We are what we eat, how we eat and where we eat. That concept is the focus of FUZE.SW, the still-shiny-new conference on food and folklore at Museum Hill, where the topic of Southwestern cuisine will be thoroughly chewed and digested from every possible perspective: sociocultural, archaeological, academic, traditional and culinary.
FUZE is the brainchild of Museum of New Mexico publicist Steve Cantrell, who dreamed up the original event as a way to promote and complement the 2013 exhibit New World Cuisine: The Histories of Chocolate, Mate y Más at the Museum of International Folk Art. That exhibit dealt with food of the Americas and the dialogue between native and introduced foods. The first conference was, according to Cantrell, enough of a hit that participants wanted to do it again.
“We also looked at how food is a lens which, in a very nonthreatening way, we can look at our culture,” Cantrell says. “Talking about the history of the Spanish in Mexico, people have heard that before.” But discussing how the Spanish influenced New Mexico with their food offers a different, more intimate, borderline feminist lens through which to view New Mexico history. Cantrell mentions the ladies in the kitchens who were responsible for the now-ubiquitous dishes of the local cuisine. “It was those ladies who created what we’re now eating at La Choza and Maria’s [New Mexican Kitchen],” he says.
This year, FUZE will focus on Native American foods and the fusion between Native American and Mexican/Spanish foods.
“This year is sort of the prequel to last year,” Cantrell says. “We’re taking a step back and saying, before the Spanish arrived, we had the Native Americans here … and oh, by the way, we really need to be paying attention to what they’re doing … because they were farming in a way that was much more healthy.”
FUZE spans three days, from Friday, Sept. 12, to Sunday, Sept. 14. Friday and Saturday are the serious conference days, packed from breakfast to dinner with talks and tastings by a fleet of distinguished writers, chefs and food professionals.
A short keynote speech opens each day, followed by three or four “fastalks” — 15-minute short talks designed to whet the appetite for the topics at hand. Fastalk topics include “The ‘New’ Pueblo Diet,” piki bread, the history of avocados and indigenous biotechnology. A talk called “It’s Not All Rats on a Stick” debates the colonial stereotypes about the realities of Native foods from an archaeological perspective.
After the morning “fastalks,” participants scatter into one of several concurrent panels (seating is first come, first served). Panel topics include farming in the high desert, indigenous cooking utensils, corn and how Native chefs define their culinary identity. There’s a discussion of tacos and even a panel on micaceous pottery and how to cook with it.
“In this conference, we will actually be looking at some of the ways that Native Americans used to farm,” Cantrell says. “It’s not so smart in New Mexico for us to be growing fields and fields and fields of alfalfa. Alfalfa’s not native. Cattle aren’t native.”
On Saturday, a panel will discuss Navajo churro sheep and Corriente cattle, which Cantrell says are far less damaging to the terrain than European cattle.
Many of the speaker’s names will be familiar, such as James Beard Award-winning authors Bill and Cheryl Jamison (The Rancho de Chimayó Cookbook: The Traditional Cooking of New Mexico); Deborah Madison (Vegetable Literacy); food journalist Betty Fussell; Café Pasqual’s owner Katharine Kagel; and Tina Ujlaki, executive food editor of Food & Wine magazine. They will be joined by a slew of local chefs, including up-and-coming Native American chefs Freddie Bitsoie (Diné) and Wenona Nutima of Tesuque Pueblo.
Madison, who gave a “fastalk” in 2013, is far more involved this year. “I went last year; I was a speaker when it was all kind of brand new and ‘what are we doing,’ ” Madison says. “I thought it was a really interesting conference … issues of gender, of contact, the good, bad and ugly, the dishes they use. There are a lot of single themes happening in these panels that could be conferences in themselves.”
And of course, between all the talks are the tastings and the meals, which will be memorable events. Friday features tastings of piki bread (Hopi blue corn flatbread), vegan hominy stew, local cider and a “Grandmother’s Lunch” in which traditional foods will be prepared by actual New Mexican grandmothers from around the state, including the pueblos. If you don’t have an actual New Mexican grandmother of your own, this may be your big chance to see what the fuss is about. Saturday night features an exclusive buffalo dinner at Museum Hill for the first 100 people who buy tickets, catered by John Sedlar, one of the creators of “modern Southwest cuisine” who will be returning to his hometown with his new restaurant at the Drury Plaza Hotel. The events are interspersed with “art breaks,” including food-themed poetry readings.
Sunday is free to the public. Museum Hill will be overrun with local food trucks on that day, and the public is invited to the all-day event featuring Native American dancers, cooking demos, cookbook signings and activities for the kiddies.
The conference is not inexpensive, however. Tickets are $250, but for that price, guests can participate in all the conference’s Friday and Saturday events, including all the tastings and meals.
Part of the ticket price is a tax-deductible donation to the Museum of International Folk Art and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.
