Sean Sherman’s Walleye filet with sumac and maple sugar, a white bean and smoked walleye croquette and toasted hominy; Becca Dilley/Courtesy of Heavytable.com
As we fine tune the concept of Malabar Soul Food at 51 we’re always on the lookout for other stories of cultural culinary crossovers. This is especially relevant with chefs who are pushing culinary limits by reaching back to early foodways like Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. Mr. Sherman’s life is in the kitchen, but a great deal of his energies go into discovering the pre-colonization foods of his Great Plains ancestors. Thanks once again to NPR and the Salt for sharing this story.
Sherman, who calls himself the Sioux Chef, grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It’s where he first started to learn about the traditional foods of the Plains, whether it was hunting animals like pronghorn antelope and grouse, or picking chokecherries for wojapi, a berry soup.
“We were close to the Badlands and its sand hills, which is not the best growing area by far,” says Sherman, who’s now 40. “But we would also spend weeks in the Black Hills, crawling around and learning stuff.”Sherman’s grandfather was among the first Native American children to go to mission schools on the reservation, and he was one of Sherman’s first teachers. Continue reading
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