AILSA CHANG, HOST:
When I think of my favorite foods, I can tick off my favorite Chinese dishes, Mexican dishes, Italian dishes. But if you asked me what Native American dish I enjoy most, I'd be stumped. There's a growing number of Native chefs who are trying to change that. They're bringing back indigenous foods from centuries ago, adapting them for the modern palate so people can learn not just about their cuisines, but their cultures.
Hey, Freddie.
FREDDIE BITSOIE: How are you?
CHANG: Ailsa.
You can meet one of those chefs in Washington, D.C., in the kitchen of the National Museum of the American Indian. Freddie Bitsoie found his way to the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe in August. He just finished up a stint as the chef at an Indian reservation casino in New Mexico.
We met up with Bitsoie on a recent morning in the museum's bustling basement kitchen. This is his first gig as a chef whose work is entirely devoted to preparing and spreading awareness about indigenous American dishes.
BITSOIE: Can you get me a pot?
CHANG: Bitsoie is also this Native American cafe's first Native American chef. He's a member of the Navajo tribe and grew up in Arizona and New Mexico.
BITSOIE: My father spoke fluent Navajo. My mother spoke fluent Navajo.
CHANG: Did you speak fluent Navajo?
BITSOIE: I understand fluent Navajo.
CHANG: You're like me with Mandarin.
(LAUGHTER)
BITSOIE: But back in the '80s when I grew up, being Native wasn't cool. It just wasn't the thing to do. I was lucky enough to live off of the reservation and then on the reservation and then move back off the reservation. I had that ability to see from the inside and see from the outside.
CHANG: That tug of war between native and non-native, insider and outsider - it may explain why Bitsoie loves bridging old and new in his cooking.
All right, so I hear you're going to cook something for us.
BITSOIE: Well, you know, that's part of the job, too.
CHANG: One of his signature dishes is a simple soup that's evolved across regions and across centuries. And then, Bitsoie decided to personalize it.
BITSOIE: Indigenous people, from Nova Scotia down on to Maine, modern-day Massachusetts, had a soup that was only made with three ingredients. It was sunchoke, clam and seawater.
CHANG: Seawater.
BITSOIE: Seawater, yeah.
CHANG: Wow.
BITSOIE: Can you, like, wonder...
CHANG: I can't picture myself gulping seawater down voluntarily.
BITSOIE: But at the same time...
CHANG: (Laughter).
BITSOIE: ...in Italian...
CHANG: Yeah.
BITSOIE: ...Cooking people say when you cook your pasta make sure it's salty like the sea, you know.
CHANG: Are we going to use seawater today in the...
BITSOIE: No.
CHANG: ...The preparation for the soup?
BITSOIE: I don't - you know, when I look out at that ocean I'm like I'm not - I don't even swim in the ocean (laughter).
CHANG: Bitsoie understands that to make some traditional dishes palatable to more people, you have to tweak them.
BITSOIE: I wanted to still have a connection to the tribes who used to eat this dish. But at the same time, this was, you know, made about five, 600 years ago. So my palate is completely different than my grandmother's palate which is even further from my grandmother's grandmother's palate.
CHANG: So to appeal to today's palate, he took the three original ingredients - clam, sunchokes and salt water and added some modern-day soup basics - leeks, onion, garlic, thyme and bay leaf. It's a balancing act, accommodating mainstream tastes while being confident enough to hold fast to Native traditions. In the culinary world, Bitsoie says, that can be difficult.
BITSOIE: I worked for a French chef where when I would cook something native, all he would say is, you did that wrong.
CHANG: You did that wrong.
BITSOIE: You did that wrong. So the biggest example is potatoes. When people think about potatoes, in the French style of cooking, potatoes are - you know, have a bite. We call it al dente in the food world. But with native foods, we saute them, and then we allow them to cook, but we cover them. So the potatoes are not only being cooked from the bottom, they're being steamed at the same time.
So each culture has their own techniques. And with native cuisine, from the beginning of time, we were always told that you're cooking that wrong. You're cooking the wrong. You're cooking that wrong. And see, I didn't know that because I was just growing up with the way my mom cooks. Look, when I got into the food business, I was looking at my mom and I said, mom, you're cooking that wrong. And I became colonized as a chef.
CHANG: But working here at the museum is a whole new chapter for Bitsoie. He can call the shots and figure out how he wants to integrate his own culture with his formal training as a chef.
BITSOIE: But the soup's ready.
CHANG: Oh, yeah. Oh, that looks good.
BITSOIE: Spoon for you.
CHANG: Thank you. All right. I'm digging in.
BITSOIE: All right.
CHANG: Oh - good.
BITSOIE: You were expecting cream and butter and that flavor of clam chowder I'm assuming.
CHANG: I was expecting saltier 'cause I had the whole seawater concept. Like, I was obsessing about that. Like, I wonder where that - but no.
BITSOIE: It's very innocent, you know, and...
CHANG: It's very delicate. I really like it.
BITSOIE: ...And that's what native food is. That's - native food is really delicate and innocent, you know.
CHANG: Bitsoie says what he's trying to do here is create new tastes and give people a new appreciation of one of America's overlooked and perhaps least understood cuisines.