Tuscon’s lifeblood is still the surrounding Sonoran desert. More than 5000 years ago, the Tohono O’odham nation cultivated crops on the fertile floodplain and planted today’s rich culinary traditions.
Roll out the barrels – Los Milics winery near Tucson, Arizona.Credit: Tim Bond
Seed collectors, bakers, chefs, gardeners, and winemakers helped Tucson receive the UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation in 2015, highlighting its culinary distinctiveness.
The sprawling city boasts the “best 23 miles of Mexican food” in the country, so I begin at the source.
Mission Garden’s Kendall Kroesen proudly tells me the living museum’s volunteers preserve (and sometimes resurrect) the agricultural history of one of the world’s most diverse deserts.
“Many of the pomegranates, quince, fig and grapes growing here could be clones of the first fruits, vegetables and grains brought by the Spanish missionaries across the Atlantic in the 16th century,” he says. Also among the fruits of the Sonoran are mesquite and chiltepin chiles.
Next, he introduces me to the first people’s “Three Sisters” – corn, beans, and squash. We spot a roadrunner, but alas, no wily coyote in hot pursuit. But coyotes, raccoons and even bobcats have scaled the adobe walls at night, hungry for the resident chickens.
When Don Guerra first baked artisan loaves from his garage in 2009, he had his “aha moment”. With a grant to grow White Sonoran wheat and Chapalote corn, his business and artisan food got its foothold in Tucson. “Today, I can source 300,000 pounds of Arizona-grown grain annually.”
Humbly, the James Beard award-winner [these celebrate culinary leaders and have been dubbed “the Oscars of the culinary world] says, “It’s all about creating sustainable food systems in the community, supporting small-scale farmers and preserving what was here of the past to ensure the future. Sourcing mesquite flour from marginalised, indigenous farmers at San Xavier Co-op Farm is good for the entire community.”
Arms laden with still-warm loaves, we begin our “greatest hits tour” to taste the family-owned, nowhere-but-Tucson culinary classics, places where facades might be weather-beaten but that’s because they concentrate on the food, rather than the decor.
This article was originally published by a www.smh.com.au . Read the Original article here. .