Chef Andrea Murdoch is busy in the kitchen of the Same Caf茅 in Denver 鈥� a pay-what-you-can restaurant run entirely by volunteers. She commonly uses the kitchen space when she needs an extra oven or two.
鈥淓verything is a combination of Russian roulette and a Rubik鈥檚 cube in kitchens,鈥� she said to a volunteer chef, laughing.
As volunteers take out pans and rip off pieces of parchment paper to cover them, a sweet smell wafts from the ovens. Murdoch is baking her famous light blue sugar cookies for an Indigenous Comic-Con event later that week.
鈥淭hey look good, and they smell good too!鈥� said one volunteer chef.
鈥淎nd it supports Indigenous economies!鈥� Murdoch yelled back.
But Murdoch 鈥� one of the Indigenous chefs that鈥檚 part of a in Colorado and other parts of the Mountain West 鈥� doesn鈥檛 make cookies like other chefs. Instead of using flour, she鈥檚 utilizing found in Southwest Colorado.
鈥淏lue cornmeal is something that's very specific to the Four Corners region of the U.S.,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou will not find this easily out on the West Coast, out on the East Coast.鈥�
And this isn鈥檛 the first time she鈥檚 used unique ingredients in her cooking to support and highlight Indigenous food sources.
鈥淚 sourced locally and Indigenously to support those economies,鈥� she said. 鈥淜roger doesn't need my money.鈥�
Going back to her origins
Murdoch鈥檚 story is quite the journey, born out of the connection to her culture. She was born an orphan in Caracas, Venezuela, near the Andes Mountains. She was adopted shortly after and came to the United States. She grew up cooking with her family and soon went to culinary school in New York.
Despite the various places she cooked and traveled, she has always been impacted by the women of Oneida Nation 鈥� only a few hours from Milwaukee. They shared their creation story with her as well as how to make their version of cornbread.
鈥淚t unlocked something in me where I just felt at home,鈥� Murdoch said. 鈥�...Having that kind of cultural experience and mindset, that felt like a reconnection.鈥�
Soon after, Murdoch wanted to expand 鈥� her food business 鈥� and create South American cuisine. Through her research, the Andinan chef found the ingredients that were representative of the culture were pre-colonial. That refers to any food that existed in America before colonizers arrived, like rabbit or bison.
鈥淚 was tapping in more and more to my ancestry, whether I knew it or not,鈥� Murdoch said.
She wanted to 鈥済o back to her origins鈥� in her cooking and support Indigenous communities. Her ingredients come from Indigenous or local farmers, like and . She chooses ingredients within the state as much as possible and does what her ancestors did 鈥� live off the land.
鈥淸I] utilize what is there,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e didn't have this, 鈥極h yeah, just ship it from wherever you are.鈥欌��
She also taught herself how to forage on her own for ingredients. She shared how she will take her dog and go out by herself as her 鈥渜uiet time鈥�, looking for flowers or spruce tips for her dishes.
鈥淚 especially love it when it's raining and I'm out there foraging because I'll talk specifically to Illapa, our weather god, because that rain is a gift that is going to help our crops,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t's going to help the land, it helps all the things. It's part of the system that makes everything go round.鈥�
She will frequently talk to the gods and her ancestors while she cooks. Murdoch lays out all the ingredients in front of her and just starts cooking, tapping into what she calls her 鈥渟ixth sense.鈥�
鈥�I don't always approach cooking and creating menus the way most chefs approach it,鈥� she said. 鈥淭here's an element of listening to the ingredients and understanding how you're going to honor them best.鈥�
While she doesn鈥檛 own a brick-and-mortar restaurant yet, she cooks for various events through Four Directions Cuisine 鈥� anything from a mirco-wedding, to cooking classes to a small chef鈥檚 table. She loves serving smaller groups because there's more room for 鈥渨himsy.鈥�
鈥淸I鈥檒l] say, 鈥楬ey, if it's OK with everybody, I have these pickled spruce tips that I think go really, really nicely on top of your elk meat taco,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd everybody just kind of looks around like, 鈥榊eah, we're game.鈥� And then that becomes a garnish and it also becomes a conversation piece and I get to talk to them about how I went foraging [and how] the buds are only out there for a limited time before they do fully sprout.鈥�
Murdoch said it鈥檚 rewarding to watch Indigenous people reconnect to their ancestral foods 鈥� as well as watching people try new ingredients for the first time.
鈥淭o see that satisfaction on their face, I'm just like, 鈥榊es, yes,鈥欌�� she said. 鈥淭hat's what knowledge exchange and cultural exchange in particular is all about.鈥�
She hopes those who eat her food take away the deeper knowledge of where it comes from and its ties to culture.
鈥�The way I look at food is respect,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t goes back to the Indigenous culture that plants aren't just plants, they are plant relatives.鈥�
Native cuisine: becoming popular, yet still hidden
This type of Indigenous cooking has grown in popularity, with many restaurants opening since the pandemic in big cities such as and . Some Indigenous chefs are also expanding . And, for the second year in a row, an Indigenous chef . The James Beard is almost like the Oscars for cooking.
Murdoch said Indigenous creatives like these have always existed, but they were in limited spaces. She鈥檚 excited to finally see their work in the spotlight.
鈥淚f you had told me five years ago that this is what the Indigenous food landscape was going to look like in this country, that we were going to have more restaurants being open, that people were going to say yes and greenlight Indigenous based projects, I probably would have looked at you with so much skepticism,鈥� she said.
But it wasn鈥檛 always this way, and in some cases, it is still invisible to the public. Many people can鈥檛 name even one Native restaurant, and Google often lumps the restaurant category 鈥淣ative American鈥� with 鈥淚ndian鈥� or other ethnic restaurants.
鈥淓ven pho, Thai cuisine, like, I can find those restaurants a hundredfold before I find an Indigenous cuisine based restaurant,鈥� Murdoch said. 鈥淎nd we live on the continent of North America.鈥�
Many other Indigenous chefs feel this way. Sean Sherman, the head chef of and winner of multiple James Beard awards, said many people draw a big question mark when it comes to identifying Indigenous dishes.
鈥淲e should really be focused on what's the true food of North America,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd you can't understand North American food unless you bring the Indigenous perspective into it.鈥�
He about how the absence of Native restaurants has to do with history. Bison were killed at alarming rates. Indian boarding schools and forced assimilation stripped them of their culture. And pushing Indigenous people onto resource-poor reservations without any land rights put them in a systemic trap.
鈥淲e just went through a really traumatic time in history where we haven't had time to heal yet, let alone evolve,鈥� he said. 鈥�... The more you dig into it, the more inequality you see and the more racist structures that you can see that are still built into the system.鈥�
Sherman is hopeful about the Indigenous food producers, chefs and food trucks that are coming onto the scene, but he said there鈥檚 room for more 鈥� as well as more room for understanding.
鈥淭here's just a lot of work to do and there's a lot of minds to change. But we're doing it through something very positive, which is food.鈥�
That鈥檚 exactly what Murdoch wants to highlight. The work she does for Four Directions Cuisine is not just catering 鈥� she鈥檚 hosted fundraising dinners to bring awareness to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, with proceeds going to the . She also wrote a book on Indian boarding school trauma, with a percentage of the sales going to the .
鈥淵es, I'm a chef, but I'm using that platform to bring awareness to cultural issues,鈥� she said.
Feeding beyond food
One recent event Murdoch helped with was , or the Epicurean Award To Support Scholars event, in June. It's hosted by the , which raises tens of millions of dollars each year for students to attend one of the in the nation, including schools in Arizona and New Mexico in the Mountain West.
鈥淗aving access to college experience is a universal challenge, but it's more so I think, in Indigenous communities where there's a lot less access to economic resources, there's a lot less physical access to places to go to college,鈥� said Cheryl Crazy Bull, a Sicangu Lakota and Rosebud Sioux woman, and the College Fund鈥檚 CEO. 鈥淲e find if we remove those barriers, then we increase Native student participation.鈥�
The dinner portion of the event sheds light on some common foods that were pre-colonial and how Indigenous people have used these foods for centuries.
The Indigenous chefs prepared a variety of dishes. Murdoch made a swirl cake using ingredients like popped amaranth, strawberry sauce, edible flowers and the same cornmeal from her sugar cookies. Chef Bradley Dry of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma made a Hen of the Woods Mushroom soup with roasted blue cornmeal and onions.
鈥淸It鈥檚] my homage to my family, because 鈥� I grew up foraging mushrooms with my family,鈥� Dry said. 鈥淭his is kind of a mixture of everything I ate as a kid in a soup form.鈥�
The main food for the event was catered by in Denver. Ben Jacobs, the eatery鈥檚 co-founder and a member of the Osage Nation, did variations on traditional dishes, like blue corn mush, Osage Hominy relish, and Three Sisters.
鈥淲e call that a 鈥楾hree Sisters, One Bite鈥� because all three sisters 鈥� corn, beans and squash 鈥� are all in one bite,鈥� he said, pointing to the dish on the table. 鈥淲e have a blue corn chip, white bean pur茅e, butternut squash, New Mexican red chili, amaranth, microgreens, smoke, and salt.鈥�
Jacobs shared how his love for cooking was inspired by his parents who opened up a small Native restaurant in Denver in 1989 for the Indigenous community. About 20 years later, Jacobs and his co-founding partner, Matt Chandra, opened Tocabe鈥檚 first location. His goal with the restaurant was to make Native cuisine accessible and show others what Native people contribute to the culinary scene.
鈥淸奥别闭 wanted to create something that wasn't just always for a community event,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e wanted to create that for our people, for our community, but also as a way to share identity and culture and who we are and where we're going.鈥�
Since then, one of Tocabe鈥檚 brick-and-mortar locations into a Native ingredient fulfillment center that plans to distribute meals to tribal communities. Jacobs said since the beginning, his work has always been about supporting the community 鈥� not a profit margin.
鈥淭he point is being able to provide people with food that's meaningful and not worry about, at the end of the day, mak[ing] money,鈥� he added. 鈥淲e're here to make impact.鈥�
Murdoch wants to do the same. She hopes that by cooking at events like this, she can uplift the cuisine and causes of her community while inviting others into the discovery.
Food is a common necessity, one of the few common necessities that everybody needs, no matter what. We need it for survival. So why not have a conversation about where your food came from? If you start with a plate of food and nourishing people's bodies, it nourishes everything else.Chef Andrea Murdoch
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, 糖心vlog传媒 in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the .
