Spruce-Grilled Steak

Canada doesn’t have much of an indigenous grilling tradition, but there’s one dish—a steak—that could come from nowhere else. Created by my friend and the editor of my French-Canadian books, Pierre Bourdon, it consists of a “Spencer” steak (what Canadians call a rib eye) grilled on spruce or pine branches, one of those simple, brilliant ideas you come up with after a bottle or two of wine around a campfire. It is not as crazy as it sounds—after all, the minty resins in spruce used to be a f