By Korsha Wilson, The New York Times
Before even the idea of a United States, Indigenous communities referred to the vast expanse of what is now North America, with its mountains and plains, rivers and lakes, as Turtle Island. Just as a turtle’s shell has segments (scutes), the various groups each had their own sections of the continent, linked through tradition and ways of eating.
Highlighting that past is at the heart of chef Sean Sherman’s work. He sees food and restaurants as a way to both discuss this history, and bring into the present. “I really want people to learn about the land that they are on,” he said.
A tribal member of the Oglala Lakota and the executive director of NATIFS, an Indigenous food lab, Sherman, 51, is the country’s leading voice on Native American cooking. On Tuesday, he released “Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America,” a cookbook focusing on traditions across North America.
Written with journalist Kate Nelson and author Kristin Donnelly, it expands on the ideas in his first book, “The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen,” like cooking with seasonal offerings found in many parts of the country (such as duck, corn, berries and elk), and avoiding ingredients introduced after colonization (dairy, cane sugar, beef, pork and chicken).
“What is American cuisine?” is a constant question in culinary circles, with many chefs saying that it’s a mix of other countries’ foods, but “Turtle Island” offers a more direct answer: Native American ingredients and practices are part of the United States’ legacy — and yet still largely unknown.
Sherman interviewed elders and traveled to all 50 states, even building a larder, harvesting wild plants, berries, proteins such as bear and moose meat while they were in season to appropriately test recipes.
“I had to buy two extra refrigerators,” he said.
One of the biggest challenges was thinking about the average American cook, who often doesn’t have access to, or overlooks, the ingredients closest to them, the produce that grows where they live.
Instead of being prescriptive, Sherman and his co-authors thought about how to teach home cooks to fully see their surroundings as a living, breathing landscape full of potential ingredients. Nettle soup, for example, highlights indigenous nettle greens and fennel, which isn’t native but “grows like a weed” along the California coast and bursts through sidewalk cracks throughout the state, Donnelly said.
“These days, these ingredients are so foreign to us, but they’re a part of this land,” said Nelson, a journalist who is a member of the Tlingit tribe of Alaska. “We wanted to show non-Native readers that this is the tip of the iceberg.”
In the book, tender greens, foraged in the spring or summer, are mixed with wild mint for a salad with sumac-spiced hickory nuts. Gumbo, traditionally associated with Cajun and Creole cooking, is Indigenous, too, here using a mix of wild and cultivated ingredients such as fresh bay leaves, popped amaranth, duck breast and wild American shrimp.
In that way, “Turtle Island” isn’t just about imagining a different present but it’s also a work of futurism, Sherman said.
“You can make food taste like where you are,” he said. “By doing that, we can carry the best of our ancestors forward.”
Recipe: Wild Greens Salad With Persimmons and Hickory Nuts
Tender greens make up the base of this bright, simple yet texturally complex salad adapted from “Turtle Island” (Clarkson Potter, 2025) by Sean Sherman. The chef created it to highlight seasonal foraging in North America. While wild dandelion greens or chickweed provide the full effect, mixed greens or even arugula also work, providing a peppery bite against the honeyed persimmon fruit. Great on its own, this salad can also be served alongside a hearty, braised main dish such as Sherman’s bison pot roast with hominy. — Korsha Wilson
Yield: 4 servings
Total time: 15 minutes
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup hickory nut or pecan pieces
- Sea salt
- Ground sumac
- 1/2 cup diced fresh persimmon or 2 ounces dried persimmons (preferably the North American variety, which come into season in the late fall)
- 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- 8 cups/about 4 ounces loosely packed wild greens (see Tip for more options)
- 1/4 cup (or more, to taste) mountain mint or any tender, bright green mint, leaves torn
- 2 tablespoons thinly sliced white parts of ramps, wild onion or scallion
- 2 tablespoons sunflower oil or other neutral oil
Preparation
1. Spread the nuts in a large skillet in a single layer. Toast over medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until fragrant. Transfer to a plate and season with salt and sumac.
2. If you’re using dried persimmons, bring a small saucepan of water to a boil. Add the persimmons and remove the pot from the heat. Let persimmons stand for about 10 minutes to rehydrate, then drain before cutting them into bite-size pieces.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the vinegar and maple syrup. Add the wild greens, mint and ramps. Drizzle in the oil while tossing to coat the greens evenly, then add the nuts and persimmons and toss again. Taste and season with salt. Serve right away.
Tip
In the spring, look for dandelion, plantain, chickweed and sochan. In the summer or fall, look for purslane, lamb’s quarters or plantain. While this salad celebrates foraging, it is delicious with even just arugula or mixed greens.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.