The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman and Beth Dooley (review)

Few would argue against the assertion that language and food are vital to a living culture. As a casual student of the Lakota language—Lakȟól’iyapi—I’ve experienced the innovative tools being used to revitalize an expanding number of indigenous Great Plains languages. With the growing popularity of local foods, wildcrafting, and artisanal cuisine, one would think that indigenous foods would also be experiencing a rebirth. If Sean Sherman’s visually rich, informative book is a representative example of the native foods movement, then that is indeed the case.

Teaming up with Minnesota cookbook author and memoirist Beth Dooley, Sean offers recipes and stories about real, that is, precolonial—no fry bread or Indian tacos—indigenous food, mostly from the northern Great Plains, and he invites us to cook some for ourselves. His approach is passionate and moderately artisanal but it is also adaptable. Can’t find timpsula to harvest sustainably? That’s okay, you can use a turnip and butternut squash instead. Out of acorn flour? Well, there’s a recipe for that, but also suggestions for alternatives. Some things, like wild game, sunchokes, sumac, and juniper (instead of black pepper) are more accessible but still require effort, and that seems to kind of be the point. There’s resources at www.sioux-chef.com, and don’t forget to visit “The Indigenous Pantry.” It is a useful reference chapter with more about the basic set of unique seasonings he uses in recipes like smoked turkey and acorn soup, griddled maple squash, cedar braised bison, wojape (a chokecherry sauce or pudding), wild rice sorbet, and sunflower cookies. (Reading aloud the Lakota subtitles beneath the recipes’ Anglo names was good language practice for me.)

Apart from a few typos and spots that seem to be missing a line of instruction, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen is as user-friendly as one could desire. Extensive cross-referencing keeps each recipe focused and manageably simple. There is beautiful photography throughout, and the artful use of font and color makes each page visually pleasant. We are introduced to other chefs in the indigenous foods community—and their recipes—along with Sean’s visions for native foods (e.g., The Sioux Chef business, the playfully named Tatanka Truck food wagon, a forthcoming restaurant, and NĀTIFS, a model of indigenous food systems). A nice touch at the beginning is Sean’s personal story about growing up on his grandparents’ ranch on the Pine Ridge reservation, learning to cook for his family when his mother took a job in Spearfish, South Dakota, becoming a professional chef in high-end restaurants, and then having an epiphany about Native foodways and his path forward in life while he recovered from all that during a year off in Mexico.

I’m not sure how many residents of reservations and other Native American communities are going to have this book in their kitchens, but it’s clear that The Sioux Chef’s team does more for Native foods than write cookbooks. It is hard to find much of which to offer criticism of this book. I look forward to more from The Sioux Chef team, and I definitely want to try some recipes!