About ten years ago I had the chance to spend a week in Iqaluit. There was a lot that struck me during my first and only visit to the North, but what I remember most vividly was the cost of a Subway sandwich: $12-$15 for a six inch sub when at that time in Ottawa the going rate was around $5. The outrageous price brought home the fact that the staples of my life – bread, lettuce, tomatoes, ham, mustard – were imported goods brought at great expense in one of the daily flights in from the south.
For a city girl on a fly-by night study tour, it was a quick lesson in why our daily caribou, hunted rather than sourced from a grocery store, would naturally replace our daily bread in a place where few (none, really) wheat fields grow.
This logic – that the fastest way to a culture’s heart is through its stomach – is behind A Taste of the Arctic, an annual fundraiser hosted by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. ITK is a charity dedicated to promoting the culture and identity of Canada’s 59,000 inuit. The $199 cost of a ticket goes towards funding ITK priorities like closing the gap in health outcomes between Inuit and other Canadians and protecting the environment and renewable resources of the North.
As the name suggests, A Taste of the Arctic brings many of the ingredients of the North to the kitchen of the National Arts Centre. Seal, Arctic char, caribou, duck, turbot, chokecherry and cloudberry all feature on the menu. However the dishes themselves were not much different than what you could find in any upper end restaurant around the city.
I got a chance to try some of the ‘elevated inuit country food’ at a tasting last week. Items like the tea smoked goose and chestnut sausage with chokecherry chutney or the caribou meatballs expertly brought out the strong flavours of the meat, neither of which tasted anything like chicken (OK, maybe the duck a little). The caribou in particular was a real treat; very moist and not like anything I’ve tried before, a flavour similar to beef but not strongly gamey. Unfortunately, many of the dishes were less successful in featuring the northern ingredient: the fingerling potato and arctic clam chowder was a decent soup that could have come from almost anywhere, while the sliver of Arctic char on a lettuce wrap did not do justice to a fish that, in my opinion, usually kicks salmon’s ass in the taste department.
It’s understandable that with such a hefty price tag, ITK and the NAC might not want to stray too far from people’s culinary comfort zones, especially for a fundraiser, but I wish that the big shots of Ottawa were a little more adventurous. Inuit country cooking features a variety of techniques, including raw, frozen, drying or aging meats and the use of seal fat. Using more of these cooking methods and staying truer to the range of ingredients found beyond the tree line would be a truer taste of the North, one that I actually think many Ottawans would line up to experience.
In any case, the people at the April 7 fundraiser are in for a night of fine food and music.
A Taste of the North is taking place on April 7 at the National Arts Centre. Tickets for the fundraiser are $200.
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