Miles Morrisseau
ICT
There is the dancing, the regalia, the singing and the drumming, the competition and the ceremony, the friendship and fellowship, but there’s also the food, the food, the glorious powwow food.
First up, you better just take this as a cheat day, because there are not going to be a lot of low-calorie options. It is comfort food and it is what you want when you are sitting in the circle listening to the drummers and watching the dancers. The food is a celebration.
Sometimes, you can’t remember the places, the faces and the names of the food truck, you just remember the food. The bite, the taste, the chew, the swallow and the bliss that washed over you as your brain released dopamine that was taken into your eager pleasure receptors.
I can’t remember where I was when I had this decadent combination, but I can taste it now and I have never had quite the same since. It was a salt-pork-and-fried-bread sandwich. I know.
Salt pork cooked slowly in a large cast iron skillet until the fat is rendered into a crunchy bite of salty perfection and the meat is still juicy. The fried bread was still warm when it was sliced in half and buttered, and had two pieces of the salt pork in the middle. I ate the first half just plain and had mustard on the second half; both were fantastic.
I never saw that food truck again and I never tried the sandwich again, the few times that I have seen it on the menu. Sometimes it’s best to never try and recapture a taste that has long since faded. This can be true of many things, including pork that is salted and bread that is fried.
Here’s a rundown of some of my musings on powwow foods.
Corn soup
The first time I had corn soup, I was not impressed. I wasn’t. What’s the big deal here? Corn, beans, salt pork! Is that it? Just those three ingredients cooked slowly for hours until the white navy beans are mush, creating a creamy sauce with the fat from the pork. The corn maintains its integrity and the meat from the salt pork is falling apart.
Yeah. It is a beautiful thing.
That style of corn soup is called Chippewa Style, and most corn soups around this area in Canada that are Anishinaabe make a thinner and thicker version.
I learned from my wife how to make this style of corn soup. The key ingredient is the dried corn. To be clear, I don’t want to start anything. I know canned corn and frozen corn are good replacements and to those that swear by using canned or frozen, to each their own.
The best dried corn near Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation is on the Oneida Nation of the Thames about 50 miles away. You can get it at one of the gas stations on the rez, fill up with some tax-free gas and when you go inside you will find a bin filled with dried Indian corn and a scoop to fill up paper lunch sacks that will be weighed at checkout. It is always worth the drive.
Corn soup in the Iroquois style uses kidney beans instead of navy white beans, and so the soup is not creamy as the kidney beans don’t break down.
For years, I would search out the Oneida Food Truck, and I would have three or four bowls of their soup every powwow. It was that simple combination of dried Indian corn, kidney beans and salt pork. The broth was glorious and it’s not just the meat, it’s the corn. It has a distinct and earthy flavor that is closer to popped corn than boiled corn. The kidney beans add their own little touch and I don’t believe any spices were added other than pepper.
A scoop of corn, beans and a piece of salt pork and a scoop of broth. Perfection.
Fry bread fixation
Fry bread is one of the great mysteries of life. The ingredients are simple, but no two recipes are alike. The combinations and amounts – what’s left in, what’s left out. Stir with the hand, spoon or a fork. Cook in lard, shortening or canola oil. Different brands of flour and baking powder. A hundred steps to take or not make this fry bread ours.
Frybread makes everything better. Do you like hamburgers and cheeseburgers? Have you had an Indian Burger? Do you like hot dogs or pogos? Have you had a skawndawg, a weiner wrapped in dough and fried? Do you like sweetie pies? Have you had a blueberry sweetie pie on a piece of freshly cooked fry bread? I have and it was incredibly decadent.
It was a “where did you get that” moment. It happens all the time during the powwow. Someone walks by with a dish in hand that looks like you must have it and you must have it now. “Where you get that?”
The directions were given with lips pointed in the general direction and I saw this glorious confection one more time and followed another set of lips. There I found the George family booth near the dance arena entrance.
The blueberry sauce was homemade with locally sourced blueberries, the whipped cream was in a can, but it was real whipped cream. The fry bread was light and fluffy – that was the key. I have to assume they used milk of some kind, possibly Carnation evaporated milk, and I would hazard a guess that it was fried in lard.
They gave me a fork and knife, but I just picked the whole thing up and took a bite of epicurean delight.
To chunk or not to chunk?
I was anti-chunk from the very beginning. It was blasphemous. It defeated the entire purpose of the entree by literally destroying the foundation piece by piece.
The Indian Taco is served in two ways – uncut or sliced in half. I don’t know where this idea of chunking up the fry bread and then fixing the taco came from, but I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Sure, it can be difficult to eat your taco at the powwow. It is a bit difficult to cut up your taco when you are sitting on a lawn chair and the taco is on a paper plate and you are trying to slice it up into chunks with a plastic knife and fork.
But that’s the way we did things. Of course, we can also just pick it up and stick it into our face, but that can be a bit messy. That is still your best option if you are standing up.
The next thing I know, my daughter is breaking apart her fry bread before making her taco. What is this?
“Oh, I had it at the powwow and now I like it this way.”
“That’s blasphemy.”
“Yes, dad, I believe this meets the definition of blasphemy.”
“But why?”
“Because the chunks soak up the chili sauce more uniformly and you get a nice mix of bread, chili sauce and toppings in each delicious bite.”
“Can I try?”
Miles Morrisseau holds a valid food handler’s certificate.