The Choctaw people originally inhabited what is now the states of Alababama, Louisiana and Mississippi and were considered by European settlers to be one of the five "civilized" native American nations. They had a complex political and social structure, organized along matrilineal lines, and practiced both agriculture and hunting and gathering. They grew corn, beans and squash - the famous three sisters -, as well as melons, sunflowers (for seeds) and tobacco. They often produced a surplus for trade, both with other Native American people and, after colonization, with Europeans. They fished, hunted deer and bear and gathered nuts and fruits from the forest. After the Europeans introduced domestic animals, they raised cattle, pigs and horses.

The Choctaw were ethnically cleansed from their native lands by the US government in the 1830s through the infamous trail of tears and forcibly moved to Oklahoma. Currently, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma is the third largest federally recognized native American nation in the US.

Choctaw cuisine today is a combination of old ancestral recipes and methods and the foods of the people the Choctaw were exposed to or forced to live among. Without access to their ancestral foodstuff, Choctaw have had to adapt to available ingredients.

For my quick sojourn into Choctaw cuisine, I made:

Walakshi

Choctaw Grape Dumplings

The Choctaw have eaten dumplings cooked with fruits from time immemorial. Originally, the dumplings were made with ground corn but they are not mostly made from wheat flour. Dumplings cooked in grape juice seemed to be a popular dessert with generations past, both among the Choctaw and other native American people. At first, I thought these would be similar to the Appalachian strawberry dumplings I made now decades ago, but the dough here is rolled and cut into strips before boiling in apple juice. The dough also used water instead of milk and lacked eggs.

The results, for me, were atrocious. I'm not sure if it was the ingredients, the fact that I didn't add enough water or that I might have overworked the batter, but I was unable to roll them as thin as the those in the original recipe looked, and when boiled they were heavy and tasted too much of flour. In any case, they went uneaten.

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Choctaw Grape Dumplings Ingredients 3 cups flour 1 Tbsp baking powder 2 Tbsp shortening or butter, melted 2 qts unsweetened grape juice 2 cups sugar Directions Mix the flour with the baking powder and melted shortening. Add 1 cup of water and mix into a stiff dough. Add more water if necessary to make sure it's all combined. Roll onto a floured surface and cut into very thin rectangles Put the juice and sugar to boil in a large saucepan over high heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Once it's boiling add the dough pieces. Boil for 5 minutes, then reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Adapted from Wyatt Stanford's recipe at The Oddyssey Online

Related cuisines I've explored so far: Iroquoian

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