Article in todays Billings Gazette about Fry Bread.....
Reporter's notebook: Sweet, flat, fluffy - there's no typical fry bread
Jodi Rave
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - Who makes the best fry bread? Navajos? Other American Indians?
It depends on whether you like it sweet and fluffy or round and flat.
Most fry bread cooks I know aim for fluff. It's good for dipping in a bowl of corn soup and soaking up juice.
But I've met plenty of Navajos who frown on northern fry bread.
My Navajo mother-in-law makes some of the best fry bread I've ever tasted. Half the pleasure is watching her shape it. She quickly pats and flaps the dough between her hands - a real dough-flapping pro.
She never rolls or stretches it, either. That's not her style. She helps Navajos take their place among champion fry bread makers.
But do they really have a right to claim the name to the venerable Indian taco?
I remember the first time I saw an Indian taco called a Navajo taco. It's made me wonder which came first. Of course, like many things Navajo, they claim it to be a part of their universe.
The issue came up again last weekend when I was with my Navajo in-laws at the Coeur d'Alene Tribe's Julyamsh powwow.
We were hungry after the drive between Missoula and Post Falls, Idaho. We decided to skip a meal at a local restaurant, figuring we could get an Indian taco at the powwow's fast-food strip before the grand entry.
For those who've never had an Indian taco, it's a delightful, hefty concoction of fried dough, beans, beef, lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and, maybe, salsa. But the high-carb confection - flour, salt and water fried to perfection - isn't for everyone.
A Navajo friend once proclaimed: I don't eat fry bread.
OK. But a lot of us do.
We know it's not good for us. Too much can lead us down a path of diabetic dietary destruction. But my in-laws and I weren't thinking of that while we scoped out the fry bread stands at the powwow.
We had a number of choices. Several stands sold Indian tacos, but only one sold Navajo tacos.
We headed to the longest line on the fairway, where the banner above the stand declared: The Original Navajo Taco.
My in-laws looked at the people working the stand to see whether they were really Navajo.
No buns, said my husband, as he checked out their hair. One man inside the stand wore braids. Can't be Navajo, said my in-laws.
Then they looked at the female cooks.
"Mom, they're rolling the dough," my husband said.
He was teasing. They were stretching it. No dough flappers back there. My mother-in-law shook her head.
After what seemed like a two-hour wait, we ordered.
They asked the boy taking orders where he was from.
Tuba City, he said.
That's in Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. Things were looking up. It looked as if we were going to get some flat, sugar-free Navajo fry bread.
I've eaten fry bread made 101 ways. And I've experimented with it and made it a number of ways myself. But I never skipped the sugar. I remember the first time I whipped up a batch for my husband.
He was a little baffled by the sweetness. "Why does it have a hole in the middle?" he asked.
My mother-in-law since has shared a few of her fry bread tips. No sugar. And I've learned Navajos tend to be picky about their flour. It must be Blue Bird.
Still, I'm a Hidatsa girl from North Dakota. And even though I've been learning to acquire a taste for some things Navajo, like mutton stew, I still remember my fry bread roots.
I'll never forsake sweet, fluffy fry bread with a hole punched in the middle.
Jodi Rave covers American Indian issues for Lee Enterprises.