Early Winter 2018: Roots

The stories in this issue explore how some of our deepest culinary traditions continue to influence our food and offer important ways to envision our future. We take a look at several efforts to highlight, preserve, and reimagine Native cuisines in our state (and beyond). Chef Lois Ellen Frank educates us on her style of “new Native” cuisine, blending ancient techniques and flavors with evolving recipes. We also visit the farmers at Red Willow Farm at Taos Pueblo, who are investing in the future by growing traditional crops and training the next generation of Native food producers. Chef Myles Lucero tells us how the stories of his favorite ingredients inspire his recipes. And we look at artist and permaculturist Roxanne Swentzell’s efforts to revitalize traditions and promote nutrition in tribal communities, while encouraging everyone to tap into their local and ancestral food roots.

In the last issue of edible, we explored some of the more recent migrations of plants, people, and flavors that have shaped our state’s cuisine. For this issue, we take a look at our roots. We celebrate our state’s long agricultural history, our uniquely adapted crops and wild plants, and the deeply entrenched food traditions that contribute to New Mexico’s essential culinary identity.

The stories in this issue explore how some of our deepest culinary traditions continue to influence our food and offer important ways to envision our future. We take a look at several efforts to highlight, preserve, and reimagine Native cuisines in our state (and beyond). Chef Lois Ellen Frank educates us on her style of “new Native” cuisine, blending ancient techniques and flavors with evolving recipes. We also visit the farmers at Red Willow Farm at Taos Pueblo, who are investing in the future by growing traditional crops and training the next generation of Native food producers. Chef Myles Lucero tells us how the stories of his favorite ingredients inspire his recipes. And we look at artist and permaculturist Roxanne Swentzell’s efforts to revitalize traditions and promote nutrition in tribal communities, while encouraging everyone to tap into their local and ancestral food roots.

We also go to Old Town in Albuquerque and learn how new flavors are re-energizing the food scene for locals. We visit a ranch in Santa Fe that uses cooking and the cowboy spirit to help our veterans, and we examine efforts by the New Mexico Landrace Corn Project to preserve a crop with some of the deepest roots in our region, New Mexico landrace blue corn. Finally, we learn about the history of a well-established fruit tree in our state, the apricot.

Through these stories, we are reminded that just as a tree’s roots, though underground and unseen, provide the stability and nourishment for long-term health and abundant harvests, so too does a community rely on its roots for the development of a healthy, local, place-based cuisine. In important but sometimes hard-to-see ways, our state’s deep agricultural and culinary roots continually feed and support the growing and ever-changing local food movement in New Mexico.