Zuni Food, Rocks and All

“Idonapshe: Let’s Eat” (University of New Mexico Press; $16.95) is fascinating to read, although it’s not likely that the average cook will undertake any of the recipes. That’s because they are authentic Zuni Pueblo dishes, requiring such traditional ingredients as Zuni coloring powder, made by roasting white rocks until they crumble. To make dowhewe (piki bread), which is tinted blue with the coloring powder, it is necessary first to prepare a piki stone. This involves treating a sandstone slab with pumpkin seeds and cedar sap, then greasing it with sheep spinal cord or cow brain. The piki batter is cooked in a thin layer on the hot stone.

Compiled by Rita Edaakie, the book was published in cooperation with Zuni A:shiwi Publishing and the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center. One intent was to encourage Zunis to return to their ancient diet, as modern fat- and sugar-laden foods have contributed to a decline in their health.

Traditional Zuni cooking is simple. Pinto bean soup requires just four ingredients: beans, water, bacon and salt. Sheep intestines are baked without seasoning. Wild spinach is boiled in water, along with a dry roasted ear of corn, an old horseshoe or rusty nails to draw out the bitterness. The only dessert is a whole wheat flour pudding that requires panocha flour, which is ground from germinated wheat.

A chapter on the Zuni language starts the book (the title word, Idonapshe, means “let’s eat”). And photographs show the Zuni Pueblo in western New Mexico, bread baking in the beehive oven and other scenes of Zuni life. It ends with a detailed nutritional analysis of the recipes, in keeping with the goal of improving the Zuni diet.

Information on Zuni culture is woven into the recipes as well as being supplied in separate passages, making this a good reference work for students of native Americans and the Southwest.

“Idonapshe: Let’s Eat” can be ordered from the University of New Mexico Press (800) 249-7737. There is a $3.75 charge for shipping.