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'How many of you have made bannock before?"

Andrew George is leading a batch of new recruits through their first cooking demonstration in the Kla-how-eya culinary arts program in Surrey, B.C.

Three of the 10 students huddled around the kitchen counter raise their hands.

"What kind?" the chef-instructor asks.

"Baked." "Fried." "Around a campfire on a stick."

"There are probably a million ways to make it," the chef acknowledges.He explains that this particular recipe for the traditional flat bread has been modified for modern diets by adding whole-wheat flour and eliminating lard.

"Why did our ancestors eat lard?" he quizzes the class. "Because it was easily transportable. Imagine bringing a bucket of oil on the trap line? The bannock was hard as a rock - there were no leavening agents back then - but it sustained them in the bush. ...

"You don't need that any more," adds Mr. George, who will later teach them how to adapt this basic recipe for smoked duck canapés with juniper-berry crème fraîche on toasted bannock baguette. "You get all the lard you need from McDonald's."

With aboriginal foods about to be catapulted into the spotlight during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, these students are learning lessons that will help preserve their culture and may also nourish what some see as the next big thing on the local culinary scene - aboriginal fusion cuisine.

At the Four Seasons Resort Whistler, where crispy deep-fried oolichan with chipotle aioli and herring roe kelp splashed with warm champagne-citrus vinaigrette regularly adorn the dining-room menu, executive chef Scott Dolbee is putting a creative spin on simple, seemingly rustic local foods.

"I'm not reinventing anything," he says. "I'm just trying to make oddities like muskox and wild boar a little more fun and interesting so that people who might not be so adventurous are willing to try it."

When Mr. Dolbee was tasked with developing the café and catering menus for Whistler's stunning new Squamish Lil'Wat Cultural Centre, he turned to Mr. George - a former member of the Native Haute Cuisine Team that competed (and won seven gold medals) at the 1992 International Culinary Olympics - to help fine-tune the dishes and ensure authenticity.

Beyond Whistler, another modern approach to Canada's oldest cuisine will soon be available at the student-run Wild Salmon Café, which opens next month at Vancouver Community College.

The casual restaurant is part of the school's new aboriginal culinary arts program. The 12-month certificate chef's course launched last September, partly at the behest of the Four Host First Nations Society (FHFN), which will need a small army of food-service professionals to operate the reception hall at the 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion during the Olympic Games.

The VCC program, which provides full training in classic Western cooking techniques in addition to specialized classes in hot smoking, pit cooking and traditional methods of hunting, gathering and preserving, already has a waiting list for its fall intake.

"There's this whole spectrum of Asian fusion ...," says Jonathan Rouse, dean of VCC's school of hospitality. "Aboriginal culinary traditions can definitely be built into many different menu areas and be part of that trend. I think it has great potential."

FHFN chief executive officer Tewanee Joseph agrees. "In native legends, we always talk about transformation - humans to rocks or different animals. The Olympics are an opportunity for transformation."

The Australian experience may provide a preview of sorts.

"The 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney really was the catalyst of change," says Australian aboriginal celebrity chef Mark Olive, host of the popular television series The Outback Café.

In 1996, Mr. Olive opened a restaurant in Sydney that featured emu, kangaroo, lemon myrtle, wattleseed and other local indigenous ingredients. It closed after 18 months.

"It was a bit ahead of its time ...," he says by phone.

"It was only when the Games came - after that spectacular opening ceremony - that people began embracing the viable indigenous culture that we have in this country," says Mr. Olive, who recently entered a partnership with the country's largest catering company.

Back in the Great White North, Mr. George is eagerly awaiting the world's arrival next February.

"When those tourists get off the plane, they'll want Canadian cuisine. What is it?"

That's a tough question for most chefs, who will argue that there are too many regions in this country to make any group of products, flavours or styles of cooking distinctive, no matter how ancient the traditions.

But for Mr. George - a member of the Wet'suwet'en Nation who grew up in Smithers, B.C., roasting moose meat over open fires, spent Expo 86 slinging bannock and barbecue salmon at the first nations food pavilion and has travelled to remote lodges across Canada teaching aboriginal youth how to cook - the 2010 Olympic Games is the culmination of a culinary career come full circle.

"When I heard the Olympics were coming to Vancouver, I said, 'What a perfect opportunity to give back what was once given to me.' "

The next challenge is how to advance aboriginal cuisine and make it more than just a totem-pole-like tourist curiosity.

Training is an essential part of the equation. The Kla-how-eya culinary program, a 16-week course that provides low-income first nations clients with the basic training for an entry-level position in food services, has become a feeder system of sorts for the professional chefs' training at VCC.

Mr. George says the pre-college template they've created is now being adopted by community groups in Prince George, Victoria, Adams Lake and Bellingham, Wash.

What may be tougher, according to Ben Genaille, VCC chef-instructor, is getting the cuisine more consistent exposure. "We need more aboriginal restaurants and catering companies to bring it into the mainstream," says Mr. Genaille, who is now trying to find corporate sponsorship a Native Haute Cuisine Team, which hopes to compete at the 2012 Culinary Olympics.

There are only a handful of full-service aboriginal restaurants in Canada. With the exception of Ottawa's Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro and the Chief Chiniki Restaurant in Morley, Alta., they are all seasonal and geared to tourists.

Albert Kirby, the Four Seasons chef in Whistler who oversees operations at the Squamish Lil'Wat Cultural Centre, says that they initially had a tough time breaking out of the tourist trap and enticing local customers.

They decided to go on a charm offensive: "We took bags of the savoury and sweet-infused flat bread that our staff created and distributed them around to the police station, the hotel concierges and the medical clinic."

It didn't take long for word to spread about the delectable "Timbits of Whistler," Mr. Kirby says.

"A lot of people are now coming in and sitting down for a smoked salmon bannock panini and a cup of coffee."

On the Web

Get a recipe for sage bannock at globeandmail.com/life

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