Four corners: Native American ingredients, Spanish culture, microbrews and more meet at this crossroads

Nation's Restaurant News,  Feb 19, 2007  by Bret Thorn

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Hopi legend has it that, early in the life of their people, when the different tribes were selecting corn, the Hopis were slow to act and got the last ear, which was stubby and blue.

Most people have more hopeful legends of their beginnings, but perhaps when you find yourselves living atop windswept mesas in a dry, arid land, you get a little gloomy.

Besides, the legend also has its optimistic side. The mockingbird told the Hopis that blue corn represented hardship, but also longevity: Other people might perish, but despite the adversity that Hopis faced, they would survive.

And survive they have, along with Ute, Navajo, Puebloan and other tribes, in the hinterlands where four states quietly meet.

The Four Corners region is where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah intersect, but it also is where Spanish and Native American cultures meld with the cultures of Anglo farmers and miners as well as ski resorts, artist colonies, microbreweries and wineries.

The Anasazi, whose remnants can most famously be found at Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado, settled the area centuries ago. The Spanish arrived in the mid-16th century, bringing with them sheep, orchard fruits, grapes and other Old World items. Santa Fe, New Mexico's capital, was founded in 1610, a decade before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

Spanish and native cultures blended early to form a cuisine that remains distinct even from that of northern Mexico, which is nearby.

Red or Green?

Unique to New Mexican cuisine is the use of red and green chiles to make sauces, which also are called red and green chile. These can be eaten alone, often with flour or corn tortillas, but more often are used to smother burritos, enchiladas and many other dishes.

At Blake's Lotaburger, a 75-unit, quick-service chain based in Albuquerque, N.M., even the signature hamburger is topped with green chile. If you order the breakfast burrito you will be asked what recently was named the state's official question: "Red or green?"

If you order half and half, that's called "Christmas."

Both are made with roasted chile, stock or water, onion, garlic, spices and bits of meat. More meat, and potatoes, might be added if the chiles are to be eaten as stews.

Mesa cuisine

Native American dishes tend to be more mild and flavored with, if anything, salt. But the flavors of the meats and vegetables really come through, says Melissa Homann, who spent years living in the Four Corners area and now is a culinary consultant for Cafe Frida, a Mexican restaurant in New York City.

Hopi researcher Lee Lomayestewa says that many Hopi dishes are made with corn. Those include nok quivi, a simple stew of hominy and mutton.

In Juanita Tiger Kavena's cookbook "Hopi Cookery," the stew recipe, provided by Margaret Calnimptewa, is made simply by boiling cubed mutton for an hour before adding hominy and letting it simmer overnight.

Lomayestewa says the stew often is eaten with a sweetened corn dish called pik'ami.

"Usually the in-laws make that: My wife would make it at my mom's house," he says.

To make pik'ami, a sugar-sweetened corn batter is poured into a metal bucket lined with cornhusks. The batter is covered with husks, put in a fire pit, covered with coals and cooked all night.

Phyllis Adams' recipe for pik'ami in "Hopi Cookery" also has sprouted wheat added to it.

Delores Noble, who works at the Navajo Nation education division, says that a traditional meal among her people would include blue cornmeal mush, called taa'neel, a stew of mutton or lamb --atoo'--and tortillas or frybread. They might drink an herbal tea called ch'il goweeh, made from a mountain plant that Noble says looks like a small daisy.

The cornmeal mush is made by mixing blue cornmeal with hot water and cedar ash.

"That's what makes it turn blue," Noble says. "If you don't use the ash, it just comes out kind of purple-looking."

The ash--about an eighth of a teaspoon for four cups of cornmeal, is added to the water that is stirred into the cornmeal.

The ash is believed to help release the corn's nutrients, much as lime does in Mexican tortillas and tamales. Kavena says Hopis tend to make ash from bean pods and vines or corncobs, which studies indicate have more nutrients than ashes from dried woods.

The mutton stew generally will be made with squash and corn. While the lamb is boiling, Noble peels the squash and removes the kernels from the corncobs. "Feed the cobs to sheep, horses or cows," she says, "so everyone gets something for it." Squash shavings are fed to the goats, she adds.

The stew also can be prepared with corn dumplings made by breaking clumps of corn tortilla dough into the stew. A mutton and dumpling stew can be thickened with a cornmeal slurry, Noble adds.

Frybread, the region's traditional fried dough, is often made with all-purpose flour, but Noble says she will use up to half blue cornmeal. She also will add some powdered milk before mixing it with warm water, shaping it into tortillas and frying it in hot grease.