Traditional food is certainly one of the main and most recognizable differences between our culture and that of the Yup'ik village. It has required an adventurous spirit on our part to try many of their traditional dishes, but we continue to want to try new things, and they are always interested to see how we react to the food that they give us. Of course, with the continued infusion of our own culture into theirs we often see things that are common to us (especially spaghetti, they love it, and it's cheap), but there are always things that we probably would never have even dreamed of making. Here are a few that we have tried so far.
Salunuk
Salmon is a huge part of the village diet for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they can harvest large amounts of it to see them through the winter. For the most part they treat it somehow in order to preserve it, and many of them smoke all or most of it, but a few still make Salunuk. Essentially the fresh salmon is buried in rock salt until the salt "cooks" the fish. The meat changes color from the typical reddish/orange of raw salmon to the pinkish/orange of cooked. However, it retains the moisture of the raw meat, and certainly comes out very salty. It brings to mind eating sashimi in a sushi restaurant...if you had a notion to cover it in salt first!
Moose Heart Soup
Unfortunately we didn't catch the Yup'ik name for this dish, but this is one that we would make at home! According to them, if two men are working together and take a moose, there is often a fight (sometimes with fists) over who gets the heart. We were lucky enough to get to see why. This soup is really very simple with the only other ingredients being rice and possibly a few vegetables, but the small cubes of moose meat are what make it so memorable. The meat has the distinctive moose flavor that we got to know through some moose ribs and steaks that we were given, but it is so fine, dense, and tender that it is easy to see why people fight over it. This is definitely a favorite thus far, and if we manage to take a moose next year it will be a meal that we savor!
Agutuk
There are certainly many things that we have not yet tried, but there is one that we're sure neither of us will be able to bring ourselves to sample. The kids have told us that this is something that they don't even eat, and the only ones that still make it are some of the elders. They take the heads of the salmon and bury them in the ground for a period of time; long enough that they begin to ferment and the normally solid salmon head takes on a consistency more like that of cheese. This is the point at which they eat it...enough said.
There are a number of infusions from our own culture that have become a regular part of the village diet, probably the most popular of which is spaghetti. Just about every event that we have attended where food was served has had huge amounts of spaghetti available, and it is always gone by the end!
An open mind has certainly gone a long way for us, and we look forward to the surprises that the future will most certainly bring!
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