Simply bringing everyone to the table.
Jump to RecipeFor the first time ever, I’ll be hosting my entire family for the holidays this year. There are lots of little details I find myself preoccupied with – things that absolutely only matter only to me. What color napkins should we use? How many desserts shall I make? Do we have enough steak knives? And are we even eating anything that requires a steak knife…? Not to mention the recipes. THERE ARE SO MANY RECIPES TO CHOOSE FROM.
One afternoon, as I was perusing a pile of cookbooks, my entire NYTimes Cooking library, newspaper clippings, and my saved images on Instagram all at the same time, I came across a quote from Chef Sean Sherman – The Sioux Chef; a recommendation for how to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.
“My suggestion is to keep it simple — cook simple, eat simple. ” Sean said. “You don’t need to douse wild mushrooms in butter and cream, for example — you just need to cook them enough to let their taste shine through. Do your best to make your food taste more like where you are. When I’m cooking with things like walleye, cedar, and rose hips, for example, I can stand on the shore of any lake in Minnesota and see all those ingredients around me.”
To cook what’s right around me. To make it taste like my place at home. To keep it simple.
That sounds like JUST the thing I want to make.
I closed my computer, toddled to the fridge, and took a peek inside. I opened the pantry and looked there too. There were lots of ingredients just begging to have a flashlight of festivities shone on them. I had a paper bag of wild mushrooms from the farmer’s market, several pumpkins that wanted roasting (surprise!) a bag of special little white beans, and things started to click together. I felt I could see how all of the flavors could mingle together in something simple, yet special. But when I pulled a very special bag of wild rice from the depths of the cabinet, I knew I was VERY right.
The little bag of rice that had been hiding in the back of my pantry was a very special gift from a friend in Minnesota; a packet of hand-harvested wild rice, also called manoomin. Because it lacked any instructions on how to prepare it, I had to start doing some digging. Back to the internet, where I found that my little bag of exotic-looking rice was so much more.
“There is an Aadizookaan, one of our ancient sacred stories, that tells about how the Anishinaabeg, the Ojibwe people and those tribes related to them, came to the Great Lakes Region. That Aadizookaan says that our ancestors were told to travel east until they came to the place where “food grows on water.” When they found Manoomin, whose stalks of seeds grow up through and then ripen over the water, they knew they had found their new home. “
– Wendy Makoons Geniusz
Thousands of years ago, descendants of the Ojibwe, Anishinaabeg, or Chippewa people traveled from the East Coast of the United States to the Great Lakes region, a region of North America that encompasses parts of both the United States + Canada surrounding the five Great Lakes. They were stopped in their migratory tracks by wild rice, fulfilling the prophecy of growing on water. Manoomin, meaning the “good berry”, was seen as a special gift from the Creator and, when harvested and finished properly, became a healthy fixture in Ojibwe life. It was recorded in their legends, employed in medicines, used in ceremonies as an offering, and as a major food source. The harvest was a hinge of social interaction each summer as the people would move to their mamoomin camps on the banks of the lakes to invest their collective energy in harvesting food that would last the year.
The only tools needed for harvesting manoomin are those required to move the canoe through the plants and ricing sticks, shaped to protect the plants’ root systems, to thresh the kernels into the canoe. The specially designed, lightweight sticks were held in both hands so that they could lean over the edge of the canoe and knock the kernels off into the bottom of the boat. Every element of the harvest and the use of these precious grains was considered and designed to take effect with reciprocity for the land, as a means of honoring the sacred nature of the food, and the Creator that provided it. Even the drying, parching, hulling, and winnowing had a special ceremony. The wild rice was then stored for the year, or sold.
The rice continued to be a means of income for the Ojibwe people until the late 1800’s when a group of anthropology professors from the University of Minnesota studying the wild rice practices of the Anishinaabeg began dismissing their harvesting techniques as primitive and economically stifling. The professors collected germplasm from twenty-four wild rice beds in lakes used by Anishinaabeg people and used these plant materials to create and release nine strains of wild rice for cultivation. Unlike foraged wild rice, cultivated wild rice is bred to ripen simultaneously and to be harvested by a combine, instead of harvested by hand as manoomin was for the Anishinaabeg. These “new” wild strains allowed producers to grow hectares of wild rice, just like any other commodity crop with great efficiency and high yield. And, to charge a far lower price than the Ojibwe could for their hand-harvested and processed wild variety. Minnesota farmers quickly adopted growing this grain, destabilizing the Anishinaabeg economy that had been based on selling foraged wild rice to food companies. By the mid-1980s, the vast majority of wild rice harvested in the country was cultivated. This rice is called “paddy rice,” and it’s not at ALL to be confused with manoomin – genetically or nutritionally.
We’ve all likely enjoyed this “new” rice. It’s delicious as a pilaf and served as a side at fancy restaurants that aren’t quite certain what “fancy” means anymore. Chances are, if you run to the grocery store to make this recipe and to buy wild rice, the rice you’ll purchase will be this cultivated variety. My heart sank.
Closing my computer again, I was reminded of just how much ingredients MATTER. And for as much as I want you to make this humble, hearty, aromatic, and satisfying dish as a meatless offering on your celebratory table, or as a cozy meal for a crowd later this winter, there is a good reason to do it right.
And it was a reminder that even when we want things to be simple, they often aren’t.
Having an anthropologist rob your sacred crops, bastardize them and then out farm and sell you doesn’t really have a modern equivalent I don’t think. It’s not at all like having someone come into your home and tell you that you can no longer have coffee first thing in the morning, nor believe in your God and, BY THE WAY, you’ve been brewing it all wrong and praying all wrong all along. Inefficiently, to be precise. But this example paints a picture of how violating it must be to have your foodways, your rituals – big and small – taken from you and your people. Being told what to eat, how to live, what to believe…are basic rights that were taken from Native American peoples long ago. And the damage is irreversible.
There are lots of swirling ways for how we can all support Indigenous populations, and to make better on the crimes and greedy behavior of our ancestors. And the answer isn’t necessarily to run out and buy all of the manoomin from the Ojibwe (which you can do! I’ll tell you how in a moment!) And it isn’t necessarily to swear off buying wild rice at the grocery store for the rest of your days. Instead, acknowledging, appreciating, and understanding where our food has come from and respecting the traditional foodways and practices that brought it to our tables is a great start.
Regardless of whether we share spiritual beliefs with the Ojibwe, it was their wisdom, the journey, their farming practices and their honor for the land that showed those researchers just how to cultivate and harvest a crop like wild rice. So no matter how it ends up at your table, we have the Ojibwe to thank.
To be food sovereign is to participate in a food system in which you, the people, produce, distribute, and consume food as well as control the mechanism for how the food is produced and distributed. These systems emphasize local food economies, a lack of dependence on larger commercial systems, and sustainability. This is an opportunity that Native Americans lost when they were displaced and moved to the reservations, their foodways were stolen along with their lands. These traditions and ways literally nourished the tribes. Acknowledging this importance is the least that we can do as we gather around our tables to celebrate this season, that would be nothing without their wisdom.
And so, let’s make a lovely little casserole – whether it lands on your holiday table as a humble, simple, satisfying dish, or whether you make it ahead for a week’s worth of bike rides, hikes and quick lunches or dinners in this season of coziness.
To begin, I highly recommend ordering a bag of manoomin from the Native Harvest Ojibwe Products, part of the White Earth Land Recovery Project. When your wild rice arrives, rip open the bag and smell the natural fragrance of liveness that the grains (or, actually, cereals technically) provide. Then, cook them in broth until they’re fluffy and tender, but not “turned back.”
Then open up your fridge, and pull out the local vegetables you’ve got inside. I use fennel, leeks and spinach to make a vegetable base because that’s what I have on hand right now. Something tells me that for most of you, that’s what you’ll have too BUT, if not, sauté up what you’ve got.
In lieu of using cheese, the dish calls for a pumpkin-hummus type of creamy spread that acts like a bomb-ass glue to stick the casserole together. You can use Kuri squash, pumpkin, or butternut squash here, any kind of white bean you have on hand.
Lastly, you’re going to zhoosh it all up with some fresh herbs, garlic and a breadcrumb topping that is a must, making this meatless wonder a textural marvel too.
Even though I recommend using a very special kind of rice, you’ll notice that there aren’t any fancy pieces of equipment required. Don’t be intimidated by the seemingly long list of ingredients – they’re all things that are growing together right now, and with a little bit of prep you’ll have them ready to combine in your casserole pan in no time.
We’ve been eating this test casserole as a recovery bowl when we come home from chilly rides, and as a quick dinner when we’re more content to sit with the fire than to stand over the stove in the evenings. It’s a perfect dish to incorporate into your week for both purposes when you want to serve up something special but simply enjoy it too.
I went back to read more about the way that Chef Sean Sherman recommends we celebrate this holiday and his words are ringing for me as I make my preparations. Maybe they’ll ring for you too.
“We Americans love our comfort food, but there are better things to do on Thanksgiving than frying a turkey while you’re drinking beer all day. Especially in the middle of a global pandemic, we should be sharing healthy meals with the people we love.
There are so many parts of our Thanksgiving menu that have an Indigenous American background, like corn, squash, wild turkey, wild rice and cranberries. Begin by showcasing those ingredients, especially if they’re part of your community-based food system.
This is the year to rethink Thanksgiving. We can all acknowledge the true history of the land we’re on and honor the hardships endured by those who came before and allowed us to be where we are today.”
– Chef Sean Sherman
As a little reminder, all proceeds from November subscriptions to Recipe Club will be donated to NATIFS.org – an organization dedicated to establishing a new food system that reintegrates Native Foods and Indigenous-focused Education into tribal communities across North America through their Indigenous !Food Lab project. Thank you, deeply, for your support of my work, and of this cause.
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