Native American cuisine includes all food practices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Information about Native American cuisine comes from a great many sources. Modern-day native peoples retain a rich body of traditional foods, some of which have become iconic of present-day Native American social gatherings (for example, frybread). Foods like cornbread, turkey, cranberry, blueberry, hominy and mush are known to have been adopted into the cuisine of the United States from Native American groups. In other cases, documents from the early periods of contact with European, African, and Asian peoples allow the recovery of food practices which passed out of popularity.
Modern-day Native American cuisine can somewhat cover as wide a range as the imagination of the chef who adopts or adapts this cuisine to the present. The use of indigenous domesticated and wild food ingredients can represent Native American food and cuisine. North American Native Cuisine can differ somewhat from Southwestern and Mexican Cuisine in its simplicity and directness of flavor. The use of ramps, wild ginger, miners' lettuce, and juniper can impart subtle flavours to various dishes. Native American food is one of living flavours and ideas. Different ingredients can change the whole meaning of Native American cuisine. A chef preparing a Native American dish can adopt, create, and alter as his or her imagination dictates.
Read more about Native American Cuisine: Native American Cuisine of North America, Native American Cuisine of The Circum-Caribbean, Native American Cuisine of Mesoamerica, Cooking Utensils, Crops and Ingredients
Famous quotes containing the words native american, native, american and/or cuisine:
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones of the soil.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The root of the discontent in American women is that they are too well educated.... There will be no real content among American women unless they are made and kept more ignorant or unless they are given equal opportunity with men to use what they have been taught. And American men will not be really happy until their women are.”
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973)
“Thank God for the passing of the discomforts and vile cuisine of the age of chivalry!”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)