Eating Arizona

“They don’t give you much in terms of nutrition,” shrugs Noland Johnson as he pulls down a tall frond of ocotillo and hands me its small scarlet buds. “But if you’re out walking in the desert and it’s really hot, they’re nice and refreshing.” Sure enough, when I put the bud on my tongue, I get a burst of moisture – sweet and bitter at the same time, a bit like a huckleberry.

Every morning since I’ve been in Arizona, as I head out into the Sonoran Desert or mountain canyons to hike or ride, new shapes and shades have revealed themselves overnight: bright yellow and fuchsia prickly pear blooms, pumpkin-orange barrel cactus buds, bruised purple cholla cactuses, the tall ocotillos that sway over me, their red blooms outlined in the sky like dripping flames. Johnson and his five-year-old daughter, Isabella, are leading me through the desert behind the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, tucked into the foothills near Tucson, on a hunt for more than just refreshment. They’re introducing me to the roots of Arizona’s first – and latest – fine foods.

Desert food in Tucson’s top kitchens

“People think nothing grows in the desert, but there’s so much growing all around us,” says Johnson, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation. On this day, he’s brought a shipment of tepary beans, native squash, saguaro seeds and cholla buds to the Loews’ five-diamond kitchen, for the Ventana Room restaurant. Its chef, Master Chef of France Marc Ehrler, has found new ways to fashion these traditional foods into a distinctly Arizonan take on French haute cuisine. Standouts include the bisque made from local squash spiced with red curry, ginger and muscat and the jojoba-fed bison tenderloin that sits on a tepary bean coulis and is finished with a saguaro cactus syrup gastrique. From the earth but out of this world.

The soil near Tucson that Johnson’s grandparents tilled in the 1930s lay fallow for 50 years. He himself had never worked the land until he was recruited by Tohono O’odham Community Action, a non-profit organization that reconnects the community with its cultural traditions, including age-old farming methods. The sudden change in diet over one generation, as the people became increasingly dependent on foods provided by the commodities system, led to rampant health problems. Over half the adult Tohono O’odham population lives with type 2 diabetes. The tepary bean, a staple in their ancestral diet – and, according to their creation myth, the source of the Milky Way – has been shown to regulate blood sugar.

When good food meets good health

But health is not the only reason these ingredients are hitting the plate. “For me, it started with a need to source local produce,” says Janos Wilder, a multiple James Beard Award nominee and arguably Tucson’s most famous chef. Wilder is on the board of Native Seeds/SEARCH, where, since the 1970s, farmers and scientists have been working to conserve and distribute over 1,200 ancient seed varietals. It doesn’t hurt that those conservation efforts translate into dishes like the perfect mini-torta of roast pork shoulder stewed in a native-seed mole I had at Wilder’s restaurant at the Westin La Paloma Resort.

In the desert, as Johnson and I come upon a furry teddy-bear cholla, I ask him to demonstrate his people’s technique for harvesting the buds. “Are you kidding me? Those things are sharp!” he laughs, recoiling. As if on cue, I brush against one, and its needles slide quickly, effortlessly through the toe of my leather boot. Cholla buds are gathered using tongs made from saguaro cactus skeletons; after being stripped of thorns and sun-dried, they have an asparagus/artichoke-like flavour. Wilder garnishes wild Mexican shrimp with the sautéed buds and drizzles them with syrup from the saguaro cactus blossom.

Sweet success

Later, seated in the hushed Ventana Room, Johnson and I relish dark-chocolate and locally-sourced mesquite-flour beignets with vanilla-bean cream. He smacks his lips and notes that while the Ventana Room makes innovative use of his crops, they taste just as good – maybe better – eaten in his family home on the reservation. “Growing up, I never ate these foods,” he says. “Now I see them at feasts and even at the dinner table with my mom. The younger kids like Isabella are getting protein from our traditional foods, and we’re all trying to make new recipes. I’ve seen the change; these foods disappeared and came back in one generation.”

From Bannock to Bush Tucker

British Columbia

At Vancouver Community College’s new aboriginal culinary arts program, the next generation of chefs is learning to cook dishes featuring ooligan oil, bannock and other foods traditionally eaten by Northwest Coast First Nations. Also on the syllabus: traditional hunting techniques and pit smoking.
250 W. Pender St., Vancouver, 604-443-8487, vcc.ca

Australia

Visitors to the 2010 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in March can look forward to a menu of bush tucker treats: dishes made with little-known indigenous bush foods like lemon myrtle, warrigal greens, desert peach nuts and Kakadu plums (one of the planet’s richest sources of vitamin C).
Prahran Markets, Melbourne, 61-3-9823-6100, melbournefoodandwine.com.au

New Zealand

Chef Michael Daly blogs about what he calls Trans-Tasman cuisine, in which traditional Aboriginal and Maori fruits and spices (munthari, rosella, paperbark) are used to inject flavour into meat and seafood. 
michaeldaly.co.nz

Ontario

Warren and Phoebe Sutherland prepare dishes based on the traditional recipes of North America’s original peoples in Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro’s open-concept kitchen. Their menu features wild boar, buffalo and rabbit with anything from mole to chipotle sauce.
108 Murray St., Ottawa, 613-562-3683, sweetgrassbistro.ca

South Africa

At Marco’s African Place in Cape Town, diners can sample traditionally hunted meats like springbok while listening to live music by local musicians.  
15 Rose Lane, Bo-Kaap, Cape Town, 27-21-423-5412, marcosafricanplace.co.za

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