Author to host Native foods talk

Patricia West-Barker | The New Mexican

8/19/2008 - 8/20/08

"70 years ago, in advocating for the power of traditional foods, (tribal member) Maria Chona correctly identified the need for the Tohono O'odham to consume traditional foods in order to be strong and healthy.

"Over the past two decades, several scientific studies have confirmed what Chona already knew: traditional Tohono O'odham foods — such as tepary beans, mesquite beans, acorns and cholla (cactus) buds — help regulate blood sugar and significantly reduce both the incidence and effects of diabetes. Over the course of many centuries, the Tohono O'odham metabolism had become especially well adapted to the foods of the Sonoran Desert. As the majority of Tohono O'odham moved away from traditional foods and adopted a more 'Western' diet, diabetes began to appear at an extremely high rate.

"Unlike the traditional foods that helped control blood sugar levels and increase insulin production and sensitivity, this new diet overwhelmed the O'odham metabolism, leading to high rates of obesity as well as diabetes. In a very real sense, the destruction of the traditional food system is literally killing thousands of Tohono O'odham."




The relationship between the diabetes epidemic afflicting the Tohono O'odham — their rate of adult onset, or Type 2, diabetes is the highest in the world — the southern Arizona tribe's shift from its historical desert-based diet to a more Western way of eating, and the results of a project focused on reintroducing those traditional foods — is just one part of a talk about Native foods that Santa Fe resident Lois Ellen Frank will give at the School of American Research on Sept. 9.

Frank — a cultural anthropologist, photographer, author of the award-winning cookbook, Food of the Southwest Indian Nations: Traditional and Contemporary Native American Recipes, and proprietor of Red Mesa Catering, which seeks to maintain the culinary techniques of a variety of Native communities while giving ancient ingredients a modern twist — will speak about three segments in the continuum of Native American foods: the pre-contact, first contact (with Europeans) and government-issue periods, with a focus on tribes' attempts to return to pre-contact ways of eating to both preserve culture and improve members' health.

"Corn, beans, squash and chile were the pre-contact cultivars," Frank says, "and on the wild side were all the wild game (elk, deer and bison), small rodents, rabbits, birds, domesticated turkeys, and all your wild greens (verdolagas, quelites, wild onions, celery and herbs, and cota (wild tea) that was the coffee-like beverage pre-contact."

When the Spanish came to the region, they brought foods that weren't here before, including lamb, pork, beef (as well as lard made from animal fats) and wheat. "Oven bread is a perfect example of a first-contact food," Frank says. "Any bread pre-contact would have been made from corn."

In Northern New Mexico, Frank says, two lineages — the Hispanic community and the Native community — co-evolved for more than 400 years, the Hispanic community taking on Native ingredients and the Native community taking on Spanish foodstuffs.

"Academically," she says, "it's debatable whether the New Mexican chile ristra was here pre-contact. We know that chiles were here; we just don't know which chiles. From archaeological remains we know that pequin and some of the smaller ones, called the bird chiles, which came north thousands of years ago with bird droppings, did exist ... but we don't know if what we now think of as New Mexican red chile was here pre-contact or if the Spanish brought it north from Mexico."

From a culinary standpoint, Frank says, what she calls the government-issue period of Native cuisine was the most destructive to members' health — but also brought out tribes' creativity.

"(The government) said, 'Here, we're going to give you white flour and lard and sugar — army rations — and you live off this. And for the Natives to be able to take beans and chiles and tomatoes and things that they had and add it to lard and flour — I think the Indian taco from a culinary standpoint is fairly creative. Delicious. It's just that when the relocated groups started to eat it on a daily basis, it was to their detriment."

The Navajo, she says, are calling traditional foods those they were eating before the Long Walk — a forced relocation in 1864 to the Bosque Redondo, a reservation in southeastern New Mexico — because for them it was the Long Walk, and the commodity foods issued them on the reservation, that changed their diets.

"The pueblos are fairly safe in the sense that they weren't relocated," Frank says, "but they were still issued commodities foods because their lives had changed and the mindset changed.

"Commodity foods are still issued everywhere to low-income families in both Hispanic and Native communities," Frank says.

The trend in Native cuisine now, Frank says, is to return to indigenous diets. Frybread, she says, "will become iconic with the resistance ... It used to be 'Frybread Power' and now there's a whole group of Native people who have Type 2 diabetes or are obese and they've got the red circle with the line through it saying 'No More Frybread'. They're leading a movement that is anti government issue and basically independent and sovereign, going back to the first two categories on the continuum for health reasons."

One of the biggest success stories in this movement, Frank says, is the Tohono O'odham in southern Arizona. A community-action project there has reintroduced traditional beans and cacti products — cholla buds, the saguaro fruits — and the tribe's diabetes rate has started to drop, Frank says. "They produce enough (pre-contact food) to feed their own community and to sell to others," Frank says. "I buy from them all the time."



The following recipes are excerpted from Food of the Southwest Indian Nations: Traditional and Contemporary Native American Recipes by Lois Ellen Frank (10 Speed Press, 2002):

Frank's cookbook includes a healthier version of the Indian taco. "This version of the Indian Taco includes ingredients that you will not see in the traditional version," Frank writes, "except for its frybread base." Her recipe calls for anasazi beans, which are related to the traditional pinto beans. If you can't find anasazis, which are usually available in the bulk bins at Santa Fe's natural foods markets, you can substitute pintos.

INDIAN TACOS: MODERN VERSION
(Serves 6)

1-1/2 cups dried anasazi beans
6 green New Mexico or Anaheim chiles
1 large red bell pepper
6 pieces Indian frybread (recipe follows)
1-1/2 cups mâche or arugula, washed and stemmed
1 large ripe red tomato, sliced
2 ripe avocados, halved and sliced
1 red onion, thinly sliced
1 bunch red radishes, sliced
18 golden yellow plum tomatoes, halved

To prepare the anasazi beans, soak them overnight in water to cover. The next day, drain the beans and place them in a saucepan with fresh water to cover. Bring to a boil, decrease the heat, and let the beans simmer until the skins break and the beans are soft, about 3 hours. It may be necessary to add water as the beans cook to prevent them from burning and sticking. After the beans are cooked, remove from the heat and set aside. You should have about 3 cups of cooked beans.

While the beans are cooking, roast, seed and devein the chiles and the red bell pepper. Leave the green chiles whole; slice the red bell pepper lengthwise into small strips.

Make the frybread according to the recipe and set aside.

Reheat beans so they are warm and begin building your tacos. Place 1/2 cup cooked beans on each piece of frybread. For each taco, add 1/4 cup mâche or arugula, followed by a red tomato slice; add 4 slices avocado and 1 slice red onion separated into rings; follow with radish slices and 6 golden yellow plum tomato halves; and top with 1 roasted green chile and 2 slices roasted red bell pepper.

You can vary the toppings and the order in which the taco is built. Serve immediately.

INDIAN FRYBREAD
(Makes 16 breads)

4 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups warm water
Vegetable oil or shortening, melted, for frying

Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Gradually stir in the water until the dough becomes soft and pliable without sticking to the bowl.

Knead dough on a lightly floured surface or in the bowl for 5 minutes, folding outer edges of dough toward center.

Return the dough to the bowl, cover with a clean towel and let rest for 30 minutes to allow it to rise.

Shape the dough into egg-sized balls and roll out to a thickness of 1/2 inch (or thinner, for crispier bread) on a lightly floured board. It is traditional to use your hands, but a rolling pin can be used as well. Try it with your hands and then, if you are having difficulty, roll the dough out.

Place a piece of dough between your hands and pat it from hand to hand as you would a tortilla or pizza dough until it has stretched to 8 to 12 inches in diameter. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

With your finger, poke a small hole in the center of each piece to prevent bursting during frying.

Pour about 1-1/2 inches of oil into a large frying pan or saucepan (the saucepan's greater depth will prevent oil from splattering) and heat over medium heat until oil is hot but not smoking.

Carefully place a piece of dough in hot oil, slipping it in gently to avoid splattering. Cook until dough turns golden brown and puffs. Turn over with two forks and cook until both sides are golden brown.

Remove and drain on paper towels until excess oil is absorbed. Repeat with each piece of dough. Keep warm between two clean kitchen towels in oven set on low. Serve immediately.



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