Roots Revival

In Tuscon, Betsy Andrews finds a community preserving its culinary future through ancient ways

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SOME PEOPLE BRING HOME a T-shirt from a trip. I bring home food. These are the souvenirs I brought home from a recent visit to Tucson: tepary beans, dried cholla buds, ground chiltepin peppers, White Sonora wheat berries, White Sonora everything bagels, three heritage flours, five breads made with those flours, corn and flour tortillas, prickly pear syrup, and just-fermented miso made from oak-roasted squash.

Recognized as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy for its culinary traditions, Tucson boasts the remains of irrigation canals built by the Hohokam people over 4,000 ago. An hour north of the Mexican border, the Sonoran Desert is surprisingly verdant. I was visiting in winter, but during summer monsoons even the parched Santa Cruz River overflows. Indigenous people have lived here for more than 15,000 years, foraging, hunting, and eventually cultivating crops including corn, beans, and squash. The Spanish arrived in the 1500s, and until 1854 the area belonged to Mexico. Over subsequent generations, Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo traditions have intertwined to create an outstanding food culture.