Harlem Bespoke: The history of many of the nation's soul food is complicated and we only recently learned about fry bread which is a beloved Navajo dish with roots in despair. Flour, lard, sugar were some of the basic food rations that the government gave the indigenous people of Arizona for the
Long Walk in 1864 which was the deadly 300-mile trek to relocate the entire population to New Mexico reservations. Mixing the ingredients and frying them was the birth of the bread which is now considered ubiquitous comfort food for many Native Americans but also a reminder of a desperate time of survival.
Modern recipes use flour, baking powder and a dash of salt for the dry ingredient which are mixed with water and divided up into balls that are then flattened and fried in a pan. Fry bread is not served up anywhere that we know of in the city so we tried out recipe today which took only 20 minutes to make. The bread is crispy on the outside with a chewy texture within and can be made into a savory meal with taco toppings or sweetened with powder sugar, syrup or honey drizzled on top. More on the history of frybread at the Smithsonian: LINK
HarlemBespoke.com 2021
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