mushrooms, wild foods and medicinal herbs, many of which he discovered in the forests of Quebec when he moved here in 2001.

Mont Tremblantby SuSie elliSon

Gone Wild

Where on earth

Mont Tremblant

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this spread clockwise from top left Villa Grand Forêt, one of the luxurious properties managed by Tremblant Living; Wild mushroom sauté; Chef and forgaer Frédéric Baësa; Tremblant signage; Wild mushroom.

THERE ARE MANY ADVANTAGES in choosing a villa or condo

rental over a hotel. You get way more space, total privacy, access to a fully equipped kitchen and no nasty surprises added to your bill. For a large group the economics of villa rental are unbeatable and for couples or smaller families, condo rentals are extremely a�ordable if you factor in the money you will save by not having to eat every meal in a restaurant. Tremblant Living

is a hands-on, personal company that will go the extra mile to make sure that every aspect of your stay is perfect. Frédéric Baësa is one of several private chefs who are available by arrangement to cook for you in the comfort of your luxurious Laurentian retreat.

tremblant livingwww.tremblantliving.com

Frédéric Baësa www.couleursgourmandes.com

Visitit

A few steps further on he dropped to his haunches again — “chanterelles,” he said. Taking care to leave the base intact to ensure future mushrooms, he cut a specimen with a slender stem and frilly, fan-shaped head. “See the gills are straight, not wavy,” he explained, pointing to the underside of the mushroom before placing it gently in his basket.

In less than half an hour we’d picked a meal’s worth of assorted mushrooms. I recognized chanterelles and boletus (the same family as porcini) from restaurant meals and farmers’ markets, where they carry a price tag that speaks to their rarity. Baësa also identified the delicate amanita fulva and an even luckier find, a bright orange trumpet called lactarius thyinos.

In addition to foraging and purveying wild foods to local restaurants, Baësa works as a private chef for Tremblant Living, a company that manages luxurious vacation homes and condos in Tremblant. To celebrate my husband’s birthday, we spent two nights at Villa Grande Forêt, a gorgeous, 5,700 square-foot chalet in a secluded forest glade humming with the sounds of late summer. When I left to go foraging with Baësa, husband was nursing a cup of coffee in an Adirondack chair on the deck. He was still there, watching the action at a bird feeder, when we came stomping in for lunch.

Baësa swapped his machete for a chef’s knife and went to work in the villa’s high-tech, stainless steel kitchen. Lunch was a showcase of local flavours. First the mushrooms — sautéed in butter with garlic flowers. Then Baësa’s own hand-made pork and maple sausages, with quenelles of creamy mashed potato, garnished with wild pork lardons and gourganes (broad beans) in a guinea hen reduction. All the wild game that Baësa cooks is hunted locally in season. In addition to the wild foods he gathers, he procures the best local produce and artisanal foods, so that his menus are a true reflection of the Laurentian terroir.

We finish with sweet, pillowy brioche buns filled with luscious pastry cream. (The Tropeziénne, I later learned, was developed in the 1950’s by a Polish baker in St Tropez for the director Roger Vadim and named by Brigitte Bardot).

Baësa had one more trick up his sleeve, a pot of Labrador tea (made from the dried leaves of a species of rhododendron found in Canada’s northern latitudes), to be drunk at bedtime for a good night’s sleep. I’m not sure if it was the tea, or the gin we drank in the Jacuzzi that did it, but we did sleep like babies in our glass-walled bedroom, with only a fingernail moon and a hooting owl for company.

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