Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes from the Upper Midwest

Local foods have garnered much attention in recent years, but the concept is hardly new: indigenous peoples have always made the most of nature's gifts. Their menus were truly the "original local," celebrated here in 135 home-tested recipes paired with stories from tribal activists, food researchers, families, and chefs.

A chapter devoted to wild rice makes clear the crucial role manoomin plays in Native cultures. Similar attention is lavished on the tallest of the Three Sisters: mandamin, or corn. The bounty of the region's lakes and streams—walleye, whitefish, and more—inspire flavorful combinations and fierce protection of resources. Health concerns have encouraged Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota cooks to return to, and revise, recipes for bison, venison, and wild game. Sections on vegetables and beans, herbs and tea, and maple and berries offer insight from a broad representation of regional tribes, including Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Mandan gardeners and harvesters.

The innovative recipes collected here—from Maple Baked Cranberry Beans to Three Sisters Salsa, from Manoomin Lasagna to Black and Blue Bison Stew—will inspire home cooks not only to make better use of the foods all around them but also to honor the storied heritage they represent.

Readers will find many unique and exciting dishes, yet also many contradictions, in Erdrich’s book of indigenous foods. The Cowboy Kicker Beans contains Famous Dave’s barbecue sauce, and the Decolonized Green Bean Casserole is made with potato flakes. A squash-pie recipe calls for evaporated milk. Many other recipes contain allspice, paprika, turmeric, white flour, granulated sugar, butter, sour cream, mozzarella cheese, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pad thai noodles, and saltine crackers. Even so, amid stories, poetry, and folktales, Erdrich introduces cooking that reveres the use of rice, corn, vegetables, meats, fish, herbs, berries, and plants used for tea, and she informs readers of hard-fought tribal efforts to preserve Native American food sources and other natural resources. She also promotes an appreciation for less common ingredients, such as sunchokes, fern fiddleheads, clover, and juniper berries. Those seeking to learn about indigenous food-preparation methods may be disappointed, and some narrative passages are a bit overwrought and confusing. Even so, these recipes possess a special flair, taking their inspiration from Native American culture. --Susan DeGrane