This NAC chef is bringing Indigenous flavours — like ‘forest powder’ — to the menu (2024)

If chef Chris Commandant could have had his way, there would be moose meat on the current menu at 1 Elgin, the National Art Centre’s restaurant.

“I would have loved to have used traditional ingredients like that,” says Commandant, who is from the Wahta Mohawks First Nations community outside of Bala, Ont., in Muskoka, about 100 kilometres north of Barrie.

But the NAC’s resident chef for September and October says that traditionally hunted meats such as moose aren’t federally inspected and therefore aren’t allowed to be prepared and served at the NAC.

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Fortunately, Commandant has other ingredients dear to the hearts of Canada’s Indigenous people to feature, including bison, venison, pheasant, duck and pickerel. He’s even concocted what he calls a “forest powder,” which combines tamarack, bergamot, fireweed and cedar. When that powder hits a hot plate, the resulting smell takes Commandant back to the great outdoors of his youth.

“I’m tapping into Muskoka memories, the sights, the smells, the sounds,” he says.

“My dishes take some of the feelings and emotions and landscapes that live up here in my mind and put them on a plate and share them with everyone, to let people know that Indigenous food is more than just cranberries, salmon and wild rice.

“There’s a multitude of things that we can do, and our ingredients are important and have a voice and deserve a respectful seat at the culinary table in Canada,” says Commandant.

The 45-year-old, who is also the NAC’s sous chef, is the latest Indigenous chef to be featured as the NAC’s resident chef, as is customary each September, coinciding with the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30.

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Commandant helped develop dishes on 1 Elgin’s lunch and dinner menus that launched late last week, and he will discuss his life and food at a 4 p.m. gathering on Sept. 12 at the restaurant. Also, Commandant and his cooking will be fêted at special dinners on Sept. 19 and Oct. 3 at the NAC.

Kenton Leier, the NAC’s executive chef, says he was glad to showcase Commandant in the resident chef program, which promotes emerging culinary artists from across Canada.

“We realized we were lucky to have a great one right here on our team who is deserving of recognition,” says Leier.

“We are extremely proud of Chris and the menu we have created in 1 Elgin that represents his cuisine and story is inspiring.”

Commandant says his great-great-grandfather Napoleon Commandant was among the founders of Wahta in the early 1880s, when one in five people from Kanesatake, Que., moved there. Commandant says photos of his ancestors from more than a century ago are cherished family heirlooms.

Commandant himself was born in North Bay and he grew up in the region around Barrie. He also spent time living in the Wahta Mohawks First Nations community and he calls it home.

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“It’s always led me toward a love of nature and the outdoors, and a respect for the environment,” says Commandant. His philosophy about food — taking what you need to sustain yourself and leaving some for the next person at the table or the next generation — also flows from his roots, he says.

While he studied journalism at Centennial College, his working life has been spent in restaurant kitchens. He worked at Reggie’s Sandwich Factory in Barrie when he was a teenager, and, after college, he cooked at restaurants in Toronto until he was in his mid-20s.

Then he moved to Ottawa. “I was curious about the city and the opportunity to see something new and do something different. Also, the pace of Toronto will wear you down,” he says.

In Ottawa, Commandant worked at such restaurants as the Ritz on Clarence Street, Foundation, Beckta Dining & Wine and the Whalesbone on Elgin.

In the mid-2000s, Commandant finally went to culinary school, graduating from Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa in Sandy Hill. After being in the industry for so many years, the stint at Le Cordon Bleu amounted to “rounding off the rough edges,” Commandant says.

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Prior to joining the NAC four years ago, Commandant himself taught students in Algonquin College’s Indigenous cook pre-apprenticeship program.

Leier says Commandant continues to teach, more informally, as part of his job at the NAC. “I saw his potential as a leader in the kitchen and we brought him on as a sous chef where his teaching background fits in perfectly,” says Leier. His kitchen has many younger cooks who are still in school or recently graduated and the NAC is proud to develop young culinary talent, he says.

It helps, Leier says, that Commandant “is very personable and outgoing. He is great at making personal connections and is very willing to learn and get better as a leader.”

On 1 Elgin’s menu, one of Commandant’s prettiest dishes is an appetizer of beet-cured wild salmon crudo, with pickled wild mushrooms, caramelized shallot soubise, sweet potato dust and micro kohlrabi. His plate of “Ndn tacos” mounts confit turkey thighs, rather than moose meat, on sweet corn cakes and adds white bean and corn relish, “three sisters” succotash and potato “straw.”

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More filling dishes include a hunter’s stew of wild game sausage and venison with turnips, potatoes, mushrooms and white beans in a chicory and vegetable ash broth, as well as duck confit with confit sunchokes, wilted greens, squash, cranberry, maple gastrique, and a cooked-down berry compote that Commandant calls “wojape.”

A deluxe dessert is Commandant’s blueberry pavlova with cranberry custard, candied wild berries and sweet gale blueberry powder.

At the five-course dinner on Oct. 3, Commandant will show off sustainably sourced salmon from Gitanyow Fisheries in northwestern B.C. in multiple preparations, from cured to smoked to cedar-poached to roasted and birch- and maple-glazed. The courses will be paired with wines from Nk’Mip Cellars outside Osooyoos, B.C., the first Indigenous-owned winery in North America.

Commandant says he’s heartened that the NAC’s commitment to Canada’s Indigenous peoples is “more than a land acknowledgement.

“For true reconciliation to exist, there has to be action behind it,” he says. The NAC’s various departments are presenting Indigenous artists this fall, while workshops this month will teach how to make dreamcatchers, moccasins and beaded orange hearts.

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“Indigeneity is encouraged and invited with welcome and open arms” at the NAC, Commandant says.

Tionnhehkwen dinner
When and where: Sept. 19, 5:30 p.m., NAC Canada Room
What: three-course dinner by resident chef Chris Commandant and executive chef Kenton Leier
Tickets: $83 at nac-cna.ca/en/event/37079

Kaie:ri Niwekenhnheke: Four Seasons dinner
When and where: Oct. 3, 6 p.m., NAC Canada Room
What: five-course dinner by resident chef Chris Commandant and executive chef Kenton Leier, with wine pairings
Tickets: $179 at nac-cna.ca/en/event/37260

phum@postmedia.com

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