Culinary Champion
James Beard award-winning author and photographer Lois Ellen Frank propounds the merit of Native American foods.
By Mary Conrad
Where would those of us who love New Mexican food be without corn, chiles, beans? While they are central to our enjoyment today, they have been critical to the lives of Southwestern Native Peoples for centuries.
Anthropologist, photographer, chef, and author Lois Ellen Frank, '99 MA, studied corn's cultivation and use in Native cultures while a master's student in anthropology at UNM. She has spent years visiting and living on Southwestern Indian reservations, collecting Native recipes, food lore, and traditions.
Five years ago, Lois Ellen's cookbook, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations (Ten Speed Press) resulted. In 2003 it received the James Beard Award, the pinnacle of cookbook honors.
Accepting the award, Lois Ellen said the recognition–and the example of culinary advisor Walter Whitewater–showed "all young Native people that they can become contemporary Native chefs. They can take their tradition… and make it beautiful, truly a cuisine, fun to eat, and savory."
Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations contains both traditional recipes and contemporary creations using traditional ingredients. For example, the posole we all know and love coexists with a posole terrine of red, white, and blue corn with azafrán sauce. Blue corn tortillas share space with a recipe for blue corn gnocchi arrowheads with guajillo chile sauce.
Lois Ellen, who is part Kiowa and part Sephardic, not only authored the book–in consultation with Walter Whitewater–she took the photographs for it. "The food is all real," she says. "In advertising it may be doctored for photos, but for us, the test is if you can eat it!"
Before entering the culinary world, Lois Ellen graduated from Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. Her work appears in numerous publications, including more than 15 culinary posters and more than 20 cookbooks.
In addition to her research and writing, Lois Ellen teaches courses at the Santa Fe School of Cooking. Along with Whitewater, she operates a catering business, Red Mesa Cuisine. She limits her catering events to one per month, aiming to finish her doctoral dissertation in 2008. For this, she is observing and interviewing Native and non–Native chefs, as well as Native cooks. Through their voices she hopes to define Native cuisine. Then she'll analyze the link between the cuisine and Native cultural expression and identity. "It's a new area of anthropology," Lois says. "Culinary anthropology."
With Lois Ellen's schedule, a bit of comfort food is surely requisite. Lois Ellen says on her Native side she gravitates to anything made of corn–posole, grits, cornbread. But on her Jewish side, it's matzoball soup!
Learn More!
At the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, October 13-14 and 20-21. Along with museum director Cynthia Chavez, '01 PhD, Lois Ellen will present Connecting Communities: Native Foods and Wellness. Open to the public, the weekends will include speakers, chefs, and food tastings.