Relish

- We're gonna make kind of like a fried wild rice.

- I know few things about fried rice.

(both laughing) (upbeat music) Have you ever tasted something that transported you to another world?

Dude, that's so legit.

I'm Chef Yia Vang.

That's what I aim to do every time I cook.

This looks amazing.

As a Hmong refugee from Southeast Asia, I use food as a way to share my culture, my family, and our history.

(blender whirring) (knife whooshing) Join me (laughs) as we step into the kitchen with local chefs to relish the cuisines and culture of our neighbors.

Food is all around us, and there's as much here in your community as there is in your grocery store.

Many foods we eat have a rich history, but for Indigenous communities, that history was nearly erased through colonialism and forced assimilation.

Now, a growing movement is focused on revitalizing Indigenous flavors and ingredients, reclaiming history and identity along the way.

(upbeat percussive music) Leaders at the forefront of this movement are bridging the past with the present, using traditional knowledge and food in modern ways, and it all starts with the ingredients.

Let's dig in.

(cheerful music) Meet Linda Black Elk, ethnobotanist, forager, and food sovereignty activist.

She's on a mission to foster relationships between people, plants, and our planet.

- Hiya, I'm Linda.

- Linda, nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you.

Welcome to the East Phillips Community Garden.

- You know what?

I used to live three blocks away from this area.

I never knew this existed.

- Isn't that funny?

There are hidden community gardens all over the Twin Cities just waiting for us to discover them.

- Linda, you're an ethnobotanist, right?

- Yes.

- Those are two words I understand.

But put together, I've never heard of it before.

- I get that a lot.

So an ethnobotanist is someone who talks about the relationship between people and plants.

There's food and medicine all over in here, both wild and cultivated.

So I will introduce you and then I'll leave it up to you to develop a closer relationship with them in the future.

It'll totally change your perspective and the way you walk on the land.

(upbeat music) So this is lamb's quarters in English.

Chenopodium album is the scientific name.

And this is actually a really close relative of quinoa.

You can eat the leaves.

The leaves are really delicious.

Some people call them wild spinach.

- I see why.

- Mm-hmm.

Delicious flavor.

- It's abundant.

- It's a weed.

(laughs) That's what people call it, you know?

I don't necessarily love to use the term weed because it implies something that's not useful.

Lamb's quarter is extremely useful.

Some people call it goosefoot.

In the Dakota language, it's called (speaking Dakota language).

Got the name goosefoot because the leaf kind of looks like a goose's foot.

- You know, it's really funny.

The Hmong word for cilantro is "chicken feet."

- [Linda] Oh, chicken feet.

Yeah.

- Because if you think- - It looks like that.

Indigenous names all over the world are so descriptive for plants that are around them.

(upbeat electro-pop music) (Linda laughing) So let's stop and look at this plant here.

This is dock or Rumex crispus.

And this is an amazing plant.

These are the seed stalks from this year.

These seeds, you can grind these up to make amazing flour.

You can see it also still has some gorgeous greens.

Go ahead and taste that for me.

- This is like a fun game for you, huh?

"Go ahead and taste that for me."

(both laughing) Actually, you weren't supposed to eat that.

- I would tell you ahead of time.

(laughs) But yeah, this is really delicious.

Some people call it sorrel.

- Yeah!

It has a little citrus.

- They're really great for cleansing the liver.

They're great for the kidneys, to improve kidney health.

So it's a food and a medicine all rolled into one.

- I feel my kidney and liver feeling better already.

- You can feel it.

(both laugh) People cut it down or ignore it all the time.

Plant blindness is real.

(gentle music) This is bee balm in English.

It actually has a lot of English names.

- Bee balm.

You know what that sounds like to me?

K-Pop boy band name.

- (laughs) It would probably be great for that.

Give them a smell.

Some people actually also call this wild oregano.

Give it a little taste.

- Oh my gosh!

- Absolutely.

You can see why, right?

This plant is an incredible spice.

We use it a lot in all kinds of cooking.

So everything from soups and stews to even casserole and things like that.

It is also a powerful medicine.

Right now, you are getting antimicrobial medicine.

So if you had any viral illnesses coming on, right now, the medicine in this bee balm is counteracting that.

- I feel like I'm like, any kid, just cough on me.

I'm good to go.

(both laugh) - I don't know about that.

(gentle music) So check out these amazing garlic chives.

You can sprinkle these on all types of dishes.

Put them in as a garlic replacement.

They have a really strong garlic flavor.

(gentle music) - Linda, you know, there's these lessons I've learned from my mom and dad.

And one thing that they've taught us is that you have to know where you come from to know where you stand, to also know where you're going.

- That's absolutely true.

You know, my parents taught me that everything we need is right here around us on this land.

All the food, all the medicine, you know, the plants, the animals, the wildlife, and even the people.

We have everything we need right here.

Indigenous people all over the world, like your parents, like my parents, all value reciprocity, giving back to the land as much as we take.

We don't just leave no trace.

We actually have a positive impact on our Mother Earth.

- I've learned so much from you.

Things that I would think that are weeds and like, I just need to get rid of, what you're telling me is like, "No, no, no.

It's actually here to help you."

- As a forager, sometimes I get worried teaching people all about all of these amazing plants, because of course we're concerned that they're going to harvest too much.

But also, at the same time, like you said, when you start to know these plants as relatives, when you develop a relationship with them, you walk on the land differently.

You take care of what's taking care of you.

(uplifting music) - We've seen what grows on land.

Now we'll take to the water in search of an ingredient that's been at the heart of Indigenous cooking for centuries.

(birds calling) Hello!

- Well, welcome to Minisinaakwaang.

- Ready to harvest some manoomin?

- Show me the way.

- All right, let's go.

(upbeat music) - Meet expert ricers Veronica Skinaway and Michaa Aubid.

They often gather more than one ton of wild rice every year.

And they're making sure that this centuries old tradition is passed on to the next generation.

(gentle music) What is manoomin?

- Well, manoomin means today "wild rice."

The direct translation from Ojibwe, manoomin means "the good berry."

- [Yia] Manoomin, or wild rice, is a plant that grows from seed every year.

This aquatic plant thrives in shallow moving water with a muddy bottom, growing in lakes, rivers, or streams.

But we call it rice.

It's technically a grass.

The edible grain on top of the plant is full of nutrients, protein, and fiber.

- We're gonna offer asemaa.

That's our tobacco.

And the reason for that is because we give before we take.

The water spirit is the most powerful spirit on earth.

So we wanna honor that water spirit, and we wanna ask for a safe journey.

(gentle music) - About 10,000 years ago, here in Minnesota, the glaciers retreated.

Shortly after, our people, the Ojibwe Anishinaabe people, we migrated all around North America for thousands of years, ending up on the Atlantic Ocean.

Just before 1492, the Ojibwe people had a vision that we were supposed to travel back to the place where food grew on water.

And that was manoomin.

(upbeat music) We migrated and we made it to Lake Superior, the Great Lakes region, which is the heart of manoomin country here in North America.

- And you were saying you were partners.

What do you mean by that?

- Well, that's my ricing partner.

There's actually two people in the canoe.

- I'm the poler.

So I stand in the front of the canoe and I propel the boat by pushing my cedar pole and guiding us through the manoomin.

The other partner is the picker.

So she's got a pair of the picking sticks there, or knockers as they call 'em.

- You know, what he said was, "Hey, those look like those would be good knocking arms."

I was like, really?

(everyone laughs) I was just gonna say, that's how my grandparents met.

Ricing.

(everyone laughs) - Back in the day- - They did!

- There wasn't, you know, Hinge or any of that online dating stuff.

It was just harvesting.com.

Let's go.

(everyone laughs) - You become a great team in life and in the canoe.

- So it's beyond the canoe, right?

- Yeah.

(everyone laughs) - Some of the first meals that Ojibwe Anishinaabe children have is that early, first manoomin that's really green.

My earliest memory is sitting right on the landing, you know, watching all the other ricers come in and watching them come in and thinking about the day when I get to be that person.

- So let me explain how you do some knocking.

See how the manoomin kind of lays over the canoe just like that?

So what you do is you kind of gently, don't pull too hard to where you're gonna break the stalk.

If you break a rice stalk, it won't grow back.

- Things like with climate change, how does that affect you guys yearly with your harvest?

- Well, there's less water.

So like, this year we're in our greatest drought since 2007.

It just looks like the trend is, is that there's gonna be less water and more rain at certain times of the year.

Our harvest methods gotta adapt a little bit to meet that.

Maybe they're a little bit earlier.

Maybe we gotta work a little bit harder 'cause there's more mud and less water.

- It's like the Ojibwe Olympics.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

It's very, very tough.

But it's the labor of love.

Wanna do it like that.

And then you wanna do two taps like that, kinda like a heartbeat.

Boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom.

- Okay.

Is there, like, a certain amount that you're looking for when you're harvesting?

- Well, generally what we do from our community here is, every person in the household, you'd like to get 100 pounds of finished rice per person.

- Per?

Even if it's a baby?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- So you're like one with the water.

You're one with the rice.

- Oh, there's like, four of 'em fell out.. - That's, you're knocking- - That's a long way to go to 100 pounds.

- I'm proud of you.

Yes, I'm proud of you.

(Yia laughing) - Now I feel like a Jedi with two light sabers.

Let's do this.

(upbeat pop music) ♪ Someone said the other day ♪ I ain't too street no more ♪ Correct pal ♪ Quit the streets ♪ To make sure that my seed can grow ♪ - [Michaa] And you must be the first Hmong ricer.

- [Yia] Hmong people usually grow their own rice.

(everyone laughing) ♪ Hits Suzuki Ichiro ♪ Never left, still see me in the city ♪ - So we want early high water and flood, sun in May and stable water in June.

And eventually sometime in about June, the manoomin stands up.

And by August and now into September, grows ahead and then ready for us to harvest.

♪ Still object to flexing bread ♪ ♪ 'Cause jealousy it kills heroes ♪ - What are the thoughts that go through your mind knowing that this is what your ancestors did?

- Makes me feel real proud and also a great responsibility.

You know, we're just the next link, you know, as it continues to go on.

And we need to carry it on, to teach it to the next generation as well.

♪ I'm trying to climb the ladder ♪ ♪ I'm trying to climb the ladder ♪ ♪ Get all accounts fatter - You ready to finish your manoomin?

Ready to parch?

- Yes.

I am excited for the next step.

♪ I'm trying to climb the ladder ♪ ♪ I'm trying to climb the ladder ♪ ♪ Get all accounts fatter ♪ Improve investment data (gentle music) - That's why we have two chairs and then the parcher flips sides.

- I'd like that taste of that.

- [Michaa] How close?

Is it getting close?

- [David] No, there's still the leaves, yeah.

- So I'd like to introduce to you a very respected elder here in our community.

This is David Niib Aubid.

We call him Niib here in the community.

- This action here is called "gidasige."

And then so it means to, someone to parch, you know, to drive the moisture out of the wild rice, the manoomin.

(gentle music) - And it has those poles just so that he could like, hold himself up a little bit.

Makes a lot of sense.

I know.

(chuckles) - [David] Oh my goodness.

You did a good job.

Really good job.

- Yeah, dude.

- [David] So far there's only maybe one or two out of like 50 there that aren't quite done yet.

And now we're gonna take a look at the fanning here, "nooshkaachige."

Creates the wind itself that moves the chaff away from the kernels of the wild rice.

- [Yia] Dang.

It's like you've done this before.

- Would you like to try?

- Yeah.

Is that okay?

- Yeah!

- Now I'm getting nervous.

- Oh, you're doing great.

Perfect.

All right.

You ready to cook?

- Yeah, let's do this.

- Let's go!

(upbeat music) - We're soup people.

We make soup out of pretty much anything.

- Rice is life.

We eat it breakfast, lunch and dinner here.

- Yeah.

Same thing with us, yeah.

(upbeat music continuing) ♪ What is life when all language is lost ♪ - Dang, dude!

- Enjoy.

- (speaking Ojibwe) That means, "Let's eat."

- [Yia] Okay.

- Miigwech manoomin.

- Miigwech manoomin.

- It has this, like, natural, rich, nutty taste.

That's so good, dude.

So great to be on that water.

And look what they gave me.

Now I can't wait to see what my buddy Sean does with it.

(upbeat hip-hop music) ♪ Light it up and blow it up ♪ They never see me coming ♪ But they know I'm always rolling up ♪ Hey Chef, how are you?

- I'm good.

How are you?

- I'm good.

- Thanks for having me.

- Yeah, good to see you.

Come on in.

- Meet Chef Sean Sherman.

You might know him as the Sioux Chef.

Sean has made it his life's work to revitalize Native American cuisines.

He shares food and flavors steeped in history, often with a modern twist, all while educating people about its complex history.

Oh, and his famous restaurant and countless awards have landed him in the national spotlight more than once.

Sean, you're so amazing at creating meals that can go into your backyard and just harvest what's there.

Tell us what we're doing today.

- We're just gonna have some fun, you know.

So we got a bunch of ingredients and things to play with.

We have some lion's mane.

We have some aronia berries that was harvested this year.

We have some duck eggs.

We have some garlic chives that are dried out from my garden.

We're gonna make it kind of like a fried wild rice.

- Know few things about fried rice.

(both laughing) - In the US, we have 574 federally recognized tribes, a whole bunch that are only state recognized and a whole bunch more that aren't recognized at all.

For us, our understanding of decolonization is not pretending colonization didn't happen, but understanding the values that colonization brought.

Theft of land spaces, a lot of hoarding of wealth, a lot of stripping of natural resources with no recourse as to the damage it was doing to environment or communities.

The treatment of people of color, white supremacy becomes so prevalent during that time period too.

We also compare that to Indigenous values.

A lot more appreciation of land spaces.

You have a lot more understanding of the plant world around you, how plants can be utilized for basically everything.

For food, for medicine, for crafting, for clothing.

The plant world gives us so much stuff.

(upbeat music) I grew up on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

I'm enrolled with the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe, hence "the Sioux Chef."

(chuckles) - Where did you get your love of cooking?

- Well, I know I've always loved food.

Being latchkey, learning, trying to figure out how to cook for myself.

And a lot of times we didn't have that many ingredients.

I grew up with primarily commodity food program foods, canned beef, canned salmon, canned chicken, canned pork.

The question, you know, "Why aren't there native restaurants everywhere?"

is a direct result of the colonial history, I would look at the packs of like, "All right, what is this taco pack mix?"

You know?

And then I would just try to mimic that with whatever spices I could have 'cause we didn't have a lot of money, so we would be using very simple ingredients.

So I just started like, teaching myself how to mimic some of those flavors that I liked little by little.

And then when I started working in restaurants, you start learning.

(gentle guitar music) I'm gonna get some bison just browning.

So I was about 13 when I got my first restaurant job.

I didn't know that much.

I didn't go to school for cooking.

I just read a lot of books and I worked really hard.

I got better at cooking.

I got better at learning about different styles and different techniques, and just moved my way up into an executive chef position.

I'm just gonna let this brown up.

We'll just break some of these prickly ash pieces up a little bit.

We can smash this with a knife and just chop it up a little bit just to get sort of some seasoning.

Obviously it's pretty strong, you know, one little kernel will numb your tongue.

- I like the name prickly ash, though, you know?

Sean, when do you think you had your aha moment for Indigenous and Native food?

- I had been working kind of a very stressful chef job, just kind of hitting a burnout.

I left that job and I moved to Mexico and to the state of Nayarit, and community there that was always selling a lot of cool stuff.

They always had a lot of really beautiful bead work and crafts.

And I just kind of realized that they were just kinda like, my long-lost Indigenous cousins, basically.

You know, we are all Indigenous to this continent.

And I just saw the future, what I needed to learn.

(gentle music) I didn't know anything about Lakota food, you know?

I realized that I could name hundreds of European recipes easily off the top of my head.

What was Lakota, you know?

And what were my ancestors eating?

How were they harvesting?

What were they gathering?

I needed to understand what happened.

I needed to understand the historical reference to it all.

So within less than a single century, how did we lose so much?

And what happened to the relations to get us to this point where I grew up on a tribal community and knew very, very little about anything when it came to Indigenous foods?

Gonna pull this off a little bit.

- What are some Indigenous ingredients in this area that people might be familiar with and some that people aren't familiar with?

- Well, we had agriculture in this region, so we had lots of varietals of corns and beans and squash and pumpkins and things like that.

Sunflower seeds.

The prickly ash berries are harvested this year.

This came right out of my garden.

An immense amount of wild food around us.

So of course we have the wild rice, which is so unique.

Choke cherries and aronia berries and cranberries and highbush cranberries.

Duck eggs are local duck eggs.

And obviously we have sunflowers from this area with the sunflower oil.

Blueberries and strawberries and blackberries and all these things that are just around us.

And there's wild gingers and wild onions and wild garlics and wild tubers.

Like different forms of wild potatoes, like wapato or sunchokes or whatever.

Like there's so much food sources around us.

We're not trying to recreate the past in any of our foods.

We're not trying to cook like colonization didn't happen.

We're not trying to cook like it's 1491.

We're just trying to understand as much as we can from our ancestry, apply it to today, and create something modern.

All right.

So throw in a little bit of the prickly ash.

Kinda get that oil going and let's throw in some of the cut up wapato.

Get that frying.

(gentle music) (Sean chuckling) - I actually really like this.

It reminds me of a jicama.

- Yeah.

A little bit.

It's a little sweet.

Yeah, those wapatos just fry up so nicely.

And they're all over the place.

Like if you're like, taking a canoe down to St.

Croix or something, you just see 'em all over the place.

It's messy to get in there.

because you gotta get your waders on, get in the water a little bit, get in the mud, and it takes some time to get 'em nice and clean.

But Linda did a great job on these ones.

I'll throw in a little bit of the dried garlic chives.

And we already have a lot of cedar in the rice, so I'm not gonna add more.

- [Yia] Yep.

Very strong.

- Put that fry up a little bit.

All right, let's throw in some of this too, as that's cooking.

- [Yia] I love that with the mushrooms.

It just absorbs all that fat.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I'm just gonna put a little bit more fat in there too, just to make sure it's got enough to cook.

A pinch of salt.

(upbeat music) Check on this rice.

This is looking really good now.

Yeah, you can smell.

(upbeat music continues) (singing in foreign language) - Ooh.

I love duck eggs, by the way.

I feel that they're creamier.

- Yeah.

Pure maple.

A little bit of this bee balm.

- Okay.

Yeah, Linda showed us this.

It's just like, this wild oregano.

- We use it all the time.

Give a couple of flips and stirs.

This is pretty much it.

Obviously a fast dish, you know?

- [Yia] Oh yeah.

- That's good.

- That's so delicious.

- Yeah, that's good.

All right, well, let's plate this up.

Why don't we just rip off a piece of dock?

(upbeat hip-hop music) ♪ Let's go Just rip that in a couple of chunks.

- That's very delicious.

- Thanks.

- So like, what about Indigenous food that you make that you feel like people are surprised by?

- Well, I think it's just the flavors, you know, we would use the term, ironically, "foreign" a lot.

'Cause it's just like, it's the food literally from here.

- [Yia] (laughing) Yeah.

- Everything in this dish is from here, you know?

And like you can do whatever you want to if you have the pantry items.

We were just having fun with it.

- For you, what does it mean to be doing foods that is, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years old?

- Humans go back a long ways, you know?

And I think it's just looking at a different understanding of where we happen to be.

I think serving this kind of food where we are, it opens up a lot of questions for people.

And we're able to talk about things.

We're able to talk about history, right, that are very complex and sometimes brutal.

And I think it's really important that people are aware of where we are.

What kinds of foods did people utilize here to survive sustainably for countless generations?

And it should be a part of the food story.

And it's just important that we stop using a Eurocentric pinpoint as the epitome of everything.

Culinary, academia.

And that we're utilizing a lot of Indigenous perspective of people who have been in certain places for countless generations.

And what's their special food?

What is their soul food?

- And I feel so connected to you, man.

Like where you're like that big brother that gets to be that trailblazer.

You've laid out this, you know, path.

And I feel very honored and blessed to be able to kind of come behind you.

- There's a movement happening out there, you know?

And I feel that connectivity happening around the world with chefs all over the place.

And I'm excited we all get to do this together right now in this time period.

Gonna continue to grow and open up these doors for other people behind me.

- Well, thanks a lot for having us, brother.

- Awesome.

- Appreciate it.

- Thanks, chef.

(upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) ♪ From the east to the west to the north to the south ♪ ♪ Anishinaabe ogichidaa in the house ♪ ♪ Grand entry time ♪ And we 'bout to bring them out ♪ ♪ Indigenous power ♪ That's what it's all about (singing in Native American language) (gentle music) (logo chiming)