#central valley represent
Every time Native Americans were mentioned in my education they were mentioned alongside this one native staple food made from acorns ground into a sort of flour/meal/cereal. I have wanted to try that shit for decades now I bet it rules. There has to be a native restaurant somewhere that serves an authentic version of it and I want to try it so bad.
CT I am so happy to tell you that Wiiwish fucks severely and is way easier to make than you’d think.
Please I desire the acorn meal
Assuming you have the right variety of acorns (I am assuming correctly bc I know where you live), follow the steps:
-Get the acorns
-Crack open said acorns, pull out the cotlydons and set them aside.
-Grind those bitches into flour. You can use a normal food processor for this nowadays.
-You’re now gonna wash the flour several times until it loses its bitterness completely. This is how it becomes safe for consumption, bc Yokuts/Chumash/various other Central Californian Natives are the fucking royalty of parboiling shit until you can eat it and it tastes good.
You now have authentic acorn mash. Let it dry a bit and then cook it in a hot skillet. You can add shit like cinnamon and sugar for a sweeter treat, or add rosemary and sage for some authentically herby savory nonsense.Tadaaaa. Wiiwish.
Any note on what the most authentic seasoning would be?
The salt and rosemary and sage would be my personal thought process on it, since those would be straight up what we had/have available, but for “authenticity” it’d be unseasoned. I liked the savory version better when I gave it my shot. It was sorta like focaccia?
Also I want to be very clear to your followers: This recipe is frankly only really possible for Central Valley CA folk. There’s a very specific species of oak we harvest from native to the area, you can’t just substitute any old acorn, it can be dangerous to do that + it probably won’t work as well. Trying to use a different kind of acorn would probably be more similar to a non-Californian native version of it, but I 1. Don’t know anythin bout those and 2. Know enough about acorns to know you don’t just randomly experiment.
