Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre Roots Community Food Centre program helps students with cultural land-based teachings

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY — A group of Westgate Collegiate & Vocational Institute (CVI) students enjoyed learning from First Nations chef Zach Keeshig through a Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre (TBIFC)-Roots Community Food Centre program on May 27 in Thunder Bay. The students made hamburger buns in a wood-fired outdoor oven, moose and bison burgers over an outside fire, and a salad on an outdoor table under the tutelage of Keeshig.

“It was really fun learning about how to make buns and also how to grind the fat to make the moose meat chewy and also still good at the same time,” says JJ Echum, a Westgate CVI student, noting that the burger tasted really good. “And also it was fun making the salad as well.”

Echum says the program enabled him to learn cultural land-based teachings and to learn from Elders.

“I didn’t know how to make a bun, I would regularly just buy it from the store but it’s really interesting in how they make them,” Echum says.

Lucius Thompson, a Westgate CVI student, says he enjoyed learning some of the techniques involved with making a hamburger meal, such as how they made the egg wash they used on the buns.

“I didn’t think putting water in egg wash would do something but apparently it does, so that’s something new,” Thompson says. “And then making your own vinaigrette and adding maple syrup instead of sugar adds a whole new sense of uniqueness to it.”

Thompson says he was honoured to have the opportunity to participate in the program.

“I’m actually in a foods class at Westgate,” Thompson says. “My teacher recommended me to do this after he heard what we were doing, so [I’m] honoured he let me do it.”

Payton Yellowhead, a Westgate CVI student, also enjoyed learning how to make the meal during the program.

“It brings me more to my culture because as a kid, I never got to do this stuff, and preparing the meat and stuff was kind of cool,” Moonias says. “I would say it’s one of the best burgers I ever had.”

Genevieve Desmoulin, cultural resource coordinator at TBIFC and Biigtigong Nishnaabeg citizen, says Keeshig provided some teachings to students about cooking cultural foods.

“We used moose ground as a traditional meat and they made their own buns in a fire oven,” Desmoulin says. “They learned how to weigh items and gain more culinary skills and life skills that are really important to them. Chef Zach Keeshig did a wonderful job of engaging the youth; they were really engrossed in what they were doing, they were attentive, they were eager to help put together the food, and as I’m watching everybody gobble down their food, I’m assuming that it’s really delicious.”

Keeshig, head chef and owner of the Naagan by Chef Zach Keeshig restaurant in Owen Sound, which was recently recognized as number nine on Canada’s Best New Restaurants list, says he does a tasting menu with about 12 courses of food that they forage, grow, and source locally.

“We’ve very lucky that we’re able to travel all over Canada, being able to do these sort of classes,” Keeshig says. “It’s very important for me to be able to hand down and pass on some of the knowledge that I’ve learned from working in some of the top restaurants in Canada, being able to work with some of our traditional meats that some people may not have done, and being able to forage and stuff like that. We want to show the next generation some of these traditions and it not be lost.”

Keeshig says they chose the hamburger meal recipe so it would be something familiar that the students could recreate at home.

“The point of these classes is to hopefully inspire them to step behind the stove and cook something quite easy but with more of the traditional ingredients we’re used to seeing,” Keeshig says. “It’s just a great opportunity for myself to be able to show these [students] a little bit of what we do back home and hopefully inspire them in the future.”

Natasha Harding, a teacher at Westgate CVI, says the students’ food preparation session was fantastic.

“They were all right in there right from the get-go,” Harding says. “Chef Zach definitely knew how to command the crowd and give out direction, it is his forte and they all bought in and were hands-on right from rising the dough for the buns to the meat grinding inside to cooking it all over the fire and in the fired oven.”