October 2, 2004 Olson is trying to transform tribal foods into haute cuisine, cooking traditional ingredients but in the grand European manner. "For me to add European style into dishes is a must," Olson said. "I really believe in the future of aboriginal foods." For Olson, the future is in dishes such as thin-cut bison tenderloin rolled in lemon, orange and lime zest -- the basis for his carpaccio -- and seared caribou with ice wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, served on little wedges of baked bread, the basis for the bruschetta. Olson, a caterer in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, brought his skills to the country's embassy in Washington to help it celebrate the opening last week of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian. Canadian artifacts and art works are among the museum's displays. Other cooks also are experimenting with the new cuisine. The museum's cafe specializes in Indian-style food and faces the same challenges as Olson. That means keeping the menu true to its roots while still familiar enough to entice non-Indians. Even finding a name for the cuisine is a challenge. When people think of Indian food, it's curry that might first come to mind. Olson calls his dishes aboriginal; the museum refers to its menu as native. Identifying a style also is a quandary. Indians historically prepared what was available locally, so the potential variety of dishes ranges from roast moose to tamales. In addition, ingredients that were new to European settlers -- corn and potatoes, for instance -- have become part of the American culinary standard. People have to be reminded the foods are Indian, said Richard Hetzler, executive chef at the museum cafe. "People think of tamales as Mexican," Hetzler said. "They think of Latin American food when they are truly products that Indians used to make." Culinary tinkering But this does not make the meal a copy of the traditional Northwestern Indian diet any more than Tillicum Village's Indian dance pageant, complete with sound track, is a ritual. Small red new potatoes substitute for wild potatoes that the Indians would have eaten, Hewitt said. The dinner also includes rice, "which doesn't have anything to do with anything," but which especially pleases tourists from Asia, he said. Olson tackles the identity problem by working with ingredients familiar to Indians in Canada. The museum cafe's response is to divide its offerings, food court-style, into five geographic regions; for example, juniper cured salmon for the Northwest and bison burgers for the Plains. The chefs also look for themes, such as smoked meat. "The defining thing would be smoke flavor," Olson said. "Things had to be smoked to preserve things over the winter months, so everything was always smoke flavor." To bring Indian foods into the mainstream, changes typically have to be made in the recipes. For instance, Canadian Indian food is bland, using only a little salt and pepper, Olson said. He digs into the European spice cabinet for his flavorings. There is another consequence to the culinary tinkering that opens the cooking to the mainstream. The results may look strange to the people on whom the dishes are based. "There's a lot of comments, especially (from) people who come from the reservations, it's like you're copying the white people," Olson said. Nonetheless, he believes the techniques are worth copying. He still remembers a restaurant meal in 1972, when he was 10 years old, during a family visit to a small town in Manitoba, Canada, at the end of a 60-mile (100-kilometer) drive from his village. "That was the first time I had my cheeseburger," Olson said. "It was delicious." |
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