This is a truly intriguing cookbook, loaded with historical and anthropological information - an amazing resource for anyone wishing to learn more about traditional foodways and cooking. I can't wait to try out some of these recipes!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy!

I started reading cookbooks with the same enthusiasm as novels when I was still in grade school, while I've made many recipes over the years, I've also absorbed enough knowledge to know a good recipe when I see one, and I found several that stand out to me, such as the mole sauce recipe which included dried fruits, the zucchini Bread with chile and chocolate, and the decadent sounding Chocolate, coconut and dried cherry tamales.
I will definitely attempt to try some of the recipes so I can update my review, but I also enjoyed thinking about how I can utilize more of the bounty of foods native to the Pacific Northwest (where I live) to incorporate into my cooking in the future. Certainly there is an abundance of these ingredients coming into season in the upcoming months, my palate is excited.

I really enjoyed reading about the blending of cultures and clearly here for all of the traditional recipes! Tortillas have been something on my tackle list and I can’t wait to try out the corn tortilla options and blue corn pasta! We’ve also planted a ton of squash this season and I know that chapter will come in handy when I’m not sure what else to make with squash, ha! I really enjoyed the descriptions she mentions in the recipes as well as the easy to follow instructions.

This is such an exciting book concept! Very unique, historically rich, and filled with recipes that make me want to run to the kitchen and start cooking—Blue Corn Pasta, here I come!

This book focuses on eight indigenous ingredients, giving background information and a good selection of modern recipes for each.

Gorgeous pictures. Great recipes. Illuminating information on Native American Cuisine.

This is exactly the cookbook for me. Look at that list of eight foods that it highlights – corn, beans, squash, chile, tomato, potato, vanilla, and cacao. Those are all my favorites. My go-to lazy meal is sweet potato topped with salsa, beans and corn. My palate was made for this book.

This is more than a cookbook though. There is a detailed history of each of the foods and their uses in Native American societies. There are also resources to find less common ingredients from Native American companies.

The photography is beautiful. There are photographs of each of the dishes but also of artistic shots of the various ingredients.

All of the recipes are vegan. I like the organization of the book. The recipes are arranged by ingredient instead of by meal type. I’d usually list a few recipes that I’m interested in trying but in this book I can’t pick.


Corn
Recipes for corn range from tortillas, to breads, tamales, stews, pastas, pancakes, and desserts.

Beans
There are salsas, spreads, stews, tacos, and pots of beans of various flavors.

Squash
Learn to roast, grill skewers, make salads, and bake with all kinds squash

Chiles
What can’t you make with chiles? There are basic red and green sauces, stuffed chiles, stews, casseroles, enchiladas, and desserts.

Tomatoes
People forget that Italians learned about tomatoes from the Native Americans. The recipes here highlight fresh and light salads, soups, and casseroles.

Potatoes
There are so many ways to cook potatoes. That could be a whole other book. There are roasted, mashed, and pureed recipes here. Add potatoes to burritos, tacos, and tamales.

Vanilla
The vanilla recipes are mostly desserts but range from sorbets to dessert tamales to skillet cakes along with more common baked goods.

Cacao
There is a nice introduction to moles if you aren’t used to making them. After that it is on to desserts like in the vanilla chapter.


This book doesn’t come out until the end of summer but I am definitely going to preorder a hard copy. (I got an ARC from NetGalley.) This is a great resource.

Like this:

I was really torn on how to rate this book. On the one hand, I appreciate Frank’s desire to present healthy versions of native foods. She presents excellent history of how all 8 of these foods originated in the Americas and of the stages of authentic Native American foods. Obviously foods like fry bread were never part of any nation’s traditional diet, and those recipes were developed to use the terribly unhealthy rations given to the people. She has also spent her life learning authentic indigenous recipes from Native cooks.

That said, Frank does not seem to be Native American herself, meaning this is not an “own voices” cookbook. Her chef and business partner is and he helped develop many of the recipes, and many Native people contributed in some part to the book. I was a bit bothered by how much the book gives the appearance that Frank is Native and skirts around her ancestry, almost as if they were trying to gloss over her true ancestry. I looked her up because on one hand she is supposed to be one of the living experts on Native American cooking but I couldn’t find any mention of her nation. Wikipedia says that she “claims” Kiowa descent on her mother’s side but in the book she carefully doesn’t claim any. I saw her mentioned on a website that tracks “pretendians” but there was no more information. So perhaps at some point she claimed to be part Kiowa but has stopped? Recently there have been a number of supposedly Native American leaders and public figures who have been outed as having no real tribal affiliations or any evidence of indigenous family history so some people are suddenly backtracking on who they say they are. Do we care if Frank is herself Native if she puts out good recipes and gives credit to the developers? I must admit I am torn.

Frank cares about health and flavor, and the book says she works with Native folks to teach them how to source healthy ingredients cheaply, but in some cases I was frustrated with things like calling for vanilla bean paste because it’s so much better even though it will be too expensive for many. Likewise, her recipe for almond milk makes no mention that you can reuse the strained pulp for baking. And while she teaches us how to make masa flour, she doesn’t teach us how to dry it and the recipes call for purchased masa flour.

I must also admit that I was really hoping for more traditional ingredients like acorns, cattails, wild rice, etc. one recipe called for choke cherries but for the most part the ingredients are very modern and generic.

Lastly, the recipes are all vegan and are not that authentic. I respect Frank’s desire to offer healthy versions, but I am not convinced that she could not have done that and kept some closer to their original recipes.

Photos are provided for about a third of the recipes. No nutritional information is provided, which is always an automatic deduction for me.

I cook a number of these dishes myself and I did not find any where her versions sounded tastier or more authentic than what I already do. I have no doubt that there are delicious recipes in this book and they will be especially appealing to vegan readers.

I realize this review sounds harsh and I don’t mean to denigrate it. I gave it three stars for liked it, but it wasn’t as great as I hoped.

I read a temporary digital review copy of this book via NetGalley.

This is more than the average cookbook. It gives a great overview of each of the eight ingredients highlighted in recipes causing the reader to ponder the depth of the effect on world cuisine of these indigenous American foods. The recipes are simple and not limited to only indigenous ingredients but certainly honoring of them. the author gives a very helpful explanation as to the various approaches to indigenous cooking and why one may be preferred over another.

Love this recipe collection. Can't wait to be able to buy it. Fairly rare to find a cookbook where I want to try basically every recipe.

An amazing book of recipes and history. I collect cookbooks, have for almost 50 years now. So any cookbook I buy has to be special and unique. I not only bought a copy of this one for me, I'm gifting it to my nieces and nephews as part of the focus on their native heritage. A wonderful book that is sure to generate many thanks.

Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky was a beautiful labour of love and it surprised me by being not only a cookbook, but an account of Native American history and origins of 8 common plants /food! The pictures were beautiful and the author did a great job with the easy to follow recipes and instructions. I was particularly interested in the potatoes and squash chapters as they are staple foods in my diet, so it’s fun to learn how other cultures prepare the food, and ways they’ve been prepared in history.

Thank you to NetGalley, Hachette Books, and Lois Ellen Frank for the ARC, all thoughts and opinions are mine, and I am now STARVING! Haha!

OKAY, FUCK YES. Let's go! I've already started to sow my seeds for a summer/fall harvest and I am absolutely LIVING for some of these recipes that I will undoubtedly be whipping up in the kitchen. Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky hits shelves on August 29, 2023 and I am so excited for its release!

I was very curious to know more about how the Navajo and other tribes eat, both now and traditionally. This book gave me everything I wanted to know in terms of context for the recipes. It's a great addition to the cookbook genre and the author has done a marvelous job explaining each recipe.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. However, it did make me hungry....

Synopsis: (from Netgalley, the provider of the book for me to review)
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A celebration of eight magical plants Native Americans introduced to the rest of the world: corn, beans, squash, chile, tomato, potato, vanilla, and cacao—with more than 100 recipes.

When these eight Native American plants crossed the ocean after 1492, the world’s cuisines were changed forever. In Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky, James Beard Award-winning author and chef Lois Ellen Frank introduces the splendour and importance of this Native culinary history and pairs it with delicious, modern, plant-based recipes using Native American ingredients. Along with Native American culinary advisor Walter Whitewater, Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky shares more than 100 nutritious, plant‑based recipes organized by each of the foundational ingredients in Native American cuisine as well as a necessary discussion of food sovereignty and sustainability.

A delicious, enlightening celebration of Indigenous foods and Southwestern flavours, Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky shares recipes for dishes such as Blue Corn Hotcakes with Prickly Pear Syrup, Three Sisters Stew, and Green Chile Enchilada Lasagna, as well as essential basics like Corn Masa, Red and Green Chile Sauces, and Cacao Spice Rub. The “Magic 8” ingredients share the page—and plate—to create recipes that will transform your world.

I had heard of the "three sisters" (Corn, beans and squash) but not of all eight ingredients that are considered to be Native American. I wondered about vanilla and cocoa but realized that when you add in Mexico and Central America, you have the hot climates needed for those. (I doubt that any Native Canadian recipes feature those two ingredients.)

The issues on food sovereignty and sustainability are interesting but the big appeal of this book is the recipes. The best Mexican food I can find locally is not from my city's large Latino and Hispanic population but from the Mexican Mennonites! Their food makes me very happy and is worth the drive to that area of SWO where I can also easily source the ingredients necessary for the wonderful recipes in this book.

A great cookbook with some important lessons, to boot: I will highly recommend this book.