Five interns have just completed a one-of-a-kind apprenticeship with an Indigenous chef who has developed a creative and progressive approach to traditional foods.
Collingwood-based Elephant Thoughts teamed up with Indigenous chef, Zach Keeshig, to create an Indigenous culinary internship using space at Riverstone Retreat - an Elephant Thoughts property near Durham.
The seven-week apprenticeship was offered to five interns and began not in a kitchen but a field.
Day one involved manual labour - moving rocks, building fences and digging a garden.
Muckpaloo Ipeelie lives in The Blue Mountains and is an Inuk person born in Iqaluit, Nunavut. She was one of five interns to take part in the program.
“One of the most memorable days was day one … I got here and thought we’d be cooking, but we were hauling rocks," she said. “I looked around at my peers and they were working just as hard as I was, and that was awesome. I knew this was going somewhere. I knew whatever was going to happen was going to be magical.”
She finished the day with a swim alongside fellow intern Brenda Beardy-Henry of the Niisaachewan Anishinaabe Nation.
Keeshig has been working with Elephant Thoughts since the Indigenous Life Festival in Collingwood. He helped put together the internship program, which received funding through the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
He said he decided to start the internship with some character building as he and the interns turned a patch of grass into a vegetable and herb garden.
“We’re not just cooking. I wanted to show them hard work can pay off,” said Keeshig. “In the end, we see what the fruits of our labour got us. That’s what I was taught.”
Keeshig apprenticed under top chefs at Cobble Beach, Langdon Hall, and with Michael Stadtländer in Singhampton.
He started cooking at 16 years old; he was attracted by the artistry of it.
“I was always artistic,” he said. “The plating, I always think of it as a canvas for what I do. That’s what drew me.”
He has opened his own business on the Riverstone Retreat property, serving tasting menus in the forest dining room and in the eco-nest, which has been converted to an eating area.
His style, he said, is “progressive Aboriginal cuisine.”
“There’s not too much background of recipes from Ojibway food,” said the member of Nawash Unceded First Nation in Cape Croker. “I base my ideas on what they were eating around this time and I use the gardens and foraging to come up with my recipes. That’s why I call it my progressive style. We’re inventing cuisine.”
For Keeshig, an important part of his dishes is growing ingredients in the garden or foraging for food in the forest.
“My whole philosophy within my professional cooking is trying to get back to the land and showcase these foods that are in the forest that we’ve gone and foraged or things we’ve grown in the garden that we built,” said Keeshig. “I like to pass on the knowledge of what I’ve been taught.”
He’s found five Indigenous women eager to receive those lessons.
Kove Sartor was one of them, even though her career plans are not headed down a culinary path, she’s applying the lessons for her education in Indigenous environmental science at Trent University.
Sartor’s family is from Nawash Unceded First Nation.
“Part of my education goal is that I want to be as well-rounded in as many subjects in the Indigenous field as possible,” said Sartor. “I’ve learned a lot about sustainability in food sourcing. A lot of the food industry is kind of awful. But eating stuff you can literally find in your front yard really adds to the sustainability of food.”
Beardy-Henry is in a culinary post-secondary program at Humber College. She’s got a plan to open her bakery in five years, and the lessons she’s learned during her internship at Riverstone will help her accomplish that goal.
“I wanted a connection to my heritage and I wanted a way to Indigenize food,” she said. “I want an Indigenous element in my work. This internship has helped me get connected and just go back to the roots and flourish with that knowledge.”
She’s also always wanted to have her garden, so growing one at Riverstone has given her the confidence to start her own.
For Ipeelie, the Indigenous culinary internship has increased her knowledge and skill in a career she already started. She owns and operates a food truck called the Retro Crepe Cafe, and she loves making food for her family.
She’s already experimenting with foraged food and freshly-grown herbs, and she is proud to have learned the secret to Chef Zach’s fresh pasta and tarts.
But for her, the best experience was not the food, it was the friends.
“This internship meant the opportunity to get to know some Indigenous peers,” she said.
She and her mother moved to Ottawa when Ipeelie was young, and so she didn’t grow up immersed in the Inuit culture she was born into.
“I don’t have a lot of friends and family who are Indigenous, so this meant getting back to my culture a bit,” she said. “You can only go so far on your own … if you want to go far, you go as a team.”
The internship finished on Aug. 13 with the crew preparing and serving a nine-course tasting menu to a small group of invitees.
You can learn more about Elephant Thoughts programs and Riverstone Retreat online here.
