Residents and visitors of Yellowknife will soon have an opportunity to expand their cooking knowledge with the NWT Culinary Festival.

Held across the July 24^th weekend, the Culinary Festival will hold a number of events designed to engage guests with the unique cooking possibilities that exist in the NWT. Some events will show the uses of northern ingredients, while others will be run by Indigenous chefs sharing their heritage.

One such chef is Stephanie Baryluk, who, along with Chef Jenni Lessard, will be sharing a special menu of Indigenous foods at the “From the Lake and Land: a celebration of modern Indigenous Cuisine” event.

Chef Baryluk shared some of her history and experience with cooking.

“I think being raised in a small Indigenous community kind of started off my culinary career without me even knowing! Food is just such a big part of our learning and our life. I went to culinary school in Vancouver, and kind of worked through the industry in all areas, and now I am running a company where all of these skills that I gained are getting put to use in such a big and positive way.”

Having originally grown up in Teetl’it Zheh (Fort McPherson), Treaty 11 Territory, Chef Baryluk has used her cooking skills to teach classes, and speak at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

As both of her parents were survivors of residential schools, being able to take part in her cultural roots through cooking is something that Chef Baryluk deeply cherishes.

“Being able to share Indigenous cuisine and being able to share the stories by using things like caribou, moose, muskox, wild fish, or different plants, when you’re serving the food, it’s more than just distributing the food, you’re giving the people you know the opportunity to learn about these ingredients and how Indigenous people prepared them.

“I guess a specialty dish of mine would be soups. Soup is something I grew up with. It seems like such a simple dish, but it can really bring people back to their childhood or back home.”

Chef Baryluk shared her excitement to be working with Chef Lessard for the Indigenous Cuisine event, where the two will be preparing a meal of muskox, moose, and sweet grass. She feels that coming together in this way will be a great opportunity for guests to learn more about the two chefs, and is excited to see how their dishes turn out.

“I think for Indigenous cuisine, it’s very underrepresented. It’s hard to find, it’s hard to source, so the fact that we are putting the food on the table is a very important step for me. It’s something I strive to do through my company. It goes back to sharing our language, our culture, and some amazing food.”

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More information on the upcoming events can be found on the Northwest Territories Culinary Festival website.