The Three Sisters - Beans, Corn, Squash

before we start native foods indigenous foods are all around us I've got something that we we cooked and we're gonna do so the beans right here so see that nice and nice and hot nicely cooked I don't cook them to where they're all mushy want to keep them you know nice and tacked so that we can tell what they are and it tastes good they hold their shape we got some other some white beans too see how it kind of rolls around you know we just want to take it and I just cut off the tips and I'll just cut it in half so it's a little more manageable and then I'll take it and I'll just put a ticket that's called squaring it off a rag that's called squaring it off right here so makes it a little makes it more stable you know easier to work with you do this with anything that's round and so all you want to do for this I just want to cut it and make it like a nice just a nice medium dice it doesn't have to be too perfect but trying to keep them as uniform as possible so that they they cook evenly so so really simple just cut them and again you see how I'm keeping the tip on the board and letting my knife just saw through it and just producing a small base or even dice I'm not too concerned about it all being perfect so don't freak out think I'm gonna throw a pot or anything so just cut it down so this is the zucchini and we're gonna do three sisters with our squash a little bit of late season zucchini yellow squash and when you're doing the three sisters at home you want to use the equal parts so one cup corn one cup squash one cup beans just trying to do the math it's really simple so that's how we're gonna cut the zucchini whoever gets on the zucchini station same thing with the yellow squash okay again cut off a very small amount of the little tip right there and if you compost save it for the compost bin I was cut in half to make it more manageable cut it in half or cut it down and I just kind of see that and then these slices are the stack them up and then cut them down again into smaller pieces so really simple just about this size so that's how we're gonna cut the yellow squash and our beans obviously are already done so someone can finish that when we do so you better now I'm gonna use this one two three four kind of stubborn right kind of hard right so what I always do with butternut squash depending on how I'm gonna cook it the easiest way to roast it is to just split it in half and then take out the seeds and put the cut side down so it's flat and put a little bit of water in the pan and then roast at 350 for like 45 minutes when it's done this will kind of be wrinkled it'll be nice and soft really easy way to cook it for us because I don't have oven I'm gonna pan roast it so to prep it for that again it's kind of you know rolls around is kind of stubborn remember a sharp knife is a safe knife because I can do exactly what I want you don't mean the stood up struggling so and here's the the cavity right where all the babies are the seeds right so inside I'm gonna take it and I'm just gonna cut off the neck right there I'm just gonna take it see I squared it off in a way now I can manage it a little bit and I'll just take it and this is how I do it you can do it with a peeler but I'm gonna just see that take my knife from holding it nice and firm you know just kind of going like that so try to keep it kinda get just the small amount of flesh off you want to get that white tough skin off of there and if you roast at home you can just scoop it out you know me it was really nice put some honey on there it's really really delicious and then for this guy - same thing cut them into manageable pieces manageable pieces and then we'll cut them down and then blow out Hannah Rose see that so and if you're a seed saver someone can have these seeds but do we'll put them on here so just about the same size dice and what I'll do is I'll demo how it looks when it's all done and we'll draw a flavor out by not adding too much salt right away okay so I'll continue these how many of you have used delicata squash anybody all right well we don't have an oven but I'm gonna split it open so you can see and so kind of give you an idea how you would treat the butternut and or acorn squash or most squash too so if you want to take it we'll just carefully hold it and split early and then you got the cavity and you would scoop out all these seeds and then you put them put them in your pan like this with a little bit of water you can take you could take a little bit of herb and put it in here and put it down and a little bit of water so it doesn't like burn right away so it steams it's to start it and then it'll soften up after about 30-40 minutes nice and sweet and the times like to say is there's two so you me would tell by the names of delicata it's in a lot of it's in a lot of pasta dishes with like sage and pinions you know so hey man that's needed you know so so just being able to to recognize these dishes or these ingredients is the key part and then from there on you know again with them sits in places we go to cookbooks or other resources or you know or to our relatives and we find the information for ourselves so to work clean I just either take these off or I just take my and just cut off the tip like that see that and then all I'll do is just normally what I'll do is I'll roast them just like this just throw them in the oven 30 30 minutes about 350 and then when they're nice and when they're nice and uh the husks are golden they've steamed in their own silk you can pull them out and then one there when they come out of the oven you're going to do it's cool I do is cut off the end to where it's exposed and these guys will just slide right out but so see you guy took it and I just cut it and I'm just gonna peel back the husks so if you guys want to keep the husks you can for whatever reason or you want to keep the the silk that the corn silk is edible I learned that you can make some Navajo or native shredded many weeks right mini corn or whatever you can just take them roll them up and you can tie them to if you want you can dry them in the oven and you know crunchy or the corn you can cut it like this and then what you'll see is it'll run away from you it doesn't want to be eaten you know it's gonna try to escape so you want to keep it so you would take it again see it's kind of rolls around hold it firm and use this to keep your fingertips tucked and then square it off Batsy and then you can then you can go like this see that roll it again yeah roll it again nice and stable and then you can go back and it's not as messy because if you start like this most of the time it'll just you'll be chasing the corn all over the table or the donut floor really simple that's all you'll do on the on the corn so you want to get it right when it's nice and hot and right to the smoking point we call it so just a big pan so it looks like a lot but I wanted to get coated all the way around see that see it's shimmering it's like nice waves all that energy from the fire coming through the pan so all I want to do is just take my squash and it's just I okay remember but at this point you and you you don't you don't start ticking it around and trying to force it remember you've got to be patient like we talked about that seed you want to let it develop so take it swirl it around and then I'll just add that in there like that so as that we want that to caramelize so we want it to do we want those we want that heat activate all those sugars and to caramelize it so this way this is like the first part of building flavors for this is autumn sisters so again instead of letting it cook too much and again you notice I haven't had any salt yet because I'm building these flavors with carmelization I'm gonna have the corn and then once at the end of their life cycle they give their life there they could do it with protein one of my favorite ways of teaching about symbiotic relationships and working together because the plants work together and you'll see that they taste good together you know to me so I mean teamwork tastes good I guess right baby better so follow me all right so still I still haven't added any I don't have any salt and pepper again I'm gonna wait till the end so so the beans I'm taking to do the smartest food not just Adam at the end so that name they're just they're just really warming them through that's it and any of that liquid that's left in the in there will really just kind of add like a stop to it so now this is this is almost done you got it almost you have there a few minutes away from one's colorful food is healthy food right so you can see all the different flavors and textures going on here all indigenous foods here right corn beans and squash and the tomatoes so we're adding the tomatoes at the end because tomatoes have acid in them too but I don't want to add them too early because tomatoes aren't like mushrooms almost all water otherwise will break down and get mushy I want them to still hold some of their sake so I do want that nice acidic though and now here's where I start to layer the final flavors yeah so let those through by pretty take some generous parsley or you could chop up kale or top of us good news or you could chop up wild lambsquarters you know you could chop up a number of different breeds based on what you want and just go in there and then again remember I'll see the result there's one even layer over the top usually does the trick yeah little bit of pepper and then I still want to use a little bit of lemon juice because salt is all folded up flavors lemons kind of push them out too [Music] so just a little bit just to brighten it up so we've got all these different complexities going on but at the same time is very simple um so we have a nice nice kind of woody earthy beans the grassy roasted zucchini yellow squash the sweet the sweet butternut squash and the sweet corn that's in there also so then we got the nice aesthetic tomatoes a little bit of herb and we're good so you can see because of our indigenous foods and our ancestral knowledge these plants come back and they when we frame the Nirmala saying a lens of ancestral hominids when we frame them in that way we're practicing the Dillion see this is culinary decolonization you know we're re-examining what's healthy for us not just from a nutritional standpoint but from a spiritual standpoint a historical standpoint you know recoveries you know you get to eat this edible ancestral knowledge so powerful and that's why I wouldn't become like this we cook so that we teach it at the life skill not we don't I can do a really intricate like modern plating so they're cool and awesome but this is where the change really happens because you can just you know what I mean and you can take it home even teach it each and every one of you can do it cooking demo and say this is symbiotic relationship this is okay and finish with a little sunflower seeds we've had pumpkin seeds it would be like adding in the little babies of the squash right but we'll add this in there for a little crunch delicious amazing the whole class was really informational and it really gave me a whole perspective of eating right Ezri good

Channel: Navajo Nation Special Diabetes Program

Views: 28,722

Rating: 4.9235954 out of 5

Keywords: Three Sisters, meal, native, american, health, food, Navajo, Apache, diabetes, prevention, nutrition, education, Cooking

Id: _sIQo8o9oO8

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2015