riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (10/16/83)
Last night a half-Cherokee friend of ours who grew up in the Southwest
invited us over to show us what his kind of home cooking was like. Here's
what we ate:
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SALAD
a big bunch of mustard greens
2 medium tomatoes
1 large jicama (a Mexican root vegetable with a flavor reminiscent of
apples; found in good supermarkets in the Southwest.)
a couple of hot peppers
Wash the mustard greens thoroughly and peel the jicama. Cut up ingredients
and mix like a tossed salad. Sprinkle with ground cayenne pepper and ore-
gano. (It might be nice to add some oil and vinegar, but our host didn't.)
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BAKED PUMPKIN
1 medium-sized pumpkin
raw ground turkey meat and/or chunks of leftover turkey
1 or 2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup fresh corn (removed from cob!)
1 or 2 tomatoes, cut up
green onions, cut up
dried chili pod
salt
oregano
comino (known as "cumin" to gringos)
juniper berries (picked that afternoon from a tree outside; also to
be found in supermarkets)
This is a winter dish which orginated in the Southeast.
Remove the top from the pumpkin as you would for a jack-o-lantern; scoop
out seeds. Mash the rest of the ingredients together to make a stuffing
and put them in the hollowed-out pumpkin. Replace the top, put the pumpkin
in a deep baking dish (it may ooze like a turkey) and bake at 350 degrees
for two to three hours. Check the pumpkin occaisionally to see when it is
done. Remove it when:
-- the stem burns (this is the classic test);
-- the skin starts to char and turns crisp;
-- the meat of the pumpkin is tender; and/or
-- the turkey meat is done.
Serve by scooping out big chunks of the pumpkin meat and spoonfuls of the
filling. If it's easier, just peel off the papery skin and carve.
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BEANS
~2 cups dried pinto beans
~4 cups water
salt
a bit of animal fat (optional)
1 diced tomato (optional)
garlic, fresh minced
onions, diced
bay leaf
spices -- comino, coriander, oregano, juniper berries to taste
Pressure cook the beans in unsalted water until tender. Remove two large
spoonfuls of beans and mash them well in a bowl. To the mashed beans add
salt, optional tomato, optional fat and the bay leaf. Heat some shortening
in a skillet. Fry the spices, the garlic and the onions. Add the mashed
bean mixture and fry until the oil is soaked up. Pour in some liquid from
the pot and soak a bit. Return the fried goop back into the main pot, stir
and warm on very low heat until meal is served.
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NAKVIKI (CORN ROLLS)
6 ears of corn
1 pkg. corn husks (like those used to make tamales)
1 tsp. salt
This is a ritual dish from the Plains.
Grind the corn by grating it and mashing each half-cup or so in a bowl to
break up any kernels which make it through the grater. Throw away the
cobs (unless you have a better use for them!) Add the salt and stir.
Wash the corn husks thoroughly. To make a roll, lay a husk flat on the
countertop and put a tablespoon of corn mush in the middle. Fold over the
two sides of the husk and then fold up its bottom, making a small "packet"
open on the top. Stand these "packets" up in a baking dish and bake at
375 degrees for ~30 minutes or until the packets of mush solidify into
little cakes.
This makes approximately two dozen bite-sized rolls. Try crumbling them
into your beans!
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FRY BREAD
4 cups white wheat flour
1.5 tsp salt
5 tsp baking powder
2 to 2.25 cups water
Fry bread comes from the Southwest and is what resulted when traders
brought wheat flour to the reservations.
Mix the first three ingredients and add the water slowly, mixing as you
go, until the dough is shiny and stiff. Let it sit under a damp cloth for
30 minutes. Tear off ping-pong- to golfball-sized pieces and flatten them
in your hands or roll them into circles about 6 inches across. Deep fry
each piece in oil, browning first on one side and then on the other. As
a piece puffs up and tries to float, push it back down into the oil. Don't
be gentle! The flatter the bread is, the better -- your goal is not to
make sopapillas.
Believe it or not, if you do this right you will make beautiful little
golden things which don't taste a bit greasy.
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RELISH FOR THE SIDE
poblano or anaheim peppers
1 or 2 tomatoes
a large onion
This goes well with everything and doesn't taste a bit like Mexican hot
sauce, despite the similar list of ingredients.
Chop everything up. Heat some shortening in a pan. Fry the peppers till
soft. Add the tomatoes and cook until mushy. Add the onions and simmer
for a while over very low heat. Add salt to taste. Allow to cool before
serving.
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I suppose I should warn you: the above recipes make a hell of a lot of very
filling food. There were five of us present with healthy appetites and we
only managed to eat about half of it.
We hope to wangle more invitations and more recipes from our friend, who is
a very talented cook in many different cuisines. He happened to spend a
year in Brasil while in high school; get ready for a Brasilian menu some-
time soon!
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Prentiss Riddle
{ihnp4,kpno,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle
riddle@ut-sally.UUCPleimkuhl@uiuccsb.UUCP (10/20/83)
#R:ut-sally:-19400:uiuccsb:7000010:000:11 uiuccsb!leimkuhl Oct 19 08:36:00 1983 WoW!