Spirit Plate

I've heard women can't touch the hooks.

Right?

That's correct.

Yeah.

A lot of people will say that these tools are tools for men, as the harvesters.

Women are the life givers, whereas the men are the ones that have to do the dirty work of taking a life.

So what is my job going to be in this whole eeling process today?

So today you're going to help us out by gathering up the eels that we hook out and placing them into the bag.

Yeah.

Secure the bag.

Secure the bag.

Okay.

I'm Chef Pyet DeSpain.

From winning Next Level Chef to cooking for A-listers, I've made my mark with Indigenous fusion cuisine.

I chased my dreams to LA but I hit roadblocks.

I spent a year couch surfing, searching for identity and direction.

But what grounded me was food.

The traditional Native American and Mexican recipes of my ancestors.

Now I'm on a mission across the Americas to reconnect with Indigenous foodways and bring their bold, beautiful flavors back to the table.

Today, I'm headed to the Native American reservation of the Yurok tribe, where the Klamath River cuts through northern California.

My guide is Bubba Riggins.

The go-to guy for traditional hunting and cooking techniques.

We'll be collecting eels for a big community cookout.

We are fortunate to live in a place that we don't have to go very far for our food.

There's all different kinds of life to sustain a people.

This is a really special place to me and all of our people from this river system.

You know, you have the entirety of the Klamath River and it meets the Pacific Ocean.

That physical energy, the spiritual energy.

The Klamath River is a river unchained: with four dams taken out just last year, primarily through the efforts of the Yurok people to free their river.

400 miles of habitat reopened.

Salmon and eel returning to feed the people.

And I think it's so amazing to think of all the generations that walked this same path to get here, so that where they could come eel and provide food for their community.

Is that the seal right there?

That's a sturgeon.

That's a huge fish right there.

Should we put that on the menu?

I'm good.

I don't know how long you were sitting out here.

All right, you ready fellas?

Bubba kind of has this, like, big brotherly vibe to him.

And he just, like, wants the utmost best for his community.

And you can really see that in all the work that he does.

I love seeing, like, the younger generation out here too.

A lot of our youth need to see figures like him in their communities, helping them to build positive masculinity.

Remember boys, when you're down here, you kind of want to stay moving an object in motion stays in motion.

I'm down here looking for, the movement, looking for the fins, the changing color, all different kind of signals that point me to an eel.

That's the power of the mouth of Klamath River.

All right.

I'd feel better if you kind of came on this way, so you didn't have your back so much to the ocean.

There's a lot of energy here, that, you know, is bigger than us, so.

Just be mindful right there.

Watch yourself.

Beautiful seals popping their heads up.

Look at that big sucker.

Hey.

So I asked him if the sea lions scare away the eel, and he said sometimes, but sometimes they scare them up onto the shore, so.

They have first dibs out there.

They're just surfing.

So I did see one of those seals get an eel and, like, slurped it up like a noodle.

Come on, ocean, give us some eel.

Oh!

(shouts and laughter) Okay, Emya!

Eww, I don't know if I'm ready for this.

That's Emya's first eel.

These eels aren't actually eels.

They're Pacific lampreys, a type of fish.

They've been here since before the dinosaurs.

They don't have any scales, or many noticeable fins.

And no jaws.

I got to do that?

Oh.

Just kidding.

You wanna wrap around your hand?

They swim up the Klamath River each spring to spawn, and their populations are really rebounding after the dams were removed.

Look at those tiny, sharp teeth.

They use those to latch on to other fish and feed like vampires.

And they're good eating.

Here we go.

Four hours later, and we've only caught one single eel.

Follow it up.

Was it one?

Just a few days ago, Bubba and his friends caught over 80 on the same beach.

Before the season is over, his smokehouse will be full of them.

And the way that they process these eels, they get to feast off of these eels all year round.

A seasonal protein is very important to the survival of a tribe.

Not just back then, but now.

I'm going to teach you all how to how to clean them up and get them ready for cooking.

You'll see that it's a little bit flexible.

A little bit.

Yeah.

Oh, they cut pretty easily.

But a good sharp knife definitely helps.

Okay.

And then right up to the mouth okay.

To the mouth.

So these are the intestines.

So you can see the cartilage in there with the spinal cord.

There's no bones.

Okay.

Which is why this is often the first meal for young children.

Oh they don't worry about choking on bones.

That's cool.

And then I'll have you make an incision on either side of that cartilage.

How many of these eel do you think that you've flattened like this?

A couple thousand.

I'm sure.

There's that mouth.

We are hoping to make a main dish with the eel we caught, but this one isn't enough.

We had a plan B just in case we didn't get enough eel.

Thank goodness we have Bubba.

He had all the things.

So he's like, oh, I've got like 20 pounds of, like, venison that I hunted and jarred.

I'll make a venison chili Colorado for the main.

And the eel will be an appetizer.

So basically at this point we need to find those ingredients.

So I know we have our main dish which is going to be the chili Colorado with venison meat.

Shout out Bubba.

So let's do some of this.

We're probably going to need a lot of that actually.

So it's good like as a rub kind of like celery salt situation Just the green onion for a sauce.

Pea shoots.

So I just did this thing recently where I grilled pea shoots.

They're real good little oil.

Little salt.

Yeah.

They'll put brandy on them and light them on fire.

Yeah that's really good.

Even like a little like squeeze of citrus on that would be nice.

So if we're portioning out for 75 people.

Yeah.

So that's about 40 pounds.

All organic, nothing sprayed.

I'll get the little one.

Thanks, you too!

We got the potatoes.

We're at Sue Meg State Park for the community gathering.

Until recently, it was named after a guy that literally massacred Native Americans.

Sue Meg is what the Yurok people called this area.

Bubba is going to show me the traditional homes here.

It's customary for ladies to go in backwards.

Oh, backwards?

Because in traditional time, ladies wore skirts.

And so, okay, you don't have to put everything out for the whole village.

Alright.

So I'll go in backwards.

These living houses were for the women and the children.

And so this is where they would sleep.

And then the men lived together in the sweat houses.

Now the doorway, like the small hole, is that keep the bears out?

is that why it's so small.

Yep.

It was in a place like this that generations of young Yurok heard the stories of their people.

Bubba told me a story he remembers about how the eel lost it's bones.

You know, the eels were coming in from the ocean into the river system as they do.

And so he was trying to earn some money on his way up in in his journeys.

And he was doing so by gambling.

The eel was gambling.

Eels gambling with the different, different beings.

And he kept losing and he's out of money.

And so he goes up to the sucker fish and says, hey, I need some money.

Sucker fish known as, hey, you have no money, how are we going to gamble?

So he took out his bones and laid them out.

And so, wouldn't you know it, Sucker fish ran him for 11 points right off the git.

And so.

Yeah.

What the unlucky eel, you know, unlucky.

Just losing his bones.

Losing his bones And so that's why the sucker fish has so many.

So many bones.

Wow.

And the eels have none.

Where we're at here at Sue Meg is where I see that village lifestyle in place.

You know, I see people coming together as community for the sense of a greater purpose.

Right?

All coming together.

with the same thing in mind.

Whether it's the brush dance, or the flower dance.

Or an event like today.

You know, people are coming together and putting their collective energies together into one mission and one goal.

To me, that is one of the most healing things possible.

In the Sue Meg Park kitchen, my first job is to finish up that chili Colorado using Bubba's venison.

So that deer meat when cooking overnight.

Slow cooking.

I was up till 2 a.m.. But as a chef, sometimes you just got to pull the all nighters and make sure things get done.

And with that simmering away, it's time to learn how to grill that eel.

When you flatten the eels and then cook them, or when you're smoking them too, A lot of times they'll, they'll curl up.

So when you make these score marks like that, it just allows a lot of that grease to come out.

Salt, pepper, garlic and onion.

A little bit.

Chili pepper.

And then just a touch of chili pepper.

Time for the indigenous fusion magic.

I'm making some salsa macha to add a little spice to the eel, that will hopefully blow Bubba away.

And that starts with using three different types of chilies.

One's arbol, a dried passilla chile, And the other one is guajillo.

As I always say, the smallest ones pack the biggest punch.

Yeah, I think it's it's really important to be teaching classes with ingredients that are accessible and things that they can find in their local grocery stores.

Like I sourced a lot of things from a grocery store that was five minutes away from where I was staying in McKinleyville.

So I have pepita seeds here, I have sesame seeds, and I have some sunflower seeds.

And Mexico, when you have salsa macha, they have peanut seeds that they usually like to throw in there.

But I try to stick with things that are more, like, indigenous to the Americas.

And there are a lot of southwest tribes that utilize chilies in their cooking.

And that's really what indigenous fusion cuisine is always about, it's just utilizing what's indigenous from that area.

And we're in the Americas.

So Mexican ingredients, if they're not influenced by the Spanish, they're indigenous to the Americas.

Oh, that smell is getting right in your face.

Smells so good.

We're going to drain off all this oil.

And then to finish this salsa macha, we'll add some vinegar.

And then we'll blend it just a bit, so it still has some of those nice crispy bits.

This will be great spooned over pretty much anything.

But especially this incredible barbecued eel.

Coming right behind you.

All right.

No, I mean, we're just serving this up to everybody.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Everybody that's here right now can grab a piece.

It's amazing.

Right?

We have this love for not just eating food, but Cooking food and creating and, like, putting our love into something that we get to feed someone and we get to see the reaction, and we can see that their smiles on their face or that like, Umm!

that's so good, you know?

Oh, wow.

That's a good combo.

Yeah.

That's it.

It's a very unique flavor.

You know, it's very rich, but also isn't like overly fishy.

Yum!

Thank you!

It was the one of his first foods.

But honestly, this is the first time he's taking this much interest in it.

Bubba, come eat.

Wanna try some?

There's just so much beauty here to to see.

And there's no wonder why the people here are so just warm and welcoming.

And you can just see like how much love they exude because of this environment that has like molded them into being those type of people.

The sauce that Chef Pyet made, it's really good.

Venison.

It's not like a normal like venison stew we usually have.

It has kind of a Mexican taste to it.

Definitely different elements in it, prepared differently than we typically do.

Delectable little meal here.

I ate it all.

As a member of the Potawatomi tribe, we have a tradition called the Spirit Plate, where we set aside a small portion of a very special meal, for prayer.

Oftentimes our traditions, they get lost over time.

And this is an effort to keep that going and to build community wherever we go.

So that spirit plate is a prayer of gratitude for what we have been able to recreate today.

There is a lot of things that had to take place in order for all of those things to end up on our plate, A life was taken.

All of the ancestors and all of the knowledge that's been passed down to us.

It's in the grand scheme of things.

We have to honor all of that.

And hope that we can do our best to make sure that they are still there for the generations to come.

Everything that you do today has a ripple effect, and it affects the seven generations to come.

So you have to ask yourself, what am I doing today that is going to leave a positive imprint for the future?