♪ [Brandy] I'm a journalist and I'm traveling across my home country, Canada.

On this journey, I'll be experiencing some of Canada's most fascinating destinations.

My next journey is in the province of British Columbia in western Canada.

♪ I've come to the province of British Columbia and I'm starting my trip here in the city of Surrey.

This place is famous for its cultural diversity and it's promoting its spice trail where visitors can come and try food from all around the world.

♪ (tabla and sitar) The city of Surrey is part of the Metro Vancouver area.

It lies between the Fraser River and the United States border.

Just over half a million people live in Surrey and the city is experiencing change at a rapid pace.

Surrey is one of the fastest growing municipalities in British Columbia and is the second largest city by population, next to Vancouver.

♪ (raga fusion) I've come to Surrey, British Columbia, and I'm with Chef Rajeev Arora.

He's a corporate chef at Dominion Bar and Kitchen, where they specialize in New Canadian cuisine.

Chef, what is New Canadian food?

New Canadian food is the fusion of different cultures put on the plate.

In a chef terminology, I would say taking the classic dishes and giving a nice Canadian twist to it.

[Brandy] Where are you from originally?

[Rajeev] Brandy, I was born in India and I relocated to Canada in 1997 and Surrey has been my home city.

[Brandy] For a long time?

[Rajeev] For a long time, I would say it's almost since '97.

So, I was there almost 22 years I've been in Surrey.

Wow.

So, you've lived in Surrey for over 20 years.

You're from India and now you're making this New Canadian food?

Right.

Tell me a bit about some of the recipes that are coming out?

My most favorite is, the one that I love the most is our Butter Chicken Poutine.

Butter Chicken Poutine.

Okay so, poutine comes from the province of Quebec?

Right.

Where did you come up with the idea of taking an Indian dish like butter chicken and putting it on top of this?

For me to make me happy when I was a small kid was French Fries and pop.

And when I came to Canada, when I saw poutine, it was French Fries with gravy and a cheese on top of it.

In fact, that was a match made in heaven.

[Brandy] Okay, they'd be happy to hear this in Quebec.

So, this is where the whole thought process started for me, and this is where the dish started getting in my mind to put together and how I'm going to do this.

Wonderful.

So, are you going to teach me how to make butter chicken?

Yes.

That's what I'm going to do now.

And before you make the butter chicken sauce, you're going to make a nice marination for chicken.

Okay.

And we have the ingredients here for that.

We have garlic, we have salt, we have Kashmiri chilli, which is the most important ingredient of the dish.

We have ginger, lemon juice, coriander powder, and we have oil and we have yogurt here and we have some chicken.

[Brandy] And what is this here?

[Rajeev] This is the marination that has been made by mixing all this together.

Wow.

Can I smell it?

Yes!

Here we go.

Hmm.

It smells really sweet.

It smells of my home.

Smells of your home?

Well, I can't wait to jump in and try this.

What's the first step?

The next one we do is now as we marinate this and now we make a sauce.

[Brandy] Okay, we're going to make the sauce.

[Rajeev] Yes.

Brandy, can I ask you a favor?

I can cut tomatoes.

Can you help me add those into the pot?

Wonderful.

Here we go...

So, one cup of water... [Rajeev] One cup of water.

...into all those tomatoes?

Yes.

And Brandy.

The next thing we're going to add is... we're going to add some garlic.

Yes.

We're going to add some ginger.

We can add some butter into it.

We add some salt.

We add a little bit of Kashmiri chili powder.

This is where the whole sense is.

This where the color of the butter chicken comes.

Really?

Yes, tomatoes do give it.

But Kashmiri chili is a chili that doesn't... too spicy, but it has a lot of flavor and color.

Cinnamon, love cinnamon.

A few cloves.

Cloves, big peppercorns.

Yes, peppercorns.

My twist, a green chili into it.

Does that make it really spicy?

It depends how spicy you want it.

If you want to omit that, you can omit that as well.

Okay.

[Brandy] Coriander here.

[Rajeev] And then we add a few cardamoms into it, so it has the seeds inside.

We let it cook, this for almost 15 to 20 minutes, and then once this gets reduced, to make the ease of our service, what I've done is I have taken a step 15 minutes ahead and I have reduced it here and we have a nice, reduced butter chicken sauce, the base for that.

And then what we have here is we have taken this sauce here and then we have puréed it and then we have warmed this into another pot.

So, this is our, almost close to finishing of a butter chicken sauce.

And now to finish this, we will add some more love into it.

I call it when I add some more butter inside.

Butter.

Everyone loves butter.

How much butter?

I would say you can put the whole thing in.

Wow!

okay!

And then now to enhance the flavor with a little bit of flavor of sugar.

Sugar!?

Yeah, go easy.

Sugar.

I put the whole thing in.

And what's this?

All we have is a Fenugreek here.

This is the real flavor of a butter chicken sauce.

[Brandy] And what is it?

[Rajeev] It's called Fenugreek.

This is a real good flavor.

You just have to, just try it.

Smell how good it smells.

Wow.

It has a great smell.

Huh!?

Never heard of it.

And these are available in all of local eastern stores you can find.

Okay.

Do we do anything with this?

With a little bit of cream into this now.

This is cream?

Yes.

This looks so good.

[Rajeev] Please stir them up.

Turn the heat up here.

Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a chicken.

I'm going to grill it.

And once it gets grilled it gets a nice little smokiness to it.

And that's what I'm going to add into this one and that's going to enhance the flavor as well.

So, it's like building the different layers of flavors into one dish.

And now what we are going to do, Brandy, is you're going to plate this.

Now let's add some cheese curds on that.

Just like that?

There you go.

Load it up.

That's good.

[Brandy] Load it up.

Okay.

[Rajeev] The second round of this now.

Wow!

How decadent!

Let's split that into two.

And now we're going to have a nice sauce on top of them.

You can evenly spread the sauces everywhere.

[Brandy] Okay?

So, finish off the sauce?

[Rajeev] Yes.

Sauce and the chicken.

[Brandy] Yummy!

How'm I doing?

Oh, you're doing fantastic.

Do I have a job?

Oh, you always have a job with me.

(laughing) Okay.

And we add some cheese curds.

Fabulous.

Cheese curds look so good.

Wow.

I don't think you'd need to eat for a month after this.

[Rajeev] And now we're going to add some nice cilantro on top of it.

[Brandy] Okay.

[Rajeev] And you can play with it.

You can do whatever you like.

I would suggest just putting them on top.

[Brandy] Are you actually eating this or is just to look at?

[RAjeev] It's edible!

[Brandy] Okay.

Rajeev] So, anything that we have on the plate here, right now, it's all edible.

It is... [Brandy] Beautiful.

Shall we... take a taste?

Wowsers.

This looks amazing.

It smells amazing.

What should I put on my fork?

I would just go and dig into it and get some nice cheese, some chicken, some fries.

This is a bit intimidating, but I'm ready.

Ready?

Here we go!

That's delicious.

Isn't it?

Mmmmm... [Rajeev] Wow.

That's really sweet.

Hmm.

It's not that rich!

It's almost like how we make our poutine with gravy and cheese curd.

Something similar.

I feel the butter chicken sauce works just like a gravy and just enhances the flavor of the whole dish.

[Brandy] It's so beautiful.

It just balances it out.

It's really good.

Thank you so much, Chef, for taking me behind the scenes and teaching me one of your really amazing, interesting, unique recipes.

Thank you, Brandy.

Thanks for giving an opportunity for me to share the recipe with you.

Thank you for coming into Dominion Bar and Kitchen in Surrey at the Civic Hotel.

I highly appreciate you giving me an opportunity to share my recipe from both the homes.

My home in Canada, that's my French Fries and my recipe from India, my butter chicken.

[Brandy] Oh, that's so sweet.

I love it.

And it's so tasty.

Thank you so much.

♪ ♪ (raga beat) While I'm here in Surrey, I am exploring The Spice Trail and I've decided to come to Kerala Kitchen and I'm with Sujithraj.

He owns the restaurant.

Where did the restaurant get its name?

The restaurant gets its name from southern part of India, a state - Kerala, where I was born.

So, I decided to bring the flavour to Canada in British Columbia to give customers an authentic feel of Kerala.

[Brandy] Beautiful.

And how would you describe that type of food?

[Sujithraj] It is authentic Kerala-style food.

It has lots of flavours in it, like coconut, spices all to bring.

And especially in Kerala it's like a coastal area, so lots of seafood.

So, I thought it's better to bring the seafood stuff here to explore.

And I love coconut, so this is going to be fun.

How come you decided to open a restaurant in Surrey?

Surrey, there are the lots of people from Kerala.

They are based on Surrey and in Fraser Valley area.

So, I thought it's better we put the restaurant here to bring up the name and people like the flavour of it.

Then we can explore all over B.C.. [Brandy] We're looking at these spices.

What are we going to cook today and what are the spices today?

[Sijithraj] We're going to cook a Fish Pollichath.

It's like a seafood-based because of in Kerala it's lots of seafood.

So, we decided to put a Fish Pollichath.

It's like a fish, cooked with spices and we wrapped in banana leaf and cooked with it.

So, you get the banana leaf flavour and the fish masala, everything together and we are using basic spices.

We have ginger, garlic, chopped curry leaf, we have onions, we have tomato, we have and our spice kerala spice mix and coconut oil and our basic sauce for the Pollichath.

Yummy.

Okay, let's jump right in.

I want to learn how to do this.

[Sijithraj] iYeah, yeah, for sure.

So, the first step is - Brandy is we are going to fry the fish, so we'll fry the fish.

It's kingfish, marinated with spices.

We kept it for, like, around 15 to 20 minutes.

[Brandy] What kind of spices?

[Sujithraj] It has turmeric, chili powder, salt, pepper, asafoetida.

So, these spices, we marinade them so the flavors gets inside the fish for like 15, 20 minutes.

It's a give and take.

So, then we fry both sides to 50% is then the rest of them will cook in the spices.

And what kind of oil is it?

This is vegetable oil.

Vegetable oil?

And what kind of fish?

King fish.

King fish?

It's more popular in Kerala with lots of people.

And why do you pick this fish?

It's tender.

It's not hard, it's not chewy, it's very tender and it's easy to digest.

[Brandy] And who taught you how to cook?

[Sljithraj] I went to culinary school in India and also here in Vancouver as well.

So that's how I learned, then experience.

All the chefs that I work there are great chefs, great cooks.

So, I learned a little bit here and then, then I improvised myself.

So, we'll just sear both sides.

[Brandy] Oooooh!

[Silithraj] Yeah.

So once the fish is done, 50% is we will put all the spices here, including the coconut oil.

That's the base for it.

We'll cook it, we'll bring to a boil.

We put the fish inside, reduce it down, check the seasoning, we wrap it in a banana leaf.

Oh!

And then we share that.

Yum, yum, yum.

Yum, yum.

(chuckles) So, our next step is to do the actual cooking.

So, we'll start with coconut oil.

Put it in?

Half of it.

Coconut oil!

That's good.

Yeah.

So, then we'll go with ginger, garlic and curry leaf.

Ginger, garlic and curry leaf all together?

All together, all together, there we go.

Wonderful.

So, then I'll just need a little bit sautéed.

It smells so good with the coconut oil.

Yeah.

I could just eat that!

(laugh together) So that next step is onions.

Red onions?

Red onions.

And you can.

The fifth step is tomato.

These are tomatoes, really small.

Now we use our special spice, which is for the Pollichath masala, so you can add that one.

So, we cook them this a little bit longer?

Yes.

Then we will add our basic sauce to it.

Can I do that now?

You can add it.

That's fine.

What's the basic sauce?

This is a tamarind and chili powder and like, your salt Kokum.

It's called 'Kokum'.

It's like a southern Indian tamarind.

We use it here.

Really?

So, we cook it.

And you made it?

Oh, yeah.

Everything we make scratch from here.

Yeah, yeah.

Ooh.

Looks so delicious.

Smells great!

Look at those colours.

Now we'll move to that area and we'll finish up the cooking.

Yeah, that's fast.

So, we'll add the fish to it.

So, the fish will get all the spices in it.

Yummy.

Yeah.

We just break it down at the centre so the fish cooks nicely.

[Brandy] Interesting.

So why do you poke holes in it?

To make sure the fish is cooked nicely and all the flavours will be in the middle as well, so that you will feel all the flavours there.

That's the reason.

Yeah, we just want to reduce it down.

It has to be a thick coating flavor to it.

It's not like a watery stuff, it's like a thick coating to it so that all the flavours comes in.

This step is done.

Now the final step is to wrap this fish in a banana leaf, and we're going to finish it on the flat top.

We're going to sear both sides to get the banana leaf flavour induced with the fish.

So that's our final step and hopefully you will love it.

[Brandy] Okay, I can't wait.

It's so exciting.

So different.

[Sujithraj] It is.

It is.

Well, Brandy, this is our final stuff.

All ready to go.

This is the food we cooked together.

I hope you will enjoy it and feel the flavour of Kerala.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Do I unwrap the present?

Please, please, please.

This is so fun.

I would love to go to a restaurant and get a present like this.

Ooh, it's really hot.

Yeah.

Oh, there we go.

Look at those colours.

Fantastic.

Okay.

What do you suggest we do here?

Oh, we'll just cut into half and we go from there.

Okay and I'll put some rice on our plates.

Yes, please.

So, what kind of rice do you serve?

This is basmati rice.

I love basmati rice.

[Sujithraj] Get the sauces in it.

[Brandy] I love that sauce.

Sujithraj] Yes.

[Brandy] I think your piece is smaller than mine, though.

[Sujithraj](laughing) I already had.

Okay, I'm going to try it.

Shall we jump in?

Yes, please!

Okay.

Wow.

Look at this.

It looks beautiful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm so excited.

The texture is wonderful.

Yes, you can feel all the flavors to it, right?

So, the spices, everything is there, coconut oil.

You can even feel the banana leaf flavor as well.

That's the main reason for it's called it's pollichath, it's like a banana leaf flavor and the fish gets the flavor to it so it's...

It's very moist fish, too.

It's not dry at all.

We try our best not to dry the fish.

If it is dry, then it's not as good as you will enjoy it because it has to be tender.

Then you'll feel all the flavors because otherwise it's like a rubber and that's why I mostly use king fish.

Well, I'm thrilled that I've decided to explore this Spice Trail here in Surrey.

Thank you so much.

Yeah!

It's... a pleasure meeting you and thank you so much for coming and exploring the flavor of Kerala in Kerala Kitchen.

The pleasure's mine because this is so unique for me and different.

And I'm, I'm thrilled.

Thanks for educating me.

My pleasure.

Thank you so much.

And my taste buds love it.

(laughing) Thank you, thank you.

♪ From Surrey, I drive northwest for around 37 kilometers or 22 miles to explore a famous green oasis at the northwestern edge of downtown Vancouver.

I've come to Stanley Park, which is in Vancouver, and I'm with Candace Campo.

She owns Talaysay Tours.

Candace is Indigenous and she takes people to this famous park to teach them about the nature and the history of this wonderful place.

Candace, tell me first, why do you take people to Stanley Park?

Well, for one, I take people to Stanley Park because it's so incredibly beautiful.

It has amazing accessible trails and the forest is beautiful and large.

There are many mature ancient trees in Stanley Park, but mostly Stanley Park is where the history of our people lies.

There are three tribes in Vancouver: Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh and we have all lived in Stanley Park for thousands of years.

Wonderful.

What is your Indigenous background?

My indigenous background is on my mother's side shíshálh.

I was born on the Sunshine Coast, Squamish, Líl?wat, Snuneymuxw and on my father's side, Blackfoot, Chippewa, Cree, Irish, English and Jewish.

It's amazing.

How do you keep track?

[Candace] Oh, we're taught at a young age.

Honestly, my mother drilled it into me so.

[Brandy] I love it.

Candace, tell me about this enormous tree trunk right beside us?

So, this is the Red Cedar tree.

For our people it's literally the tree of life.

We call it 'xwepiy'.

And it served so much for our society, our material, culture, shelter, clothing, transportation.

And even when the tree has lived its full physical life, it's still giving.

It's giving to nature.

You could see this Western Hemlock is functioning as a nurse tree, giving food and nutrients.

For our people we use the bark from the decaying cedar tree for ceremonial purposes.

We call it 'temlh' the sacred paint and we'll mix it with an oil and during ceremony, we apply it.

Wow.

This is fascinating.

I can't wait to see what else you can show me in the forest.

[Brandy] There's lots to see here in Stanley Park.

It's four hundred hectares of West Coast rainforest.

It is Vancouver's first and largest urban park and is very popular with locals and tourists.

[Candace] So, I want to show you one of my favorite trees.

We call this 'kwelay' and it is the Western Hemlock.

And although the Western Hemlock is a very common tree in our forest here, this tree has like 101 cultural uses for us.

First of all, the needles are highly medicinal and an excellent source of vitamin C so you can make tea out of them.

I recommend that you harvest shoots in the late spring and summer when the shoots come out.

You'll see these really nice, vibrant yellow needles and you'll know they're ready.

The needles are also used as a rub for food, so it helps enhance flavor when you're cooking.

Yum.

But what I like this tree for is what it accomplishes for us when the Pacific herring migrate back into our waters in February, March, what our people do is they selectively harvest some of those branches and they attach them to flotations.

Back in the day, you could use an animal bladder and fill it with air.

Today we use buoys because they're readily available, but when this branch is in the water what the Pacific herring will do is they have a nice healthy place to lay their eggs.

And of course, our people will harvest some of the branches because they'll be caked with nice, crunchy white eggs.

And it's considered a delicacy amongst our people for many reasons.

But we'll also leave many of those branches in the water because, of course, they function as a healthy environment for the Pacific herring to rejuvenate their populations.

[Brandy] Wow.

Sounds like a tasty treat.

And you're helping the fish.

Truly.

I would love to try it one day.

It's a win-win.

Yeah.

I'll come to your house in the spring.

Sounds great.

We'd love to have you.

Follow me please Brandy, I really wanted to show you something.

This here is what we call a 'canvas fungus'.

Our people call it Echo.

And our beliefs are that there's energy that exists in this world.

And it could be good energy, which exists most of the time.

And sometimes it could be the other energy, otherwise referred to as the negative energy.

And what our people, our ancestors would do is they would put the Echo, the canvas fungus at the doorway, and if there was any negative energy trying to come into the home, it would bounce off the Echo and go away.

Wow.

That's so interesting.

It is very odd-looking, so I can understand why the other force would just want to bounce off of it.

Well, on this side it's nice and white and this is very small.

They're usually much bigger.

But you can see that this one has just started growing.

How cool, how fun.

[Brandy] My journey inside Stanley Park would not be complete without coming to see the First Nations totem poles at Brockton Point.

They are said to be the most visited attraction in British Columbia and some even say in Canada.

The collection started in the 1920s and are from different Indigenous artists from various nations.

[Candace] So now that we're at the Totem Pole Park, what I wanted to show you is my all-time favorite artist.

It is Susan Point of the Musqueam Nation, one of our local Salish tribes here.

And in this panel, which she is emulating, is the celebration of family, but more specifically, the celebration of the union and the relationship between the child and the grandparent.

[Brandy] And I love how you can see the child is getting bigger and bigger in the shapes here as it gets older.

[Candace] That's right.

And then when you look over here, the same process in life is happening, you have the adult with the black hair.

And as their life spans, they have gray hair and white hair.

And the white hair represents the wisdom and the love and the respect we have for our elders and the role they play within our families.

It's wonderful when you describe what we're seeing because it means so much more when you're looking at the art.

That's right.

And our, our beliefs and our values are that when the grandparent and the grandchild have a strong relationship, strong family.

Wonderful.

Strong family, strong community.

Oh, great.

I love these totem poles.

[Candace] So here we have the Ellen Neel totem pole.

And it was carved in 1955.

When Ellen Neel carved this pole it was just near the end of the ban of the potlatch.

But what I find just so incredible is that when Ellen Neel learned how to carve, she was taught by her grandfather, the Master Carver, Charlie James and Charlie James, who was born in the 1860s throughout the majority of his career, it was illegal to carve totem poles.

So, the fact that he was able to teach his granddaughter and she became a renowned carver herself is really a celebration within itself.

[Brandy] Wow.

And why was there a ban on potlatches?

There was a ban on the potlatch in the 1880s, 1884.

And by 1920, they really started to enforce the ban because they realized that our culture and our society was so strong that we would not adhere to their governance model.

So, the Potlatch was banned.

It was illegal to practice our art and speak our language.

Residential schools were heavily enforced, and it was really to assimilate our Indigenous people into mainstream society and to become that much-needed workforce and labor force that was needed.

And how did this pole survive that story?

This pole was survived because the Kwakwaka?wakw people were very strong and passionate about their culture, and they were one of the tribes that practiced underground potlatching at great cost to their selves.

People were imprisoned if they were caught potlatching.

So, when I think of the people who hung on to our stories, our history, our art form, really, they're to be respected and, and to have gratitude for what they have did for us.

What a story of survival right here of a culture.

Truly.

Yes.

Wow.

Well, Candace, thank you so much for sharing all these stories with me and the history of the people of Stanley Park.

You're most welcome.

Thank you.

♪ ♪