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Food and drink: First on the scene with aboriginal cuisine

At a seven-course feast and the Lil’wat Café, First Nations are changing what we eat

From Stó:lō hip-hop artists to the participation of the Four Host First Nations, Canada's aboriginal peoples are playing a huge role at the 2010 Winter Games.

"The level of participation, hands down, is going to be the legacy in that it's given us the opportunity to educate the world (about) who we are,'' said Justin George, chief of the Tsleil-Waututh, in an interview with CTV.

Part of that legacy will be through an aspect of First Nations' culture that, until recently, has been a best-kept secret - their cuisine. With 650 First Nations across Canada, there's an abundance to draw from. And Ben Genaille, a Cree from Manitoba with 27 years' experience in some of Vancouver's finest commercial kitchens, was the perfect candidate to harness it.

Talk about a legacy: once the Olympics along with the Four Host Nations' roles were on the radar screen, Vancouver Community College asked Ben to develop its Aboriginal Culinary Arts program. He now teaches the program, which will be producing fully qualified chefs specializing in aboriginal cuisine long into the future.

"I've been promoting aboriginal food for about a dozen years in Vancouver... and the intention in developing this program was promoting aboriginal food and aboriginal cooks during the Olympics," he says.

Ben is also manager of the Aboriginal Culinary Team (ACT) that participated in the World Culinary Olympics last year. Here in Vancouver, it's enriching our Winter Olympics by, among other things, putting together a special seven-course dinner that will be served every night of the Games to raise funds to send the ACT to Europe for the next culinary Olympics.

This all arises from an authentic place for Ben, whose earliest food memory from his childhood in Manitoba is about as uniquely Canadian as it gets.

"I was eight and I was with my brother Kelly, who was nine-and-a-half, and my cousin, Richard, who was nine, and we had our 22s," he recalls. "Off we went into the woods with the baked bannock in our backpack that our mother made for us. We shot a rabbit and a pheasant, we started a little fire, and we roasted them.

"I can still see us sitting on the ground around this fire, having a little snack with our bannock. Then we shot another 20 or 30 rabbits, skinned them, took them home and put them in our freezer, then we went out and played hockey."

But you won't have to shoot and skin your own rabbits for the nightly Aboriginal Feast and Wine Pairings held in a traditional longhouse at the Native Education College in Vancouver ( www.necvancouver.org ). Each course is paired with a wine from B.C.'s Nk'Mip Cellars, North America's first aboriginal winery.

The entire dinner is indicative of what's happening with aboriginal cuisine right now.

"Putting together the aboriginal curriculum, it was a bit of a challenge 10, 11 years ago. Since it's an oral history, there's not a lot written down," says Ben. "But we use all traditional ingredients - we aren't adding heavy cream or a pound of butter to anything to make it richer. Everything is indigenous to North America - everything has been here from the beginning - and we adapt it, like any other cuisine."

For instance, traditionally water contained in cedar bentwood boxes or birch bark baskets was boiled by heating up rocks and putting them into the liquid. That's also how you would make soups or poach food, ergo the first course, "hot rock" poached spot prawn with cattail heart cream and wild onion oil. The cattail cream is made from the young shoots of cattails, or bull rushes, harvested in early May, when the bottoms of the stems are tender. They taste like leek or palm heart.

The menu goes on with a rich repertoire of local ingredients, like Nass River seaweed added to bannock crackers, fire-roasted corn and bison short ribs that you don't need a fork for - they're braised for eight hours to a delectable conclusion.

While the Olympian seven-course dinners promise to be a fantastic way to get a taste of aboriginal cuisine, you can also do some fine local sampling anytime at the Lil'wat Café ( http://www.slcc.ca/cafe/ ), part of the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre at Whistler.

Try the delicious bannock bread, ever-changing with special additions inspired by the staff - maybe fresh Saskatoon berries picked outside the café. Or the pemmican, or cold-smoked salmon, or a big bowl of salmon chowder.

Café manager Albert Kirby has worked with Ben, who was in charge of a special dinner for international diplomats at the cultural centre. They're also planning food-based outdoor tours centred on indigenous foods, plus they're working together getting students from VCC's aboriginal culinary program working at the café on a co-op basis - something that echoes a key to the café's success.

Soon after the Lil'wat Café opened, it became a collaborative effort, with Albert adding his management expertise from the Four Seasons to the contributions of the young, innovative culinary ambassadors from the Squamish and Lil'wat nations who work there.

"They're all empowered to do what they feel like to come up with the best recipe they want," says Albert.

Levi Nelson, who offered the Lil'wat First Nations' welcome to the world at the opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games, worked with Albert to come up with the recipe for the rhubarb pudding they serve. He was inspired by the pudding he remembered eating at his great-aunt's house in Mount Currie, where they enjoyed all kinds of fresh fruit and fish - "everything was at our disposal," he says.

David Baker, from Squamish, helped come up with the recipe for the café's salmon chowder, which is similar to a fish soup his grandfather and family enjoyed - "it's a great meal, it tastes awesome." And Eva Marie Joe, also from the Lil'wat Nation, is known for her bannock bread. She and the café staff have served up some 20,000 pieces, but you can make our own, thanks to their recipe below.

 

Lil'wat Café Bannock

2 c. unbleached flour

1 c. warm water

1½ tbsp. baking powder

1 tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

½ c. cooking oil

Place the oil in a deep-frying pan or enough to fill a pan ¼-inch deep and heat to 350°F (medium-high heat). Sift together dry ingredients. Add the water and stir together to form a sticky dough. On a flour-dusted surface, make small patties of the dough without overly working it. Fry patties in oil until golden brown on each side and puffed up. Bannock can be eaten on its own or with peanut butter, jam or butter.

 

Tickets for the seven-course Aboriginal Feast and Wine Pairings are available at http://www.ticketweb.ca or contact Kanata Cuisine, 604-831-1215 or cuisinekanata@gmail.com .

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who loves bannock.