Have you checked out the LCL Spice Club yet? This month's spice giveaway is thyme and the recipe card features Wild Gitigan Salad.  I made this recipe last week and the salad received rave reviews from my family: "I think it's wonderful!"  "I love the flavor combinations."  "Wild rice is my favorite!" and one slightly less than enthusiastic response, "I'm not used to eating raw kale, but it's good." Overall, my family found it a unique and healthy meal.
In honor of Native American History month, November’s Spice Club recipe is from First Nations, an organization dedicated to "uplifting and sustaining the lifeways and economies of Native communities." This salad was created by a group of entrepreneurial youth in Minnesota who wanted to create a nutritious food option that would promote healthy food choices.  They actually sold this salad at a major league baseball game! (Go Twins!) “Gitigan” is an indigenous word meaning “garden” or a place to harvest locally grown foods.
Wild Gitigan Salad features black beans, wild rice, and fresh kale as its main ingredients. It is flavored with thyme, lemon zest, parmesan cheese and olive oil. This is a hearty dish could be served as a side or even the main dish for salad lovers. If you have vegetarians at your table omit the parmesan cheese topping and you’re good to go.
I found making this recipe to be a delightful sensory experience, the combined aromas of wild rice cooking with thyme is warm and comforting. The lemon juice/zest makes it fresh and zingy.  Yum!
We hope you’ll stop by the library soon and check out the spice club offerings. If you're inspired to make your own creation using your sample of thyme, we'd love to hear about it!

For more amazing recipes from Indigenous chefs, be sure to check out the following cookbooks available at your Lewis & Clark Library:

Cover ArtOriginal Local by Heid E. Erdrich

Local foods have garnered much attention in recent years, but the concept is hardly new: indigenous peoples have always made the most of nature's gifts. Their menus were truly the "original local," celebrated here in sixty home-tested recipes paired with profiles of tribal activists, food researchers, families, and chefs. A chapter on wild rice makes clear the crucial role manoomin plays in cultural and economic survival. A look at freshwater fish is concerned with shifts in climate and threats to water purity as it reveals the deep relationship between Ojibwe people and indigenous fish species such as Ginoozhii, the Muskie, Ogaa, the Walleye, and Adikamig, Whitefish. Health concerns have encouraged Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota cooks to return to, and revise, recipes for bison, venison, and wild game. Sections on vegetables and beans, herbs and tea, and maple and berries offer insight from a broad representation of regional tribes, including Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Mandan gardeners and harvesters. The innovative recipes collected here--from Ramp Kimchi to Three Sisters Salsa, from Manoomin Lasagna to Venison Mole Chili--will inspire home cooks not only to make better use of the foods all around them but also to honor the storied heritage they represent. Heid E. Erdrich, author of five books of poetry and coeditor of Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community, teaches writing, performs her work broadly, and gives lectures on American Indian art, language, and literature.
Find  Original Local in the library catalog
 

 

Cover ArtThe Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman; Beth Dooley (Contribution by)

2018 James Beard Award Winner: Best American Cookbook

Here is real food--our indigenous American fruits and vegetables, the wild and foraged ingredients, game and fish. Locally sourced, seasonal, "clean" ingredients and nose-to-tail cooking are nothing new to Sean Sherman, the Oglala Lakota chef and founder of The Sioux Chef. In his breakout book, The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen, Sherman shares his approach to creating boldly seasoned foods that are vibrant, healthful, at once elegant and easy. 
Sherman dispels outdated notions of Native American fare--no fry bread or Indian tacos here--and no European staples such as wheat flour, dairy products, sugar, and domestic pork and beef. The Sioux Chef's healthful plates embrace venison and rabbit, river and lake trout, duck and quail, wild turkey, blueberries, sage, sumac, timpsula or wild turnip, plums, purslane, and abundant wildflowers. Contemporary and authentic, his dishes feature cedar braised bison, griddled wild rice cakes, amaranth crackers with smoked white bean paste, three sisters salad, deviled duck eggs, smoked turkey soup, dried meats, roasted corn sorbet, and hazelnut-maple bites.
The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen is a rich education and a delectable introduction to modern indigenous cuisine of the Dakota and Minnesota territories, with a vision and approach to food that travels well beyond those borders.
Find Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen in the library catalog
Also available for digital checkout:
Libby eBook

 
 

Cover ArtTawâw by Shane M. Chartrand; Jennifer Cockrall-King (As told to)

Tawâw [pronounced ta-WOW]: Come in, you're welcome, there's room. Acclaimed chef Shane M. Chartrand's debut cookbook explores the reawakening of Indigenous cuisine and what it means to cook, eat, and share food in our homes and communities. Born to Cree parents and raised by a Métis father and Mi'kmaw-Irish mother, Shane M. Chartrand has spent the past ten years learning about his history, visiting with other First Nations peoples, gathering and sharing knowledge and stories, and creating dishes that combine his interests and express his personality. The result is tawâw: Progressive Indigenous Cuisine, a book that traces Chartrand's culinary journey from his childhood in Central Alberta, where he learned to raise livestock, hunt, and fish on his family's acreage, to his current position as executive chef at the acclaimed SC Restaurant in the River Cree Resort & Casino in Enoch, Alberta, on Treaty 6 Territory. Containing over seventy-five recipes -- including Chartrand's award-winning dish "War Paint" -- along with personal stories, culinary influences, and interviews with family members, tawâw is part cookbook, part exploration of ingredients and techniques, and part chef's personal journal.
Find Tawâw Progressive Indigenous Cuisine in the library catalog
Also available for digital checkout:
Hoopla eBook