Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

SANIKILUAQ
When Steven Cooper departed the North, he never lost his taste for country food.

The first harvest, a large plastic bag of mussels and sea urchins, shows the bounty of the sea and the aptness of local hunters. - photos courtesy of Steven Cooper

Cooper, a long-time Northerner and now-Edmonton lawyer, along with his wife Twyla Campbell, go to some extreme lengths - a few thousand kilometres - even in the dead of winter to harvest Hudson Bay mussels.

"We're crazed that way for Northern food," he said. "We always have caribou and char in the freezer."

His friend and Sanikiluarmiut, Dora Emikotailak Fraser, put out a call in Sanikiluaq asking for anyone interested in harvesting uviluq (mussels), miqqulik (sea urchins) and ammumajuq (clams).

Pretty soon, two elders and two other locals happily accompanied Cooper out on the ice last month to find fare for the Edmonton couple's special dinner.

But why fetch mussels from thousands of kilometers away, not, say, any number of grocery stores down the street in the big city?

"There's nothing like eating the roe of a fresh sea urchin on sea ice," said Cooper, adding it's not just the delicious, fresh, pure food. There's a certain mystique, an uncanny intuition hunters have to find food under the ice.

"(The hunters) knew precisely where mussels were. We moved over 30 feet, there were clams. We moved over another 30 feet, sea cucumbers."

With muskox carpaccio and a sous-vide caribou roast, the Edmonton couple's dinner is no ordinary meal. Cooper and Campbell are part of the sustainable foodies group Slow Food Edmonton, and Dec. 1 was their seventh "Northern food" night. The dinner was a private affair - no tickets - the guest list was mostly friends.

The menu featured food prepared by two "powerhouse chefs," renowned former-prime ministerial chef Louis Charest, and Matt Binkley, who cooked for Albert II, Prince of Monaco in Iqaluit this year and who has cooked privately for Kevin O'Leary and Mario Lemieux (among others). Both stayed overnight in the couple's basement.

"What it has led to are some amazing connections," said Cooper, whose wife Twyla Campbell once yakked about yak tartare with Kate Middleton while he discussed an affinity for Arctic sea urchins and sea cucumbers with other royalty.

The couple has had the pleasure of dining with many of Canada's top chefs, but what's at the bottom of this pile of Northern food is the belief that renewable - and delicious - resources of the North are not or should not be restricted exclusively to the North.

Cooper says there's a long-held perception of the North as clean and unspoiled, referencing a once-upon-a-time proposal to commercially harvest sea urchins from Hudson Bay written in the 1990s. It's Northern food's rarity, purity and above all, tastiness, that makes so many top-rated chefs choose to amaze dinner guests with walrus, maqtak and miqqulik.

"They want to showcase that," he said.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.