A Central New York Culinary Observation

Venison pie, this and other recipes 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. In fact, as I mentioned in my post on the history of Thanksgiving Traditions,http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanksgiving-day-series-part-5-abraham.htmlthe first facsimile of these meals consisted of 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: Our Culinary Memories

Turkey Salad with Cranberry Vinaigrette, lots of leftover recipes below

We had our first Thanksgiving with just the four members of our immediate family. We relocated to New England in August and we are still recovering from how the move depleted our savings; thus we stayed put this year in our new surroundings. I believe the entire family had a hard time emotionally with not sharing the day with extended family—it just didn’t feel natural. As a coping devise with the sadness, my wife cooked the entire meal recreating, to the best of her culinary memory, her mother’s southern Thanksgiving recipes. She did a fine job and the experience help her address the longing she had to be around her family. That’s my message, food is in part is about family memories, hopefully good memories but that’s always the case. When we eat certain foods, they remind us of older relatives and family friends who we spent special occasions with. It’s more than the great stuffing, corn bread, biscuits, or gravy; it’s the people who made them with great love and care. The same is true with how we use and eat Thanksgiving Day leftovers; they trigger memories from times long ago. Here is a wonderful link to some recipes for your Thanksgiving leftovers. As I did with Thanksgiving, I am going to provide stories and observations about Christmas food history, traditions, and related recipes over the next couple of days and weeks.

Turkey Leftover Recipes: http://fatandhappyblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanksgiving-leftovers-potato-cake-with.html

Turkey Leftover Recipes and tips: http://tipnut.com/turkey-leftover-recipes/

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 6 Abraham Lincoln Started It

Turkey with cranberries, recipes below

The Thanksgiving Day holiday has a much shorter history than most people realize. European Settlers and Native Americans did have a meal together during the colonial period that most associate with Thanksgiving. But neither side called it a Thanksgiving Day meal and in fact the Europeans saw it as a religious fall harvest festival, a tradition with a long history in Europe. Moreover Native American leaders viewed the event, which included several days of feasting and most likely no Turkey on the menu but plenty of venison, as a political summit with European counterparts. It was President Abraham Lincoln who first ordered all government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving on November 28, 1861 just several months after the start of the Civil War. In 1863, New England writer and magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale then forcefully lobbied Lincoln to establish an “annual Thanksgiving” day as a “National and fixed Union Festival.” Thereafter Lincoln issued a proclamation, not a federal law, but a proclamation, that began shaping the tradition we celebrate today; more on how it became a federal holiday tomorrow. I came across an interesting Civil War period primary source that stated that every year thereafter Lincoln’s proclamation, a détente occurred just prior to Thanksgiving Day during which time Union and Confederate cooks came together to agree on a “standard” holiday menu. Cooks from both camps collaborated to prepare among other dishes a “most imposing stuffed turkey, cranberry sauce, turnips, [and] pumpkin….” Here are some turkey and cranberry recipes that will come in handy this Thanksgiving:

17, 384 Turkey Recipes

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Food/Recipes/13-261-Turkey-Recipes.html

15 Holiday Cranberry Recipes

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Food/Recipes/15-Holiday-Cranberry-Recipes.html

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.

Thanksgiving Day Series: Part 1 Heirloom Recipes

Pecan pie, recipe below

The Thanksgiving table is never considered complete if you can’t fill up a least one separate table with deserts. In most families, older female relatives with family recipes passed down from one generation to the next through oral history start cooking several days before Thanksgiving, starting with cakes and pies. One of my favorite is pecan pie. Pecans are indigenous to the Americas and Amerindians had been cooking and baking with them long before the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century. Amerindians gave the pecan its name; they knew and enjoyed them and introduced them to European settlers and the first Africans in the Americas. Pecans and pecan pies did not become popular in the U. S. south until the mid-20^th century when farmers began cultivating a domesticated and improved pecan plant. Below is a family pecan pie recipe one of my students shared with me. Make a point this Thanksgiving of collecting (writing down, digitally recording, or video recording in the kitchen) the recipes that people in your family have passed down through oral history. A good recipe is a family heirloom that should be both treasured and documented for the next generation.

Aunt Nancy’s Pecan Pie Recipe (with my suggested substitutes):

Ingredients

3 eggs slightly beaten (or egg substitute)

1 cup sugar

1 cup Karo (light) syrup

2 tbsp melted butter (or vegetable based butter substitute)

1 tsp vanilla

1 & ¼ cup pecan halves

Method

Stir list ingredients together, and then mix in pecans. Pour into 9 inch pie crust and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes. Let cool to room temperature then refrigerate before serving.

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: President Obama's Indonesian Childhood

Spicy pad Thai, recipes below

This is the last in a series of post on spicy hot flavored foods. In Dutch colonial Indonesia (1800-1942) elites warned Dutch settlers not to eat the local spicy foods sold on the streets insisting that they had harmful effects on the liver and would destroy one’s digestive system. Since the end of colonial rule, elitist prejudices against spicy foods abated a bit. But one still sees that haute cuisine remains almost exclusively Eurocentric in most former colonial societies with elites still relatively cold toward spicy foods that street venders sell. President Obama is currently on a tour of South East Asia drumming up business deals and jobs. The president will be visiting Jakarta, Indonesia where he lived with his mother S. Ann Dunham and step father Lolo Soetoro (a native of Jakarta and graduate student at the University of Hawaii) from age six to ten while his mother did field work as part of her doctoral studies in anthropology at the University of Hawaii (S. Ann Dunham, Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, Duke University Press 2009 a book based on the dissertation). The president speaks the native language and he is very familiar with the delicious spicy hot foods of Jakarta. Thus it only seemed fitting close this series out with a dish from that region of the world. If you like spicy food, you will love the recipes below.

Home Style Thai Recipes: http://www.templeofthai.com/recipes/

Spicy pad Thai video recipe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vznd6-MJTIQ

President’s Jakarta years: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6VvlKlNfDE

Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=46699

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: Heating Up Europe

Portuguese Piri piri chicken and tomato salad, recipes below

Historically there has been a race and class dimension to the custom of eating spicy hot food. With some exceptions, Europeans used salt and showed disdain for spicy hot flavors until more recent times. For example, before the establishment of colonies in the Far East, in the Netherlands cooks seasoned their food with salt and few other non-spicy flavors. The French used salt plus lots of butter, chives, onions, thyme, and garlic. British seasoning traditions called for salt and mustards, ketchups, Worcester sauce, and marmalades. The Spanish and the Portuguese represented the first European nation states to indulge in spicy hot flavors thanks to the Moorish colonization of the Iberian Peninsula in 718. The Moors introduced peppers from Asia Iberian Kitchens as well as nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon. By the 1470s, a newly independent Portugal established trading strong holds on the West coast of Africa and began importing African peppers to Europe through its principal port at Lisbon. Hot spices slowly made their way across Europe where they became symbols of wealth among elites in Venice, Italy. Here are Jamie Oliver piri piri chicken, dressed potatoes, rocket salad, and Portuguese tart recipes. There is a also a vegetarian piri piri dish recipe Click the links below they all look spectacular.

Piri piri chicken recipe: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chicken-recipes/piri-piri-chicken-dressed-potatoes-rocke

Vegetarian potato patties with a salad and piri piri sauce recipe: http://www.foodista.com/recipe/M5ZBHLZ5/vegetarian-potato-patties-with-a-salad-piri-piri-sauce