Tradition on the table: creating meals with a sense of history, place and gratitude led two chefs to an award-winning cookbook and a reawakening of their own heritage - Native Intelligence

Natural Health, March, 2004 by Thea Singer

A week before Thanksgiving, Native American chefs Lois Ellen Frank and Walter Whitewater prepared an elaborate dinner for nearly 100 people attending the American Indian Science and Engineering Society conference in Albuquerque, N.M. Their menu was based on the six major categories of foods traditionally eaten by American Indians of the Southwest: corn, chiles, vine-grown vegetables, wild fruits and greens, legumes, and game. The conference members enjoyed pinto-bean terrine in brown herb sauce with blue-cornmeal tortillas shaped like feathers; spicy corn soup garnished with redpepper puree; stuffed quail in squawberry sauce; lamb-stuffed green chiles; and, for dessert, a torte dripping with prickly pear syrup and peach honey.

While Frank and Whitewater ground, sauteed, blended and baked like any other gourmet caterer, they added another step. Storage bags were set aside to hold the byproducts of the process. Corncobs, which had been stripped of kernels and simmered in the soup's chickenstock base to provide an extra dose of flavor, were placed in one bag; the skins and seeds of chiles and prickly pears filled another. These would be returned to the earth to nourish the soil and give thanks for the bounty.

"With Native American food, nothing is wasted," says Frank, 43, who has a long-standing food photography business in Santa Fe, N.M. "Everything is looked at as an integral part of a whole."

Frank, who is part Kiowa as well as English and German Jewish, has spent more than 15 years visiting the pueblos and reservations in the Southwest to learn traditions and recipes for the indigenous foods of the region. Out of that education, largely imparted by the women elders ("the grandmas," she fondly calls them), have come two cookbooks and many feasts, ceremonial and otherwise.

Whitewater, 44, is a member of the Dine, or Navajo, Nation and grew up on a reservation in Pinon, Ariz. He has been Frank's culinary adviser since the early 1990s, when the two met while preparing a ceremonial feast on an Apache reservation in White River, Ariz. Whitewater researches authentic Native American recipes, and ensures that the decorations used in presentations and photo shoots are appropriate. "Certain things, like an eagle feather, are very sacred, and you wouldn't use them [as props to dress up food]," says Whitewater.

Recently, the two colleagues launched Red Mesa, a catering and wholesale company that plans to sell food products made by nearby tribal nations like the Akimel O'odham (Salt River People) and the Tohono O'odham (Desert People). Last May, Frank and Whitewater accepted the 2003 James Beard Foundation Award in the Americana category for Frank's lushly illustrated cookbook, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations. Whitewater and Sam Etheridge were culinary advisers on the book, which offers traditional recipes with a modern flair, such as the blue cornbread recipe on page 59.

a natural balance

If one word were to be used to describe the Native American approach to food, it would be balance. From the hunting or planting and harvesting to the cooking and eating, there is a commitment to maintaining a balance among the elements of the outer world, as well as a commitment to nutritional balance for the individual. This is achieved, Frank suggests, by forming relationships with the beings--whether plant or animal, cultivated or wild--that nourish us.

Such relationships beget responsibility. "What happens, especially commercially, is that things become very compartmentalized, and people don't realize that everything is part of something greater," Frank says. "That detaches you from taking responsibility for the entire entity, and it becomes easy to waste."

Consider the journey of a sheep raised by Whitewater's family. The animals graze openly. They are sheared once a year, and the wool is woven into rugs. The newborn lambs are brought into the house when it's cold and fed by hand. "You see these aunties holding these baby sheep, and they love them," says Frank.

Whitewater's grandmother, who is the matriarch, decides which sheep are butchered and when. But before the animal is killed, there are prayers of thanks and of explanation. "It's very sacred that we talk to them," says Whitewater.

Every part of the sheep is used: the blood for pudding; the large bones for stock; the meat for chops, ribs, and roasts; and the bone marrow, the fat and the cooked brains perhaps to grease the large flat stones required to make piki, a paper-thin cornbread of Hopi origin.

There are acknowledgements afterward as well, says Whitewater. "After a ceremony, the people give back to the fire a little piece [of food], to give back to the spirits and give thanks."

Native Americans believe that the land--and all that comes from it--has a spiritual significance. "We have to consider what's under the earth, what's on the earth, what's above the earth," Navajo elder Paul C. Begaye Tohlakai told Frank. "There are ruins and remains of [those who came before us].

"The people when they hunted would run herds of game through these lands and kill the animals; it has a history of being a ground where animals sacrificed themselves for the good of the people. The ancient culture that lived here had their ceremonies. They greeted the sun every morning. Now we recognize the power, the spirit that dwells on the land."