Chef Shawn Adler serves up a tasty webinar in celebration of National Indigenous Peoples Day
By Rick Garrick
EUGENIA — Indigenous chef Shawn Adler and Indigenous storyteller Sarain Fox enjoyed hosting the Indian Tacos with Chef Shawn Adler Culinary Workshop webinar on National Indigenous Peoples Day. The webinar was part of the Summer Solstice Indigenous Festival Virtual Edition, presented June 1-21 by TD and Indigenous Tourism Ontario.
“Sarain Fox had come up earlier and we had filmed the making of a pow-wow-style Indian taco — we made it with bison and it was great,” says Adler, chef and owner of Pow Wow Cafe in Toronto and Flying Chestnut Kitchen in Eugenia. “It was a good way to get people engaged and celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day.”
Adler started the webinar by making fry bread from scratch using his recipe from Pow Wow Cafe, which is a family recipe. He also made bison chili for the gourmet Indian tacos as well as a maple and strawberry dessert using his own maple syrup prepared at the Flying Chestnut Kitchen.
“We used ground bison,” Adler says. “It’s a leaner meat, but it’s very healthy and it’s just got a little more gamey flavour than beef.”
Adler also answered questions from participants on fry bread and other topics during the webinar while cooking meals for customers at the Flying Chestnut Kitchen.
“In this portion of Ontario, patios are open again so we had a bunch of people on the patio and we were doing take-outs at the same time,” Adler says. “So it was a busy afternoon.”
Adler plans to start up the Pow Wow Cafe once patios are allowed to reopen in Toronto.
“It was nice to be included in [the Summer Solstice Indigenous Festival Virtual Edition] Pow Wow,” Adler says. “I can’t wait for the real pow-wows to start up again so we can go and be slinging our tacos for people.”
Fox, host of Rise on Viceland and Future History on APTN, says the webinar was an opportunity for people to get together during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
“This was a way for us to come together as a community through social distancing, through spending time in our own homes and be together and feast together,” Fox says. “And it was a lot of fun!”
Fox says some of the participants shared photos of the meals they prepared during the webinar on the Summer Solstice Indigenous Festival Facebook page.
“My favourite part was the innovation,” Fox says. “Some people were choosing to stuff their tacos this year, putting all the ingredients inside sort of like a pizza pocket Indian taco.”
Fox says it is important to continue doing programs such as the webinar during this time of COVID-19.
“We need to be mindful that it is really important to be programming Indigenous content right now and to be having these important conversations,” Fox says, “and for all of Canada to be able to see who we are as Indigenous people in an accessible way so we can continue to build bridges and become stronger communities united.”
Trina Simard, executive director of Indigenous Experiences, says the culinary program at the Summer Solstice Indigenous Festival was an opportunity for people to have a “tangible experience” of Indigenous culture.
“As we were doing our Pow Wow celebration online for the weekend, we really wanted to make sure we brought that kind of food component home,” Simard says. “So we invited Shawn Adler from Pow Wow Cafe to show everybody how to make a Pow Wow favourite with the Indian tacos. Those that pre-registered received all of the (ingredients) at home, including (bison) meat to make some chilli, and were able to follow along and create their own Pow Wow food experience.”
Adler’s webinar is posted along with the webinars of three other Indigenous chefs online.