An award-winning blogger, cookbook author, recipe developer and much more, Marie Asselin infuses her French-Canadian roots and love of Italian cuisine into delicious recipes that are easy to follow and beautifully packaged. We wanted to learn more about her culinary journey — where it began and where it’s taking her.
AD: When did you first realize you wanted to dive into baking and cooking?
I started cooking with my mom when I was a kid. She was a stay-at-home mom, and she made everything from scratch. Very early on I learned to make desserts with her, and I soon took over the task whenever we had guests. After I left home, as a young adult, I had a phase of eating pretty bad, processed stuff—I didn’t have the same knowledge in cooking actual meals as I did in baking desserts.
Two things converged to make me become serious about food: I studied graphic design in the late 90s and I soon discovered the publications that inspired me the most design-wise were cookbooks and food magazines. I would literally spend the little student money I had on books and super expensive magazines from France and Australia. This inspired me to register my website, FoodNouveau.com, in 2000, and I used the platform to practice my web design skills and store my favorite recipes.
Around that same period, I discovered that I was lactose intolerant. This forced me to make more conscious choices about what I was eating, and to make the effort to find alternatives to dairy products to use in my desserts. My experiments in the kitchen led to a growing passion for food and cooking in general, and over the years, I started dreaming about making it a career. (It would take 10 years before I would get to that, though!)
AD: Have you always had an interest in developing recipes? If not, when would you say that began?
I would say that my passion was first and foremost in following recipes. I would cook and bake my heart out using my growing cookbook and magazine collection. Contrary to chefs that tend to be more intuitive in their cooking style, I loved the guidance of recipes. In that sense, cookbooks were at the heart of my culinary education. It was only after several years of cooking and baking other people’s recipes that I grew the confidence to start riffing, and then to come up with my very own recipes.
I think my interest in cookbooks and recipes is what allowed me to become a good recipe developer. I’ve always been a meticulous cook, and this is a quality that comes in handy when you write recipes you want others to use.
AD: How do you come up with your recipes? Are they family recipes, experiments that you have tried/perfected over the years?
The first recipes I developed were inspired by my travels. I’ve travelled a lot and I’ve always traveled to eat, basically. The reason why I turned my site, Food Nouveau, into a blog in 2010, is because I wanted a place to nerd out about dishes I’d tasted abroad and wanted to recreate in my own kitchen. This gave me the confidence to follow my inspiration and create more recipes based on my own life experience and interests.
AD: When and how did you develop an obsession with citrus?
Well, I like to say that it all began with the crates of clementines my mom would buy during our super cold, super snowy Québec winters. The aroma of the freshly peeled clementines I’d eat after coming back from school is one of my most vivid food memories. One of the first desserts I made on my own was lemon meringue pie, too! Granted, I made it using store-bought Shirriff kits, but I was so very proud of these pies!
I’m sure people that are lucky enough to have citrus fruits growing in their backyards love them dearly too, but I think for those of us who live in Northern countries, citrus fruits are lifelines that get us through dreary winters. We literally need them to keep healthy! So my citrus-fueled childhood memories evolved into a full-blown obsession after I started cooking “for real” because citrus fruits are so incredibly versatile and useful in both savory and sweet dishes. Citrus fruits wake up taste buds and make food more exciting!
AD: Why is it that French and Italian cuisines heavily influence your recipes?
I feel like anyone can cook any food they love to feed their families, but if you’re going to create recipes and teach other people how to cook, you should draw from your own heritage and what is instinctive to you.
I’m French-Canadian and our food culture is, of course, influenced by our French roots. Growing up, I also had family living in France and my parents were francophiles, so I’d say my upbringing may have been more heavily influenced by France traditions and food than the average Québécois. France is one of the countries I wanted to travel to first, as a young adult, because I’d heard my parents talk about it so much (we never went there as a family.) Later on, I found a second home in Paris, this is a city I truly feel at home in and I try to return for a week or two every year.
French pastry is my biggest source of inspiration when it comes to baking. While I won’t always have time to make super intricate desserts, I feel like we can draw a lot of inspiration from the sophisticated flavor profiles and beautiful presentations of classic French desserts. I love boiling these down to clever touches you can add to your everyday sweets to give them an extra special touch without having to spend hours in the kitchen.
As for Italian cuisine, it’s very simple: I’m quite simply head over heels in love with the country. Italy is the country I’ve traveled to the most (even more than France) and I speak the language too, so I like to think of myself as an adoptive daughter. Italian cuisine is what made me develop an interest in savory cooking. Simple recipes that use few, but quality ingredients, are principles from Italian cuisine that drive my own day-to-day cooking.
To me, there’s just no other cuisine that is as heart-warming and satisfying as Italian food. It puts smiles on everyone’s faces! For all these reasons, this is the cuisine I researched, learned from, and practiced the most over the years, which is why I now feel comfortable sharing my Italian cuisine knowledge with others.
AD: How did the idea of managing a cooking school come about? What did you have to do to prepare for that venture? What was your day-to-day like?
The cooking school came to life in sort of a round-about way. After coming out of design school, I founded a design firm with a friend who was an industrial designer. We offered a wide variety of design services to clients ranging from manufacturers to individuals who wanted to renovate their kitchens. We built a fully functioning kitchen in our showroom to attract clients and, to be honest, the reason why we started inviting chefs to teach classes was to make the space profitable. But then I grew an outside interest in managing that part of the business, even though it only took up a tiny fraction of my actual time (classes only happened a few times a month, and at night.) This was the first time the idea of weaving food into my career seemed a possibility at all. This was in 2004-2005, and I would only make the full-time transition into the culinary world in 2010. But it all started when I’d layout and print out those recipe booklets while working overtime!
AD: What was it about your time in Paris that inspired you to revive Food Nouveau?
Ah well it was quite simply so overwhelming for the senses to live there! My exploration of countless Parisian pastry shops is what sparked my passion for pastry making. At first, I was especially obsessed with French macarons, which I learned to make in Paris. I perfected my technique after coming back home and started teaching my friends to make them too. My how-to recipe for French macarons is the very first recipe I published in March 2010 and it’s still, almost 12 years on, one of the most popular destinations on my site.
AD: Your imagery is stunning! Do you take your own photos? I imagine this could be where your graphic design background comes in handy?
Thank you! I did take my own photos for the first 8 years of my site. I never liked taking photos though, it was more of a necessary evil. In 2018, I wrote my first cookbook, Simply Citrus, and I just couldn’t imagine taking the photos for an entire cookbook. I’d been collaborating with a talented food photographer, Catherine Côté, on client projects for a few years, and she’d become a friend. I decided to hire her to photograph my cookbook, and then we did another one together (French Appetizers), and then we did two more cookbooks together for a client. Working together became so easy and fun that I then made the transition to hire her to make the photos for my site, too. It was such a relief for me not to be behind the camera anymore! I can now concentrate on creating my recipes and styling the food, and then Catherine creates the images I could previously only dream of.
It’s funny because for the longest time, I thought my studies in graphic design were for naught. I also have a B.A. in translation, and this is what I credited as the credential that gave me the confidence to start writing and creating culinary content. I’ve always been a creative person, but it took me years to realize that the food styling part of my job actually pulls directly from my design background. So, you could say translation gave me the confidence to start writing, and graphic design allowed me to make my recipes come to life!
AD: Are there any future projects you are working on that we should lookout for?
After seeing my two first cookbooks being published and distributed by a traditional publisher, I’ve decided to take the self-publishing route for future cookbook projects. I actually had self-publishing experience before my first physical cookbook was published: my first eBook was published in 2015 (Sweet Spot) and it helped me get noticed as a food writer. After riding the traditional route twice, I’ve decided to go back to self-publishing. I love that flying solo allows my creativity to flow without constraint and that I can have control over the whole publishing process. I can even build my eBooks from scratch too, thanks to my design background!
I’ve just put 4 brand new eBooks out into the world: Citrus Desserts and Savory Citrus Delights can be considered sequels to Simply Citrus, Creative Appetizers is a follow up to French Appetizers, while Maple Desserts & Treats pulls directly from by maple-loving Québécois heritage.
This is just the beginning: I have a spreadsheet full of eBook ideas I’d like to pull together over the next few years. History will tell if this new venture is a success, but I’m hopeful the people who come to my site and love my recipes will find the eBooks helpful and useful too.
