Curated playlist
Native American cuisine
- GuavaStrawberry guava threatens more than 100 other plant species in Hawaii. Birds spread its seeds in their droppings.
- CassavaCassava, a staple for over 800 million people, can kill if prepared badly. Raw roots contain toxic cyanide compounds.
- Wild turkeyThe wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, is the heaviest member of the order Galliformes, the group of ground-dwelling game birds that includes pheasants and grouse. By the late 1930s, game managers believed that fewer than 30,000 of these…
- American bisonBy 1889, only 541 American bison were left in the United States. They once numbered an estimated 60 million.
- Maple syrupQuebec alone accounts for 72 per cent of the maple syrup produced on Earth. Almost all the rest comes from Canada and the United States, which makes this one of the most geographically lopsided foods in the world. Maple syrup is a sweet…
- OpuntiaOpuntia is a genus of flowering plants in the cactus family Cactaceae, and most people know it as the prickly pear. Cacti are native to the Americas and suited to arid climates, though shifts in rainfall and temperature driven by climate…
- VanillaVanilla, the flavor behind countless cakes, ice creams and perfumes, owes its place in the world to a 12-year-old boy on the island of Réunion. His name was Edmond Albius, and he was enslaved. In 1841 he worked out how to pollinate the…
- TamaleA red light burning outside a home in Guatemala at night signals that tamales are for sale inside. The tamale itself is a parcel of corn dough and filling with roots thousands of years deep. Today it appears in Andean valleys, Caribbean…
- Asimina trilobaAsimina triloba, the American pawpaw, is a small deciduous tree of eastern North American forests that bears a fruit with a custard-like texture. Ohio botanist William B. Werthner once wrote that the fruit is sweet and a little puckery,…
- PemmicanPemmican, a dense mixture of dried meat and rendered fat, earned one of the strongest endorsements ever given to a food. The explorer Robert Peary wrote in his 1917 book Secrets of Polar Travel, "It is an absolute sine qua non." He had…
- GritsGrits, the boiled cornmeal porridge of the American South, became Georgia's official prepared food in 2002. A bowl of it is simple. Coarsely ground corn is stirred into warm salted water or milk until it thickens. Yet this plain dish has…
- PopcornPopcorn kernels can swell to 20 to 50 times their original size when heated. The word covers both a special variety of corn and the snack that comes out of it. Evidence of popcorn reaches back thousands of years in the Americas, which…
- CatfishA Mekong giant catfish caught in northern Thailand on the 1st of May 2005 weighed 293 kilograms. The press only heard about it almost two months later. Thai officials began keeping records of such catches in 1981, and no Mekong giant on…