Family Ingredients

So did you grow up around livestock and farming?

No, and, you know, some of the best farmers can be those people who didn't grow up with it.

Right.

Ed Kenney: Returning home can reveal memories from your past that you have lost but never truly forgot.

Every dish has a story.

Food brings people together and has the power to conjure up cherished memories.

Jack Johnson: Oh, you're such a pretty thing I'll take you, and I'll make you all mine Ed: I was born and raised in the Hawaiian Islands, one of the most diverse communities in the world.

Johnson: We could watch it from the clouds We can't stop it anyhow, it's not ours Ed: In this show, we'll meet a guest from Hawaii, learn about their favorite dish, trace it back to its origins, and have some fun along the way.

Johnson: Oh, you're such a pretty thing I'll take you, and I'll make you all mine [Music playing] Ed: I'm heading back to the island of Kaua'i.

One of the oldest Hawaiian islands, Kaua'i is inhabited by survivors.

It is the only island not conquered by Kamehameha the Great, and in more recent times, it has endured two major hurricanes.

Kaua'i's people are tough, resilient, and courageous, qualities found in our next guest.

Over the years, I've met Val Kaneshiro.

She's always extended the invitation for me to come to the farm, so finally I get to come out here.

She actually married into the Kaneshiro family.

So, did you grow up around livestock and farming?

No, and, you know, some of the best farmers can be those people who didn't grow up with it.

Right.

I've seen the way you've been interacting with these animals.

They're your family.

They're my children, yeah.

This farm's unlike pig farms I've been to.

They've worked into their herd heritage breeds such as Berkshire, Red Duroc, all these different breeds, so they have this kind of a pure, unique...

I say Kaneshiro bloodline.

There was a giant black Berkshire pig.

His name was Powerline, and it was the biggest creature I've ever seen.

I was, like, hiding behind, like, 3 other people.

Ha ha ha ha!

I've got this soft spot in my heart for farmers.

I don't know what it is.

I think maybe the millions of solitary hours that they spend, either with them tilling the soil or them with their livestock, allows them to get a world view that many of us don't have, and this definitely holds true with Val Kaneshiro.

So, were you born and raised over here on Kaua'i?

No.

I came from the mainland, northern Wisconsin.

My mother still lives there on the reservation where she was born.

I'm Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe.

Ojibwe.

Ok. Yeah.

My dad is from here.

My dad is from Kaua'i.

Ed: Native Americans arrived in Hawaii in the 1820s on whaling ships from the East Coast.

They jumped ship and remained in the Islands, forcing ship captains to hire Hawaiian men to replace these whalers.

In 1974, the first-ever Honolulu Intertribal Powwow was started.

A small but strong group, these Native Americans found their way to the Hawaiian Islands through military service, job opportunities, or marriage.

Many of them have immersed themselves into Hawaiian culture while maintaining their Native American roots.

Do you have any fond memories of growing up on the reservation?

I loved it there, yeah.

I loved the reservation.

It was hard times.

It was... Life was real hard back then.

Can I ask you, do you have any really fond food memories growing up on the reservation?

Besides the wild rice and the maple syrup, the first thing that, when I think about... one of my fondest memories is the wewaagaagin, those fern shoots that came up first thing in the spring.

You know, after a long, cold winter, to have that first green fresh food, that is the flavor that I'll never forget.

Ed: I picture the Midwest and Wisconsin and the Great Lakes part of the United States as having harsh, cold, long winters.

The wewaagaagin, which is available, found for two weeks, really signified the coming of spring.

So, she explained wewaagaagin is these little fiddlehead fern shoots that were sauteed with butter and salt pork or bacon.

You can't go wrong with butter and salt pork or bacon.

Ironically, we have fern here.

It goes by dozens of names-- pohole, hoio, warabi.

It's a perennial fern plant.

It's always growing.

And you just pluck off the tops.

Ed: Fiddleheads are a little curlicue, and it just seems like they're only about this big.

And do you forage them?

They're wild?

Yes.

And it was something that we could harvest ourselves.

And we'd bring them home, and Grandma would cook them up.

It was...

I'll never forget it.

They were wonderful.

Ed: We left the Kaneshiros', and we went to the Ueuntens' farm.

Gary and Glenna are farmers.

They have a traditional-style farm, but as you venture below the farm, down this gulch, it's very moist, almost a swampy environment, and it's the first time that I had seen warabi or pohole as far as the eye could see.

They're at least 8 feet tall, and Gary pointed out to me as we're walking through, he'd go, "Look."

Kind of straight.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

How did you even see those?

Makes me think about how many times I have walked by this plant...

He said, "Well, you want to start picking some?"

And I said, "Do we need a knife?"

"Nah.

Just crack them."

So we just cracked it off.

Val: A nice one in there.

Oh, yeah.

Whoa!

Ha ha ha ha!

Before you knew it, we had a bunch that was this fat, and we were ready to cook.

I was excited to learn how to make Hawaiian-style wewaagaagin.

It looks nothing like wewaagaagin, right?

Well, it's the "Jurassic Park" version.

I mean, I'm usually picturing something a little bit small, like this, that's more...more wound, and it grows up.

More tightly wound.

Right.

First thing I usually do-- the ends kind of get dried out a little bit.

Just a little bit.

Only about an inch is all we need to take off.

What I really love about this is...

I mean, if you... You see that?

Look at that.

That's slime that's in there.

It's like okra.

I love it!

I learned in Japan, they call it neba neba.

And the ferns always have these little kind of microscopic hairs on it, but we've already done a really good job at washing them off.

I think ours were hairier.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're gonna blanch that.

Usually when I blanch green vegetables, I put enough salt so it tastes like the ocean, right?

So, about 30 seconds, a minute maybe.

So, look at how green it gets.

Something about the salt and the chlorophyll really brings the green out, right?

Val: It's just so beautiful, and it's starting to smell good.

Yeah!

Should I just dump them out?

[Water pouring] Ooh, it smells like... almost like asparagus.

Always throw it in the ice water.

That stops the cooking, yeah?

I'm going to start chopping some pork.

How big do you like this?

One inch maybe?

One inch.

Salt pork belly, you put that with anything, and it's delicious.

We cooked it with bacon and butter and salt.

It was that buttery flavor that I remember.

So, are you looking for a little color on the pork or just to render it down a little bit?

Just to render it down a little.

It's actually better if it's still moist and not crispy.

So we're gonna go with a couple handfuls of this?

[Sizzling] Oh, look at that.

It's so beautiful.

So expertly done.

Mmm!

So delicious.

Still got that...little bit of that moisture, but it's not slimy.

I think the tips are less slimy.

They came out real good.

It is.

It's like asparagus, right?

It's delicious.

It came out really good.

I'm so proud of us.

[Laughter] Ed Kenney: We traveled east towards Lac Courte Oreilles in Wisconsin.

This is my first time to this part of the United States.

Just like back home, the Native Americans have a deep connection to the land, and many of our practices are built around our stewardship of the Earth.

Our first order of business is in Minneapolis to meet Tashia Hart.

She is a culinary ethnobotanist and part of an emerging food movement of young Native American chefs.

They're utilizing indigenous ingredients and food traditions to create a brilliant contemporary cuisine.

Tashia, hi.

Boozhoo!

Boozhoo.

Val: That first day with Tashia really opened my eyes to what you can do with traditional ingredients.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you for having me.

Ed: You've brought a bunch of stuff here.

We have none of this in Hawaii.

Tashia: So, this is spruce cones, and there's male and female.

And can you eat them just like this?

You can, and they taste different.

The females are more bitter, um, and the males are less bitter, a little more florally.

That's an opening for a joke, but...

It smells like Vitamin C. You know what I'm saying?

It's tastes like vitamins.

Does it?

Yeah, especially the tips.

That is so odd.

It's like chewable Vitamin C. Mmm!

What is this?

That's yarrow.

We call it ajidamo-jiibik in Ojibwemowin.

It's antibacterial, antiviral.

And culinarily as well?

Yes, but culinary as well.

You can try it.

It's kind of bitter.

It's really pretty.

Tannic, a little.

Oh, wow!

Just a little bit.

Too much, huh?

Mmm!

Did you actually forage all this stuff?

I did.

That is Labrador tea.

We call it swamp tea.

It grows in the swamps.

The smell of it is actually probably my favorite smell in the entire world when it's cooking.

Mmm.

And this is why we are here.

Can you eat these raw?

I do, but, um... Ok. Good.

I have kind of a bad habit of putting things in my mouth... Me, too.

that I'm not exactly sure what they are.

So, it tastes like a green bean, but it's got that same slimy stuff.

Fiddlehead ferns, morels, ramps, and asparagus.

Those are the 4 things that I think of in the spring.

We don't have those in Hawaii.

You can actually forage for this?

Yes.

Wow.

So, we're gonna make a puffed amaranth and crushed hazelnut-coated wild rice patty.

So we're gonna get our hands dirty.

Oh, well, it's ok. Ha ha ha!

So, this is actual wild rice, not paddy wild rice, and it comes from the White Earth Reservation.

So, there's whole wild rice in here, and then there's also wild rice flour.

This is puffed amaranth seed, toasted hazelnut.

So you're just gonna coat the cakes in the mixture.

Don't need an egg or anything.

It just sticks right to it.

Ok, here we go.

Let the sides brown.

So this is gonna give it a nice nutty flavor on the outside.

So we're gonna blanch some fiddleheads.

We're also gonna blanch the stinging nettles, and then we're gonna make, like, a pesto.

We're gonna add some sumac, some salt, some pumpkin seeds, and some sunflower oil.

And why is it called stinging nettle?

Because if you touch it, you're gonna get stung.

Really?

Yes, but people actually use it medicinally for, like, arthritis.

It helps.

So you can touch it.

You can touch it, yes.

You don't want to eat it.

Ok. Ha ha ha.

It's gonna...

It's gonna irritate the back of your throat and your mouth.

[Food processor whirring] So we've got this butternut mesquite sage puree that I made.

This is so much fun being here, just like, with all the foods that I love.

Now's the time.

We're all digging in.

I want to make sure we all get one.

Val: That wild rice cake that she made, it's the kind of thing you want to just slap your forehead and think, "Well, why didn't I think of that?"

Ed: There's so many different flavors and textures from these all-new flavors to me.

Mmm!

Lac Courte Oreilles is actually a French word that refers to short ears.

[Man speaking native language] Val: I've been gone for so long.

I don't know if I could transfer back anymore.

There comes a point where I've been in Hawaii longer than I was here.

And you just wonder... Where is my home, you know, where do I belong, after you've been away for so long.

[Music playing] Ed: Paul DeMain is the owner-operator of Trading Post.

Paul DeMain seems to have this in-depth knowledge of the products, the agriculture, those things that were grown, farmed, consumed in this area.

[Music playing] We were a couple weeks late for maple harvest, but Paul demonstrated the process on a birch tree.

The trees got personalities, just like cows and pigs and other animals.

You get to know them.

We have some trees that gush all the time.

We have other trees that just give up a little bit.

[Drill whirring] Ed: There it is.

Can I taste it?

Paul: Yeah.

It's gonna be about 1% sugar coming out of the tree.

So it's gonna take a hundred gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.

Yes.

Very mild.

Paul: When I pull this tap later on, this may still leak for another month before it closes up and coagulates.

Maple trees will close up a lot faster.

Ed: It was barely sweet at all.

Birch and maple are a cooked-down product.

The whole time he kept saying "syrup," the only thing I could think of was the 4 basic food groups-- candy, candy cane, candy corn, and syrup.

Ha ha ha.

Paul DeMain and his good friend, Melvin Gasper, took us off into the woods to go foraging for fiddlehead ferns, or wewaagaagin.

I could have just stayed out in these woods all day long.

This is tobacco that was grown here in our own gardens, and we'd like everyone to take a pinch and put it out there just as a gift of thanksgiving.

Melvin: So, they coincide with a lot of the different plants, like the mayflowers here and the trillium, the white trillium flowers growing back in here.

When they start coming up, that there is when the fiddleheads start coming up.

Val: Oh!

Ed: He was explaining to us, as we're walking through the woods, that you've just got to know what to look for, and I parallel it to taco eye in Hawaii, taco, also known as octopus.

You can be diving, and unless you have taco eye, you won't even know they're there, but then when you go with someone that has taco eye, they'll be pointing out octopus everywhere.

This is exactly what happened with the wewaagaagin.

Melvin says, "Oh, see?

It's right there."

And he's pointing at it, and I don't even know what I'm looking at.

I'm like, "Right where?"

And then he bends down and shows me a little sprout that's about this big.

Once he showed me that, I looked around, and I just started seeing it everywhere.

Paul: They say if you don't have that good relationship with your plants and animals, they will avoid you.

Val: The wewaagaagin was something that I remember gathering as a child around our home.

All of the other ferns that I've seen in other places were slightly different.

So, when we were there harvesting that day with Melvin, it finally was my fern, my wewaagaagin, the one that I remember harvesting.

[Music playing] It's so good to be back.

I'm so happy to be here.

We're so happy to have you home.

It's been a long time...

I know.

I know.

for you to come and visit.

[Music playing] Val: My mother, she grew up in a time when there was more prejudice.

I think it's gotten a little better.

She taught me to be proud to be Native American before it was cool.

I give her a lot of credit for that.

[Music playing] Ed Kenney: We went to the Courte Oreilles Community College.

Aniin!

Cousin, how are you doing?

Boozhoo.

Ed.

Ed, voice-over: The overwhelming generosity and welcoming spirit of the people of this tribe has been without bounds.

Every place we've gone, we've been treated like family.

[Music playing] The college has this huge farm.

It's actually been a farm for decades, but it has not been in use for many, many years.

It's about 90 acres of usable farmland, and they have integrated this into a sustainable agricultural program.

We got to go there and meet the farm manager, Sue, and her assistant or accomplice, Chris.

One of the earth-shattering moments I had is that she took me into her seed barn, and she has jars... jars of heirloom Native American seeds.

She has traded with... with people in New Mexico and people on the East Coast, all different varieties of flint corn, blue corn, all these different, um, beans and just native foods.

Looks like a little penguin.

[Laughter] So, why do we not see more agricultural?

There's a couple of factors.

One, the ecosystem didn't, like, really support it.

The second was, if you go down south, you'll see a lot more agriculture.

Just because we're on that border, we have such a small growing season.

Ojibwas, they were much more family-oriented.

People would be in smaller family groups and would be going for zhigaagawanzh, the wild onions, or wild wewaagaagins.

There's a couple other things that you can harvest right now that would be foodstuffs, and then here in a month or so, everybody would start going to berry-picking grounds, because those are-- Hunters.

Hunters and gatherers.

Yep.

Ed: Because this farm hasn't been cultivated for years, the soil is dead.

So, what their main focus is at this point is rebuilding the soil with compost and chicken manure and different sorts of amendments, keeping it 100% organic.

[Music playing] It was such a privilege to be able to cook all afternoon with this woman named Thelma.

As a chef, I have always seen in the spring every food publication, every food blog, always talks about the fiddlehead ferns that are available, and they're always this short, little snail-shaped curlicue, completely different than what we have at home.

When we came up here, the wewaagaagin is very much similar to what we have in Hawaii.

When I had an opportunity to eat them, they vaguely resembled hoio in Hawaii.

It had a little bit of that neba neba slime to it that I love.

Tasted more evergreen or like forest floor.

So now I understand why Valerie, when she ate the hoio in Hawaii, it reminded her of what she had on the reservation growing up.

[Music playing] It was time to gather around and have a feast.

One of the big traditions is that only the men set the table.

In this case, the table was a floor.

They had laid out blankets.

[Man speaking native language] Val: I think I asked this question of Chef Ed-- what is it about our childhood food memories and our childhood memories in general, why they seem so vibrant?

The foods just tasted better in the past.

Did they actually taste better, or are we romanticizing the past?

Ed: And then we were all hit with a huge surprise.

They called Valerie up and presented her a gift on behalf of the tribe.

[Drumming and chanting] And Valerie came up, not expecting anything like this.

[Drumming] Valerie was taken away from the reservation to Hawaii at a very young age.

Val: From the time I was 14 and 15, my parents had separated, and they were in a divorce situation.

And my father, he, um... he wanted to go home.

He wanted to go home to Hawaii.

[Drumming and chanting] So, knowing that the kids would not voluntarily go with him, he...he tricked us.

Ed: For her to be here and share her childhood and her life and her family and friends with all of us is something greater than anything that I can really put my finger on.

[Drumming and chanting] Val: It's always emotional here, because this is the kind of place, you know, when you really feel that sense of belonging somewhere, and they just are very special memories.

And those people become the very special people of your lives that you never forget.

Lac Courte Oreilles is where I'm from.

It's my heritage, it's my identity, it's who I am.

[Drumming and chanting] Ed: Home is a place of happiness, security, and love.

It is a place where you are shaped and formed, creating the true essence of who you are.

But what happens when you have to leave your home?

Sometimes the winds force you to sail out of the safe harbor and into a foreign land.

You will need to build a new life.

There will be similarities between the two places that will bring you comfort, but one will never truly replace the other.

In watching Valerie's journey, I realize that we all leave home one time or another.

It is the only way you will grow, but you will never lose your connection to the home that you're from.

The people, the place, the smell, and, yes, the food all make an imprint on you, and they become the foundation from where you begin your life's journey.

Ed: Next on "Family Ingredients"...

These are so spicy.

They turn it up, Ed?

Those are hot, man.

Isn't water "nuoc"?

Nuoc.

Nuoc?

You want some nuoc?

Yes, please!

Ha ha!

"Help?

Help?"

Nuoc!

Kenney, voice-over: Chefs are always looking for inspiration for their next dish, but sometimes that exciting new thing is hidden deep in old traditions.