Taste of the Nations

Chefs in Arizona are spicing up their dishes with indigenous ingredients, long used by the region's Native American tribes.

Chef Janos Wilder at Sleeping Frog Ranch in Tucson, AZ, where he buys ingredients to use at his restaurants
JON MANCUSO PHOTOGRAPHY

Pronounced "Skook-Tosh," this customary salutation is only the first Pima and Maricopa tribal tradition you'll notice at the resort, located on the tribe's 372,000-acre Gila River Indian Reservation.

Sure, you can observe the Native American décor and artwork, but it's only once you're seated for lunch or dinner at Kai (www.wildhorsepassresort.com; 602-385-5726), meaning "seed," that you will really get a taste of the tribe's influence on the resort.

Chef Michael O'Dowd heads up the kitchen at the only restaurant in Arizona to have earned both Mobil Five-Star and AAA Five Diamond awards. But before he developed the menu - featuring the likes of lamb loin with mole made from native spices - he spent some time learning about the tribe.

"When I first got here, I knocked on the doors of the elders and asked them what they ate as children," O'Dowd says. "And then I kind of branched off to different tribes. Getting all these ingredients was kind of like a treasure hunt."

O'Dowd, who also incorporates buffalo from the Cheyenne River and salmon from the Sugpiaq tribe of Alaska into his dishes, says, "I try to use the local ingredients in a spiritual sense, in a way that pays homage to the past while tricking it out for the future."

Local olives
prepared three
sweet ways from
Kai And reinventing the ingredients is all part of the fun. "Nobody knows what they're going to look like or what they're going to taste like until you actually open them up," O'Dowd says. "We get excited about that."

Arizona is home to 21 federally recognized tribes, and reservations and tribal communities comprise more than 25% of the state's land. It's no surprise, then, that local chefs like O'Dowd are inspired to preserve the cultural traditions of tribes by incorporating native ingredients into their menus.

Since the early 1980s, Chef Janos Wilder has been fusing the bounty of the Sonoran Desert with French techniques. The James Beard Award-winning chef (Best Chef in the Southwest in 2000) heads up the kitchens at Janos and J Bar (www.janos.com; 520-615-6100) at the Westin La Paloma Resort outside of Tucson, AZ (116 miles from Phoenix).

Wilder was asked to shape the initial direction of the menu at Kai before O'Dowd joined the team. He jumped at the chance to help. "[Kai was] very much mission-driven, which is kind of odd in a restaurant setting," he says. "Restaurants don't really have missions, other than we want to cook good food and make people happy. But they can become so much more than that, if you focus on it."

He, too, visited with Pima tribal elders to learn about what they ate growing up.
While Wilder had long worked with the crops of the Sonoran Desert, it wasn't until these conversations that he gained a more complete understanding about the tribe members' views on food.

The elders had many fond memories of the camaraderie that came with meals, but they never once praised the actual dishes. The revelation that they didn't enjoy the food was liberating. "It gave me a permission slip, almost, to say, 'OK, I'm going to use the ingredients as a point of departure,'" Wilder says.

Wilder has used local ingredients to create dishes like jerked pork with basil chimichurri sauce and chicken breast stuffed with Serrano chiles and lemon basil pesto, served with red chile risotto and lemon cucumber pico de gallo. Of cooking with the local bounty, he says, "It's going to be the freshest. The ingredients are going to sing with authenticity and contain the flavors of where you are. Cooking with a sense of place is what we ought to be doing."

Executive Chef Marc Ehrler of The Ventana Room (www.ventanaroom.com; 520-615-5494) at Loews Ventana Canyon resort in Tucson has also taken note of the local bounty, going so far as "adopting" a Native American farm as part of the hotel's new focus on local agriculture.

Growing up on the French Riviera, Ehrler accompanied his father to local farmers markets and marinas to buy fresh produce and fish. "I grew up using local ingredients and that set up my philosophy about food," he says. "It's about who's growing things and catching things around my neighborhood. It's a constant quest for better product, new product, local product."

When he arrived at Ventana Canyon about two years ago, Ehrler immediately set about finding local foods to cook with. He soon came across tepary beans, a hardy legume that has sustained the Tohono O'odham tribe in the arid desert for centuries.

The discovery led Ehrler to Tohono O'odham Community Action, a nonprofit group that runs Papago Farms, which was created to help the tribe return to eating its traditional healthy diet. Unfortunately, tribal members have developed significant health problems since they started eating sugary and fatty foods. Today, they suffer from the highest rates of diabetes in the world, with some studies estimating that half of them may develop the disease as adults. A 2002 University of Arizona report showed that fewer than one in four tribal members ate a traditional, healthier diet. The study's authors noted that many members were unaware that the traditional diet could head off diabetes or help regulate the disease in those who already had it.

Papago Farms was launched to provide some of the healthier staples to get the tribe back on track. Noland Johnson, a tribe member who runs the farm, grows tepary beans, squash, corn and other produce, which is then sold in the local supermarket. The farm, he says, "is close to my heart because it's part of my culture, it's part of my family's heritage and it's helping my people."

It also helps keep local ingredients on Ehrler's menu. He pairs tepary beans with beef tenderloin from a nearby ranch, glazed with syrup made from the fruit of the saguaro cactus - one of his favorite Papago Farms discoveries.

"When I saw they were making a syrup from the fruit, I jumped on it," says Ehrler, who is amazed by how the flavor of the syrup changes depending on how the fruit is harvested.

Using ingredients from the farm gives Ehrler a chance to highlight the local tribe while offering guests a range of flavors they'll only find in Arizona. "It helps us remember that we have Tohono O'odham in our neighborhood and they have traditions and roots," he says.

And when you sit down to a meal at The Ventana Room, Kai or Janos, you'll be able to experience these traditions firsthand.

RECIPE

ROASTED BIG SQUASH BISQUE SCENTED WITH RED CURRY AND BEAUMES DE VENISE (FROM THE VENTANA ROOM)

1 big squash, about 2 lbs.
1 leek, white part only, sliced and rinsed in hot water
1 one-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thinly
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp red curry paste
3 cups vegetable or chicken stock
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 tbsp Beaumes de Venise Wine
Orange zest from 1-inch peel
Olive oil
Sea salt and white pepper

DIRECTIONS:
Cut the squash into halves. Rub with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and bake on a sheet pan covered with foil for 60 to 90 minutes at 350 F, or until the squash is soft and can be pierced easily with a paring knife.

Allow squash to cool to room temp. Using a spoon, remove seeds and scrape remaining flesh into a bowl.

In a pot, heat 2 tbsp of olive oil over medium high flame. Add leek, ginger, carrot, zest, bay leaf and red curry paste. Sauté for 5 to 7 minutes, until lightly caramelized and soft. Add squash, stock and heavy cream. Turn heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes.

Pour soup into a blender, and blend on high speed until thoroughly puréed. You may need to split the soup into a few batches. Return soup to the pot and adjust seasoning with salt, white pepper and add Beaumes de Venise. Serve hot.