::DEPARTMENTS:: Su Cuisine

Pueblo Hospitality

By Cathy Robbins

If you’re not cooking for 25 people, you’re not cooking enough,” Bert Wilson says of holiday meals for his extended family at Zuni Pueblo.

Wilson is one of four Pueblo cooks at Albuquerque’s Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. None knows how to cook a holiday meal for just four or six or eight people. Wilson’s household, for one, never has that few people in it, except perhaps in the very early morning. After that, the house is full. As many as 50 people—family, kin, outsiders just visiting—will come through the house on a holiday, and traditional Pueblo hospitality dictates that each and every one of them should be able to sit down at table.

Anyone who has watched the steady stream of holiday visitors in a Pueblo home must wonder how such quantities of food magically appear. Part of the answer is the kind of adaptation that Native Americans have practiced in many areas of life, combining elements of their own culture with those of Europeans who came here. In their cuisine, Pueblo people retain the strong cultural elements that reflect their native traditions as well as those of their colonizers. Their unique winter stews, for instance, are perfect for quantity cooking at holidays. So take some tips about cooking for a crowd from the staff at the Pueblo Harvest Café.

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SU CUISINE RECIPE
Norman Torivio’s Posole

• Start with 4 gallons water
  
• 6 bags posole
  
• About 21/2 pounds diced pork
  
• Start with 1/4 cup ground oregano
  
• Salt to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a 6- to 8-gallon pot. Cook at a strong simmer for 4 to 5 hours, adding more water as needed to keep the stew covered. Add more oregano and salt to taste. This produces a basic posole. Serve with bowls of red and green chile for each diner to add to the stew.