- Sujhey Beisser: I'm Sujhey Beisser.
I was born in Venezuela.
Cooking has been a part of my life
for as long as I can remember.
I remember as a kid,
my favorite pastime was kneeling on a chair,
watching my grandma cook.
In today's program,
we're going to learn about corn,
also known as maíz.
We eat it all the time,
from a casual breakfast to lavish dinners.
Maíz is one of the most vital foods the world has seen
for both animals and humans.
As the world's most dominant and productive crop
with extensive areas of land dedicated to global production
yielding over 1 billion metric tons,
corn is for a variety of purposes,
including animal feed, grain for human consumption,
ethanol, as well as for sweeteners, starch,
and for beverages like alcohol.
Maíz is literally everywhere.
It's a superfood, and its seeds could very well be
one of the most important foods humanity grows.
In marvel of engineering,
maize was invented in Mexico
thousands of years ago.
It's recognized today
as humanity's first genetically engineered food,
which has caused experts to reassess their understanding
of native history and culture.
Today, you're going to meet two chefs
who are sharing their knowledge with the world
through indigenous cooking
and how maíz has shaped their lives and communities.
Chef Elena merged her two passions
for community building and indigenous cooking
to create Wild Bearies,
an educational community outreach non-profit
that strives to bring ancestral foods
to communities in a nurturing and nourishing way.
Chef Elena will share about
the connection she has with the ingredients
and the responsibility we all have
in the foods we grow and eat.
- Elena Terry: Cooking is so sensical and beautiful.
The act of every part of it is instilled in you
when you do it.
I can make a meal, or start a fire, and know that,
like, my great-grandma's there with me.
I know that sometimes
when a certain animal might show up
for us to celebrate or to have a ceremony,
that my great grandma is there,
and I can think of those times
that she taught me how to clean it or care for it
or talk to it.
Appreciate that that animal
is fulfilling its destiny in some way
by showing up and nourishing us.
It's about that energy and appreciation.
Even if you go up to any human
and show that energy and appreciation,
they brighten up.
And so, why wouldn't we treat our foods that way
and say, "I'm here to help you grow."
And in the end, you know, you're gonna feed my family,
and I'll care for you
so that you can be everything you need to be,
to care for us.
If you've ever been to a space and it seems familiar,
or you've ever had something where you
instantly feel this connection
or that it's something that is instilled,
it's that for me,
it's a seed that was planted generations ago
that I get to benefit from the harvest of.
We have stories about the struggles
of what we had to endure to preserve those seeds
sewing them into our clothes,
hiding among our moccasins,
and bringing them with us on these journeys of trauma
and how we knew how crucial those foods were to continue
and how important it was to have those seeds.
You have to think of what "colonizing" means.
Our entire food systems were taken.
Socially, we were put in a space
that changed the way we ate.
We were relocated
and moved to spaces
where we weren't familiar with the food sources
or weren't able to cultivate.
Luckily, because of the intentions set forth by our ancestors
and the awareness of how crucial that knowledge was,
we have it today,
and we are able to find those foods and it's beautiful
'cause they're coming back in ways
that I haven't seen before,
and we call it "rematriating" back,
but it really is,
I feel, them saying it's time.
Reclaiming this space
and being able to say that we can get it to thrive again,
it's just one small area
that we're able to say is ours again.
You know, in this area in Wisconsin Dells,
everybody knows it is the waterpark capital of the world,
but for us, there's creation stories.
There's connections to that part of the river.
So, the base on a lot of tribes
are that these Three Sisters, there's different stories,
even across the country on how they came
to individual indigenous peoples.
It's the corn, the beans, and the squash,
and they naturally grow beautifully together.
I think if you look at food
and where they naturally exist together, and they thrive
when you combine those on a plate.
You know, there's so much that can be done
with the Three Sisters and the different varieties of corn
that are grown across, you know, the continent,
or the different varieties of squash and beans,
and then pairing them up together.
I mean, it's endless,
what you can do with those Three Sisters
and to think that they work so well together.
It's a perfect example of how those lessons
on how these plants came to us,
teach us how to live our life.
You know, I might have these qualities,
and my sister will have these other qualities,
and my other sister has these qualities
and, but together we're very powerful,
and we replenish each other the way we need to
or look out for each other the way we need to.
I just love everything about being in a kitchen
and in a restaurant setting.
The motion, and the smells, and the sounds,
and being able to finally be at a point in time,
in our culture, in our communities
where our foods are not only appreciated
but they're understood differently.
For me, the whole process is healing.
Comes from the Earth
and the places that my ancestors thrived,
and it brings me to those spaces
of overcoming, resilience,
strength, healing.
- Sujhey Beisser: Next, we are going to meet Chef Anthony Gallarday
of Tavo's Signature Cuisine in Milwaukee.
Chef Anthony will share the importance that culture plays
in innovating and evolving our foods.
[traditional Aztec music]
- Anthony Gallarday: It takes me back to my culture,
you know, to the Aztecs,
to everybody who was here before America was discovered.
I wanted to learn more about my culture,
not necessarily about Mexico or its history,
you know, go back in time even more.
You know, everybody talks about Pancho Villa,
Emiliano Zapata,
you know, Mexico's revolution, Cinco de Mayo.
I wanted to go way back to the Mexica, the Aztecs.
There's a story
of how the Aztecs, the Mexicas, got the corn
and how it came to be.
Corn is-- it's what our culture was founded on.
Our "yellow gold," that's what we call it.
The ceremony represents
the first genetic manipulation of corn.
It used to be called "huazintle."
It was a small little leaf
that had little grains,
and they brought 'em together.
It was a selective process.
They started taking out the bigger kernels
out of each corn that would grow
and just saving the bigger ones, saving the bigger ones,
and planting the bigger ones throughout generations.
And eventually, we got huge corn
and the variations of different colors,
tortillas, tamales.
Everything that we cooked with, it's corn.
My mother was actually shocked
that I could cook so well.
You know, out of all her kids,
she never expected me to be the one that,
you know, took on her recipes, took on her cooking.
I got started when I was 10 years old.
I started working in a kitchen, right alongside my father.
He was the head chef for many, many well-known restaurants
here in Milwaukee.
When we put Tavo's together
and the ideas came together as how to approach it,
I told my father, I said,
"I want to bring my mom's cooking.
I want to use her recipes."
Man, I grew up with the best chef in the world.
When she makes
any traditional dish that you can think of--
tamales, pozole, menudo--
her sauce is so unique
that I had to share it with the world.
I needed people to experience it.
And that's when I told my dad,
"Why don't we take my mother's recipes?
"You know, what we eat,
"take traditional Mexican food and elevate it.
Give 'em modern Mexican cuisine."
And that's how Tavo's came to be
Our vegetables.
That really meant something to me
when I started talking to a lot of farmers.
We source for heirloom vegetables.
And the reason we did heirloom vegetables
was because these have been growing in families
for hundreds of years,
generation after generation
and they don't use pesticides, are organically grown.
There's a saying that says, "Your body is a temple."
Treat your body right and it will treat you good.
I do believe it's important to know where your food comes from.
Understand what you're putting into your body.
Who picked the food? How many hands?
How was it grown? How it came to be.
Respecting each and every one of those steps.
We want consumers to connect with food in a way that
takes them back to Earth,
to Mother Nature.
Being able to educate people
on what our true culture is,
how they lived back then
and be able to tell an oral story
to live throughout generations,
it brings back dignity
to our culture and to our people.
You know, now,
you have people who are actually invested
in learning this history
and reviving the truth about what happened back then.
[traditional Aztec music]