Welcome to Today's Special! With Thanksgiving just a few weeks away, this
month's focus is on Native American foods, which found a place in our culinary
history on the earliest holiday tables.
European foods are well-known in American cuisine, but more than half of the
foods we enjoy today are from our own shores, given to us by the North American
Indian. One of the most notable is the famous Indian triad of corn, squash, and
beans. These three sisters were planted and grown together -- the corn stalk
supported the snake-like bean vine sown on the same mound, and squash grew
between the rows of corn. Adapted and transformed throughout the years, they
shaped both our culture and cuisine.
Corn became corn bread, spoonbread, corn fritters, and hominy grits.
Succotash, a unique Native American dish made of a stewed mixture of corn and
lima beans, quickly became a favorite. Maple syrup, tapped from the maple trees
which heavily populated New England and New York state, was a popular Indian
sweetener often used with fruits, nuts, and squash. In fact, it was probably the
Narragansett and Penobsoot women, two Eastern tribes that lived along the
Atlantic coast, who taught New Englanders how to sweeten beans with maple syrup
and fat -- the forerunner of our Boston Baked Beans.
North American Indians often prepared wild turkey, a native American bird,
with corn, lima beans and tomatoes in a thick mixture which we now call
Brunswick stew. Other Native Americans paired turkey with wild rice. The
Winnebago and Chippewa Indian tribes of the lake country of northern Minnesota
considered this dark, chewy grain as precious as gold and used it in stuffings,
soups, and side dishes.
The recipes in Today's Special are from
Enduring Harvests ~ Native American Foods and Festivals For Every Season,
by E. Barrie Kavasch. When I first reviewed Enduring Harvests in September 1997,
I couldn't find enough superlatives to praise this book. E. Barrie Kavasch, a
recognized authority on Native American culture and cookery, shares with the
reader a culinary history of the Native American, an abstract in anthropology, a
vision of color and botanical landscapes, and the culture of a people who made
food preparation an art as well as a prayer. Enduring Harvests also presents a
colorful travelogue of regional Indian festivals, brought to the reader against
the backdrop of their dances, drums, and ceremonial fires. In a word, it is
fantastic!
E. Barrie Kavash holds many titles as a distinguished authority on Native
American plants, cuisines, and cultures. She is of partial Native American
descent (Creek, Cherokee, and Powhatan). Kavash is a free-lance author/artist,
ethnobotanist, food historian, and consultant. Enduring Harvests is published by
The Globe Pequot Press, 1995.
I'm pleased to be able to share some of the wonderful recipes from Enduring
Harvests for your holiday table (see Recipes from Marilyn;
right). The prose with each recipe will lure you to the
heart of each Native American festival, and I heartily recommend you include
some of these sweet and savory delights in your holiday menus. Be sure to share
the history and ceremony of each dish with your family as you sample these
delightful Native American foods.
Until next time, hold on to your patience and try to stay centered ~ It's
time to enjoy the holidays!