A Central New York Culinary Observation

Venison Pie, recipe below 

I will never forget the time our family had Thanksgiving dinner at my Cousin Katie’s house up in Syracuse, New York. I must have been around twelve at the time. I recall we were driving down Borden Avenue where she lived and passed a home with what looked like a freshly shot and gutted buck with four points hanging from a neighbor’s house. Evidently the proud hunter planned on fresh venison on the Thanksgiving table. I would go on to attend college Syracuse University where I played lacrosse. Raised around members of the Onondaga Nation, I found that my teammates from Central New York were serious woodsmen. Midfielders and defensemen from West Genesee disappeared during hunting season and came back with freezers full of venison. When the campus cafeterias where closed at 7:30 pm, the upstate guys gorged on venison dishes while my teammates from down state and other points south of SU's Carrier Dome made due with thanksgiving leftovers, kraft mac and cheese kits, and or takeout pizza and buffalo wings. Thus I learned over the years that folks in Central New York loved to eat wild game. We associate venison with Native American culinary traditions which is true. The history of Thanksgiving Traditions begin with New England settlers eating with a group of Native Americans. The available documentary history of that event reveals that Native Americans brought several freshly killed dear to the several day long feast. Below are links to venison recipes for the hunting type among you.

Venison pie:http://debsravingrecipes.blogspot.com/2010/09/venison-pie-wintry-hit.html

Insanely Delicious Venison recipes: http://www.yumdiary.com/2010/07/venison-burgers-sliders-appetizers.html

Thanksgiving Day Series: Thanks For Acts of Kindness

Great Depression era bread and soup line

As an adult, my Dad Fred Opie Jr. made regular donations to the Salvation Army as thanks for the acts of kindness they showed to his family during the Great Depression, especially around Thanksgiving. “If it wasn’t for the Salvation Army, my family would have never survived the Depression,” he once told me. My Dad’s sister added that during World War II, “I can remember [the Salvation Army] knocking on the door, and they would bring us food for Thanksgiving . . . .” The Salvation Army is a London based ministry that William Booth started in 1865 to reach out to the poor in London. I encourage everyone to give your money and or your time to similar organizations dedicated to helping people who are unemployed and underemployed. Many organizations helping those in need have seen drastically increased demands for their services while the economic recession continues. Here are some links below that can help you learn more and how to help this Thanksgiving.

http://meadvilletribune.com/homepage/x239934433/Food-pantries-soup-kitchens-issue-call-for-help

http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf/vw-local/Ways-to-give

http://www.centerffs.org/getinvolved/waystogive.html

Thanksgiving Day Series: A Little Biscuit History

Buttermilk biscuits, recipes below

The Swedish novelist Fredrika Bremer had an opportunity to experience southern cooking at a camp meeting revival in Macon, Georgia in 1850. At sunrise she woke to the delightful sound of African Americans singing hymns and the delicious smell of frying ham and eggs, simmering red-eye gravy, steaming rice or grits, and baking buttermilk biscuits. “After the service came the dinner hour, when I visited several tents in the black camp, and saw tables covered with all kinds of meat, puddings, and tarts; there seemed to be a regular superfluity of food and drink.” Masters generally granted slaves time off for revivals and holidays like Thanksgiving. They also furnished slaves with flour for making biscuits. Southerners considered biscuits special occasion bread because they required far more preparation than corn bread. Here is a buttermilk biscuit recipe (and a gluten free recipe) based on the work of my friend and food chemist Shirley O. Corriher. Shirley is a Georgia native who is a sensational teacher of cooking and baking. These bad boys are a hit in my house where I have two buttermilk biscuit eating young children.

Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe

Ingredients

Nonstick cooking spray
2 cups spelt flour 1/8 teaspoon baking soda to up the flour rise/ or use 2 cups self-rising flour
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt
¼ cup sugar
4 tablespoon vegetable shortening
2/3 cup heavy or whipping cream/half and half works too
1 cup buttermilk, or until dough is like cottage cheese
1 cup whole-wheat flour for shaping the wet dough into biscuits
2 tablespoons melted butter to brush over the baked biscuits

Method

Preheat the oven to 425; spray cook sheet or cast iron skillet with non-stick spray; combine dry ingredients except for the 1 cup flour for shaping the dough; stir in buttermilk and cream and let stand for 2-3 minutes. Flour your hands and softly shape your biscuits. If you’re rushing, use an ice-cream scooper. Place the biscuits tightly against each other on wax paper so they will rise up instead of out. Sprinkle with flour then place then on the sprayed surface for baking. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and brush with the melted butter and serve, makes about a dozen biscuits.

Gluten free biscuit recipe: http://www.domestifluff.com/2009/08/

Thanksgiving Day Series: The History Behind Kale, Collards, and Mustard Greens

Greens, recipe below

Greens have a long association with people of African descent in the South and by extension the white folks around them. For example, in eighteenth century Africa, female toddlers of commoners accompanied their female elders into the forest to gather vitamin rich “bush greens,” different varieties of kale, collards, and mustard greens to supplement what the men of their compounds produced and hunted. Over time they domesticated these wild greens and learned to prepare them raw or cooked and seasoning them with salt, pepper, onions, garlic, herbs, and pieces of meat and fish when they had access to them. We know that both Igbo and Mande women commonly served greens with chicken battered and deep fried in palm oil. Thus meals with greens were yet another culinary tradition passed on to African Americans from their African descendents who first came to the Americas during the colonial period. The African and Amerindian diets contained far more greens than Europeans consumed and over time European colonist, particularly in the colonial south, began eating more greens like the black and people around them. During the antebellum period enslaved African only had time to make greens when masters gave them days off such as on Sundays and holidays. Thus over time they become closely associated with days like Thanksgiving. Below find traditional and vegan recipes that would work well with kale, collards, and mustard greens.

Pork Seasoned Greens: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/collard_greens_with_bacon/

Healthier Southern Greens: http://www.healthyselfandhome.com/InTheKitchen.html

Vegan Greens

Ingredients

1 bunch of greens: collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, kale, or chard
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 bay leaf
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon salt, depending on the saltiness of your stock

Liquid smoke or smoked paprika

Method:

Wash the collards good in plenty of slightly salted water, strip the leaves off the steams, discard the steams and cut the greens into small pieces. Start out with 3 bunches which will serve 6 people, they are big but they cook down like spinach. I steam mine in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes until the fibrous leaves are easy to eat. Steaming preserves the water soluble vitamins that are killed when you just boil the greens down like most of my ancestors have done for years.

Remove the collards from the pressure cooker and save the water to make the pot-licker or stock.

Season the water with 3 cubes of vegetable bullion, dried bay leaf, dried red pepper flakes, little vinegar, and some honey. Had some smoked paprika or a little liquid smoke which most grocery stores sell if you like that smoked meat flavor (the traditional recipe calls for a smoked ham hock or a hunk of smoked fat back). The pot-licker is full of vitamins and great seasoning for the greens Sauté the steamed greens with chopped onions and garlic in olive oil with your preferred seasonings like pepper, salt, etc. Add sautéed greens to the pot-licker and let them marinade for 30 or more minutes.

Thanksgiving Day Series: FDR and The Making of a Federal Holiday

Chess pie, recipes below

So when and how did Thanksgiving become a legit federal holiday in the United States? Until the 1940s the country observed Thanksgiving on a variety of different dates in each state in November During the Great Depression U. S. retailers started a campaign to make Thanksgiving a federal holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. They insisted that it would create robust commercial activity in both the food and transportation that the national economy needed. Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) agreed and for two years he threw is political capital behind the passage of a law that finally pinned down the date in 1941. In doing research for my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy, I conducted some thirty interviews with African Americans most of them born before 1941. These are oral histories of southerners talking about food, family, and friends. Some shared memories of foods that reminded them of special occasions from their childhood like Thanksgiving. Lamenta D. [Watkins] Crouch was born in the 1940s in Greenbay, Virginia, in Prince Edward County, about ninety miles from Richmond. She recalled growing up in Virginia eating chess pie, and “very rarely apple pie.” Here is a recipe for this traditional southern custard pie.

Chess Pie Recipe

Ingredients

4 ounces of butter

½ cup brown sugar, packed

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

1 tablespoon vinegar

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 tablespoon cornmeal

Method

Melt butter, blend with sugars. Add eggs and other ingredients and stir until blended. Do not beat. Bake in unbaked pie shell for one hour at 350 degrees.

Lemon Chess Pie Recipe: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-10-19/features/1994292005_1_chess-pie-pie-shell-recipe-requests

Thanksgiving Day Series: Part 5 English Foodways and the Antebellum South

Apple cobbler, recipes below

Fruit cobblers represent one the earliest desserts prepared on special occasion days like fall harvest celebrations which is the harbinger of what we call Thanksgiving Day. They proved popular because they provided a way for poor people to collect often discarded bruised fruit to make a delicious inexpensive dessert. In the British Empire fruit like peaches, apples, and berries were traditionally considered food to be cooked and purchased by poor folks and commoners. The English lower classes essentially prepared two types of fruits: those cooked and those uncooked. The English elites believed raw fruit was unhealthy and caused fevers. As a result, they generally stewed or baked fruit until it was very soft, often using it in pies and tarts. The migration of this tradition is best illustrated by the number of different recipes for cobblers (also called bucklers in Virginia) found in southern cookery. The cobbler was one of the prized dishes baked on the plantation on special occasions like the fall harvest festival. Enslaved Africans adapted the culinary culture of the English as they prepared food for English planters, particularly the English penchant for pies. Here are variety great apple cobbler recipes that would be perfect for your Thanksgiving Day table:

Cast iron skillet Apple Cobbler: http://en.petitchef.com/recipes/skillet-caramel-apple-cobbler-fid-531990

Wheat-Free, Dairy-Free & Refined Sugar Free Cranberry Apple Cobbler: http://heatherstrang.com/wheat-free/2008/02/wheat-free-dairy-free-refined-sugar-free-cranberry-apple-cobbler/

Sweet Potato-Apple Cobbler: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000000768549

Thanksgiving Day Series: Part 2 Using the Last Fruits of the Growing Season

Smothered shrimp over fried green tomatoes, recipe below

Here’s a dish I created that’s rooted in sustainable gardening. This time of the year, gardens in the north east are producing their last fruits of the growing season: herbs, cucumbers, green peppers, green tomatoes. Here is a really good sautéed shrimp served with a gravy over crisp fried green garden tomatoes. My family love it and it’s a very inexpensive recipe made with garden tomatoes and a $9.95 bag of pre-cleaned, shelled, and cooked bag of shrimp from Costco.In doing research for my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/tableOfContents, I a came across a document on 1940s low country South Carolina and the use of shrimp among whites and blacks. I found that during the summer better off white families ate shrimp dishes like “fried shrimp” for breakfast, and shrimp and stew for dinner. For African Americans, shrimp appeared at only one time, and it was on a fall menu as the breakfast dish “shrimp and gravy.” Thus shrimp consumption in the low country became an indicator of race, class, and cultural identity, and a juncture at which different eating traditions developed rooted in income differences. The bottom line is throughout history people have eaten what they could catch, grow, and afford to purchase. Here is my recipe below:

Fred’s Smothered Shrimp over Fried Green Tomatoes

Ingredients

4 to 6 medium size green tomatoes

1 cup diced onions

¼ cup diced green pepper

Fresh sage and or parsley

Garlic cloves

Sea salt

Fresh ground pepper

1lb of shrimp

½ cup canola or other vegetable oil

1 cup of flour

Method

Sauté 4 cups of cleaned shrimp in canola oil with a garlic clove, ¼ cup diced green pepper, ¼ cup diced onions, add a bit of fresh, sage, parsley, and salt and pepper. Set the shrimp aside after they are cooked. Prepare fried green tomatoes with 5 large tomatoes. Then put the fried green tomatoes on a cookie sheet and bake for about 12 minutes at 325. Use the leftover oil from frying the tomato to make gravy adding flour and water to make it. Then add the sautéed shrimp. Remove the now crisp fried green tomatoes from the oven and arrange them on a large platter. Pour the smothered shrimp over the fried green tomatoes and serve. Recipe, which serves about 6, would be a hit on Thanksgiving.

Feeding the Revolution in Jackson, Mississippi Part 2

Mississippi delta tamale, recipe below 

Yesterday I started a Veterans Day post talking about WWII veteran and civil rights activist Medger Evers. After the war Evers returned to native Mississippi and opened a NACCP office over the top of the Big Apple Inn a restaurant on Farish Street in Jackson. African American in Jackson referred to Farish Street, located close to the city’s train depot, as little Harlem because so many black people walked the streets and did their shopping and entertaining there. The story goes Juan “Big John” the owner of the Big Apple Inn Mora and an immigrant from Mexico City started off as an entrepreneur selling tamales out of a hot tamale cart on Farish Street. Big John married an African American women and in 1939 he and his son Harold purchased an old grocery store on Farish Street for one hundred dollars. The two renovated store into a restaurant and opened it as the Big Apple Inn restaurant; Harold named the restaurant after a popular dance in 1939 that he loved called the Big Apple. Regulars, including civil rights leaders Medger Evans, Fannie Lou Hammer, and others affiliated with the NAACP in Mississippi made their way to Big John’s to buy hot sandwiches and tamales made from scratch. Evers did not have adequate office space to hold meetings, and he would often hold them down stairs in Big John where he would discuss civil rights organizing and protest strategies. When customers came in buy sandwiches and saw so many people meeting in the restaurant, they inquired what was going on. Customers liked what they heard, and joined the movement. “In fact they would be lined up at the [restaurant’s] door just to hear Medger’s strategy,” says Big John’s grandson Gene Lee, Sr. So the Big Apple represented a big part of the civil rights movement in Jackson providing a place where Evers could meet and discuss strategy in safety and it fed the civil rights revolution in Mississippi. WWII veteran and Ku Klux Klansmen Byron De La Beckwith assassinated WWII veteran and civil rights leader Medger Evers in front of Evers' Jackson home in 1963. Today the Big Apple Inn has two locations, the original on Farish Street and the other on State Street in Jackson. In addition to the smoked sausage and big ear sandwiches dressed with slaw and mustard (which cost a dollar each) the menu also includes bologna sandwiches, tamales, and soul shine pizza! Here is a recipe for a Mississippi tamale which are very popular thanks immigrants from Mexico like Juan “Big John” Mora (1890-1976).

Mississippi Delta Tamale Recipe: http://www.tamaletrail.com/recipe_howto.shtml

Spicy Hot Food Series: Cooling Down in Asia, Africa, and America

Jambalaya served with corn brread, recipes below

Beginning with the Portuguese in the 1470s, elite European explorers and colonizers came in contact with darker skinned people from subtropical regions. The people of these regions cooked with generous amounts of peppers, chilies, and spices to color and flavor oils, sauces, starches, and vegetables, and hide the taste and smell of spoiled meats and fish. In addition to flavor, they ate spicy hot food because it served to cool them in the long run by making one sweat. As colonial societies in Asia, Africa, and America developed so did race and class identities rooted in eating and drinking habits. Historically within these societies elites held prejudicial views against traditional spicy hot flavors those poorer and most often darker colonized sectors of societies ate. Jambalaya is a good case in point. It started as a classic spicy hot dish made with rice and vegetables grown in ones garden and seasoned with poor cuts of meat purchased inexpensively or foraged in the waste of elites. It seems like every culture as a local jambalaya like dish. In the coastal U. S. south Elites held it in contempt as the food of poor whites and blacks who lived on the proverbial wrong side of town, often in the same neighborhoods. Here are traditional and vegan jambalaya recipes.

Biloxi, Mississippi jambalaya recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/beccas_jambalaya/

Vegan jambalaya recipe: http://www.veganmeat.com/recipes2/jambalaya.html

Spicy Hot Food Series: Part 3 Simple Low Country Seafood Dishes

Spicy shrimp and grits, recipe below

I am in the midst of a series on spicy hot food. In my kitchen I have wonderful framed picture of different hot sauces from around the world. My wife Tina and my two children, who are five and eight, all love spicy hot food. In doing research for my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy I learned that allot of the peppers that spice up dishes here in the Americas came from Africa via the African slave Trade. Enslaved Africans cultivated them in subsistence gardens in Brazil, Cuba, Martinique, and the Carolinas. For instance, we know that, as early as 1742, South Carolinians cultivated Guinea Pepper from an African tree that planter and slave owner Eliza Lucas Pinckney claimed produced a “good ingredient” used for seasoning simple low country seafood dishes. Below is an out of this world spicy shrimp and grits recipe. I cannot think of a better meal on a cold day.

Spicy shrimp and grits recipe: http://myhusbandcooks.wordpress.com/2006/11/27/shrimp-n-grits-need-i-say-more/

Who Got Out the Vote In Depression Era St. Louis?

St. Louis style pizza, recipes below

During the Depression poet Maya Angelou, born in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri lived with her Grandmother. Her Grandmother was a well connected political precinct boss who elected officials in St. Louis depended on for votes. As a result young Maya Angelou recalls men with seedy reputations regularly came to her Grandma Baxter’s house and “sat with churchlike decorum and waited to ask favors from her.” In return for her favors “come election [days], they were to bring in the votes from their neighborhood. She most often got them leniency [when they busted by the police], and they always brought in the vote.” According to St. Louis natives, there pizza is distinctive and must try if you are visiting the city. “When I return to town for family events,” says one native, “often my first and last meals” is pizza. There made with a thin unleavened crispy crust, a blend of provolone, Swiss and cheddar cheeses, and a thick sweet sauce with lots of herbs in it. In addition, most of the toppings are sliced flat and put under the cheese. Because the pizzas are thin, they are most often large in diameter, and sliced into squares rather than traditional wedges like in New York or Chicago.

St. Louis pizza recipe: http://marketpower.typepad.com/market_power/2010/02/st-louis-style-pizza-recipe.html

St. Louis natives on pizza and more: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/578573

Related link: http://hollistonfamily.com/2010/02/12/cooks-country-day-12-st-louis-style-pizza/