Come join Chef Farais of Indigenous Edibles as he recreates 2 items from the First Thanksgiving feast in the Macy’s Cellar. John will share his recipes with you for a truly local and healthful Thanksgiving feast.

John’s cuisine combines historical native ingredients with contemporary tastes, and brings recognition to frequently overlooked traditional, healthy, native whole foods.

Date: Saturday, November 13th, 2pm
Cost: FREE
Venue: Macy’s: Union Square
Address: 170 O’Farrell Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

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This is miniscule compared with the thousands of plant species eaten by many Native Americans. One of the tragedies of our modern age is how thoroughly we have forgotten just how many plant species can be harvested and eaten. A small but growing group of people are doing their best to reverse that trend.

“Imagine how sustainable our diets would be if we simply ate what the land provided,” says Alrie Middlebrook, president of the California Native Garden Foundation, at a recent native food banquet she organized with indigenous food chef John Farais. The banquet was the culmination of an Eating California class taught by Middlebrook and Farais, which combined information about growing, harvesting, cooking, and eating native foods.

The meal was ambitious in scope, with seven courses that included more than 25 California native foods. Farais hit the ground running with an amuse-bouche of mesquite-seared rabbit served over acorn tortillas. He didn’t stop until he had served two rounds of dessert (counting as one course), including both elderberry and elderflower sorbets, acorn brownies and “mesquite snaps.”

Dr. Kat Anderson, an ethno-ecologist from UC Davis and author of “Tending the Wild” (University of California Press, $21.95), gave some background on the feast. One of the principles Native Californians had when they collected wild foods, she said, was to always leave some behind, ensuring a supply of food in the future.

For example, their collecting technology did not uproot the wildflowers and grasses when they collected seeds. Instead, they developed special “seed beaters” and baskets. Humans became both seed collectors for food and seed dispersers — scattering the seeds to grow back in the following years.

These traditions all but disappeared as immigrants flocked to the area for the Gold Rush of 1849. Immigrants brought with them new plants to grow and new foods to eat, and over time these took over.

More than 150 years later, the availability of native foods has been drastically reduced. Chef Farais laments, “The biggest challenge with trying to use California natives is that (they are) practically nonexistent.” To find some sources of edible natives, Farais looks far and wide.

For example, mesquite flour was once a staple food in Southern California and throughout the Southwest. Today, it is almost completely unavailable from U.S. sources. However, it is still commercially milled and utilized throughout South America and is starting to be imported from countries such as Argentina and Peru.

And while oak trees producing acorns are plentiful, acorn nuts or flour are virtually unmarketed in the United States. In Korea and other parts of Asia, however, a fine acorn flour is commonly used to make an acorn jelly called dotori mook, eaten with soy sauce and other flavors. As a result, acorn flour is readily available in Korean supermarkets.

The goal now, says Anderson, is to “bring the natives back.” They are not only tasty and nutritious, but are extremely drought-tolerant, as they have adapted over thousands of years to live in this climate.

Indeed, the goal of the California Native Garden Foundation is to do just that — by planting them in your garden. Compared with a traditional lawn, a native garden uses 80 percent less water and can produce food for you and your family, as well as the birds, butterflies and other wildlife.

“Traditionally, people were all over the land in a truly interactive way,” Anderson says. Now it is our challenge to “learn from the place in which we live, and incorporate native plants back into our lives.”

By Aaron French

Coming up at 4 PM on July 4 at the Marin County fair in San Rafael (next to the Civic Center) you can watch John during the GLOBAL KITCHEN event.

John will be doing a food demonstration on ancient Aztec food.

John Farais The Culinary Cowboy
This chef, cowboy, farmer, artist and spiritual traveler celebrates Native American ingredients and agriculture for a viable and sustainable future. John Farais is a Sonoma County chef who specializes in the history, taste and promotion of the Americas’ indigenous cuisine. He has dedicated himself to developing a Native American cuisine that combines the historical natives with the contemporary and bringing recognition to these mostly overlooked, traditionally healthy foods. He gardens native Aztec corn, 1,000-year-old Anasazi beans, Lakota squash, elderberry, yerba buena, nettles, amaranthus and sun chokes at a Sonoma winery to develop a market and teach their history.

Learn more here:

John Farais – The Culinary Cowboy from Gary Lam on Vimeo.

John Farais at the Global Kitchen

Farais has been a chef for nearly a decade, specializing in all types of cuisines. He pays the bills by working with as a chef for various North Bay catering companies, but his passion is Native American cooking.

Why Native American cuisine?

“It’s a very creative process being a chef and working with food. And that whole process is kind of creative because you constantly check what’s available and what can go together. Along the way I kind of decided I wanted to do Native American food because its our history and I realized that there’s a food here that is untapped. We have a lot native foods that are being ignored.”

Because he wanted the recipes to be as authentic as possible, Farais spends a lot of time researching the ingredients, and recipes. Although it’s generally known that grains, nuts, plants, berries and seeds were the mainstay of a Native American’s diet, Farais is determined to find out which varieties were original, and not introduced.

“Traditional is food that has been used by a culture for a long time,” he says while pulling ingredients out for us to look at, “So traditional is what I concentrate on rather than heirloom, or introduced.”

He uses the Latin name in order to determine the foods origin, and then figures out which are native to North America. In addition, Farais pores through cookbooks and historical recipes, looking at Native American recipes and weeding out those that don’t use traditional ingredients. An example are modern cookbooks that feature Native American cooking.

“A lot of them are non-traditional the way they ask for wheat. Wheat is introduced, almost all the grains are introduced,” says Farais. “So I try to stay away from it, like fry-bread which is a considered native food, but it wasn’t what they were using traditionally.”

Instead of wheat, they used amaranth flour or acorn flour. Or even mesquite flour- a package of which Farais is tearing open. He offers us a taste.

It is incredibly flavorful, sweet and almost like cocoa.

Some indigenous ingredients can be found pretty easily; strawberries, cranberries, tomatoes, corn, and squash, but Farais has to cast his net wide to locate more exotic ingredients.

He will travel to the East Bay to Korean grocers to find acorn flour and seaweed. At Berkeley Bowl–also in the East Bay–he’ll pick up arrowroot bulbs and at Whole Foods they will sometimes stock sun-chokes, and yucca root. Mexican grocery stores are a good source for cactus leaf and prickly pear. For bison, elk or venison, Farais will head into San Francisco to Polarica, a specialty store for game meat.

Farais is mindful that even though he may be using traditional foodstuffs, he’s not cooking over a traditional open fire. And when he can’t find the exact ingredient, he’ll adapt.

“Whenever I can do a traditional method, or do it in a traditional way, I will,” he says, “But of course it’s using modern ingredients and modern kitchen. In adapting recipes, I look at recipes that are out there and look interesting, and then I see if I can adapt it to Native American.”

He does take us out back to show us something he’s making using a traditional ingredient–corn–in a traditional method–a Mexican crock. It’s a fermented corn drink called Tiswin, which is basically corn fermenting in water. Farais lifts the lid to check on its progress.

Not quite ready, he says sniffing, but give it a few days.

As a parallel to the locavore movement, Farais has also begun to grow his own indigenous produce. One of the catering companies he works with, has allowed him to farm on some very fertile soil in Sonoma County.

“There are the “three sisters”, he says pointing to a grove of impossibly tall cornstalks that tower over the 6′ 2″ chef.

“Three sisters” refers to the Native American practice of growing corn, beans and squash together–the corn stalks provide a trellis for the beans and the squash provides a low cover that keeps the beans and corn roots cool. In Farais’ case, he’s growing Aztec multi-colored corn, Anasazi beans and Lakota squash.

He’s also planted elderberry, Jerusalem artichokes–which Farais points out are neither from Jerusalem nor artichoke and whose traditional native name is Huitz la coche. He has planted Hidatsu sunflower for seeds, and amaranth for flour.

“For me, I feel like I need to re-introduce these things to people, to the mainstream, so that maybe we can get more farmers interested in growing things that are native. I mean what’s more local than native?”

Farais’ push for awareness of indigenous food is beginning to take root.

He’s held workshops for Slow Food U.S.A., and also works closely with California Native Garden Foundation down in Los Gatos. He’s also working on some ideas for a cookbook.

Farais is also frequently hired to cook special occasion Native American feasts. One he’s doing this weekend–a Heritage Dinner benefit for Marin Museum of the American Indian in Novato–has an amazing menu-

It starts with rabbit with hazel nuts, mesquite and amaranth flours served on acorn cornmeal and sage cake. That is followed by a salad composed of native and naturalized greens with pine nuts, sunflower sprouts and flowers. The main coarse is bison encrusted in mushroom dust and toasted Pepitos, topped with a relish of sun-choke, rosehip, and dried elderberries on a bed of wild rice with native corn and squash pilaf.

Finally, dessert will be mint custard tart and the aforementioned prickly pear ice cream.

We wager it will be way better than “California Spaghetti.”

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Here is Chef John Farais’ Popped Wild Rice with Cranberries and Pine Nuts. He actually made a batch for us while we were there, and it is truly delicious.

(All the ingredients can be purchased at Trader Joe’s)

• Ingredients- wild rice, orange-flavored cranberries, pine nuts (buy them pre-toasted), olive oil, salt
• Heat a large, heavy, flat bottom frying pan over med-high heat. (no oil in the pan)
• Throw enough rice so that it is a single layer on the bottom of the pan.
• Cook for a few minutes, stirring the rice until you see it begin to pop and crackle. Don’t let it burn.
• Empty the rice into a large bowl.
• Throw another handful of rice in the pan, and repeat the steps. Throw in a third handful of rice and repeat the steps again.
• Mix the cooked rice with just enough oil to dress lightly.
• Toss in a handful of cranberries and toasted pine nuts and mix. Eat while warm.

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Chef John Farais has a product for resale, called Indi-O, a snack bar with three ingredients native to America–sunflowers, mesquite pods and seeds and honey. You can order them on our website.

He is available to cater special dinners featuring Native American cuisine.

If you want to attend the a Heritage Dinner benefit at the Marin Museum for the American Indian, please go to their website.

To find out more information about California Native Garden Foundation, check here.

Slow Food East Bay website is here.

John Farais, a chef specializing in Native American cuisine, has discovered a very cool way to leach these Valley Oak acorns to make them into edible acorn flour. I suspect this will not work for the higher tannin Live Oak or Black Oak (these acorns are yellow fleshed) as there wouldn’t be enough surface area exposed to get the tannins out. But I haven’t tried it, either.

His recipe is as follows:

Leaching:

1. Shell them. No need to dry them.
2. Put in a bucket and fill with water3-4 inches above acorn level.
3. Change water 2x a day.
4. Drain water when the water is clear in 4-7 days. My water was clear in about 4 days.
5. Taste for bitterness. If still too bitter, continue leaching in bucket with more clean
water. My wet nuts were actually kind of sweet!

Making Flour:

1. Put wet acorn meats into blender cup about 1/2 -3/4 full, they are soft at this point.

2. Add 2 cups of cold water.
3 Start on low speed, add more water, if needed to fully blend all nuts, then go to high
for a few seconds.
4. Drain in cheesecloth or fine sieve (china cap), You can save water, for soup, bread,
or mush.
5. Put on a silpat ( a silicone pad used in the oven for baking) and dry in oven at
lowest temp for about 30-60 minutes (This can vary so you have to monitor) Warning: 150
degrees or more can bake the flour into a dry mass of rubbery solid if it is in the oven
too long.
OR
Put into dehydrator at 125 degrees for 2-3 hours, or until dry.

Done Deal!

Photos by John Farais. You can contact him at thecowboychef@facebook.com

A 3 dinner date is being planned by a client at Black Sterling Friesian Ranch for the Labor day weekend.

indi-O Snack Bar

I have created a snack bar, called “indi-O”,  that has 3 ingredients native to the Americas: Toasted Sunflower Seeds, Mesquite Flour, Honey.  It is an unbaked, non-gluten all purpose bar, that is positioned between candy bars and energy bars. I am launching it to the market this year, starting at the Cotati Farmer’s Market,  in August ‘09.(link to SNACK BAR and add picture of Bar from www.indigenousedibles.com)

Traditional Recipe Workshop

A class demo and dinner is being planned for Slow Food East Bay for sometime in October 2009. I will have the class do an historic recipe and adapt native ingredients to a modern recipe.

2nd Annual Fundraiser for MMAI

Heritage Dinner, one of their yearly fundraisers, for the Marin Museum of the American Indian in Novato for August 29. This is my second dinner for them. Being a board member of the museum, this is how I give back.