Cooking Praxis #1 - Into the Wild
1) Research and inquiry about a course/meal
Trying to find real, authentic Native American recipes was a lot more difficult than I anticipated. The majority of the recipes were more modern day recipes, the majority being for Fry Bread. A lot of the recipes we looked through had ingredients that Native Americans would not have access too, so we avoided those recipes completely. We finally found three recipes that we thought sounded good and that we would only have to alter a little bit: Buffalo Stew, Succotash, and Nokake (Corn Bread).
Recipes:
Buffalo Stew
1 lbs buffalo
1/8 cup animal fat
Several small chopped onions
1 clove of minced garlic
1 cups of corn
4 cups water
1/2 tsp.salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
2 carrots, sliced
2 potatoes, cubed
2 tomatoes, cubed
1 green pepper
Cut buffalo in cubes, brown in oil. Put meat aside and saute garlic and onions in the buffalo oil. Return the meat into pan, add water, corn, salt, pepper. Cook for 2 hours, or until meat tender. Add the vegetables and continue to cook until done, about 30 minutes.
Succotash
2 cups precooked black eye beans
1 cups whole kernel corn
Several potatoes scrubbed and cut into bite size pieces (do not peel)
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
Several small onions chopped coarsely
1 Tbsp. chopped celery
1/2 Rounded Tbsp. honey
Salt and pepper to taste
Add just enough water or vegetable broth to cover (or chicken broth) Cover and bake in medium oven about 40 min. or on top of stove for 15-20 min. I usually cook mine in my crock pot on low and let it cook all day (about 4 to 6 hours) The slow baking or cooking in the crock pot I think works best as it gives it more time to season.
Algonquian Nokake
2 Cups cornmeal
2 Cups water
2 Tbsp. animal fat
2 Tbsp. salt
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bring water to boil in a saucepan. Add cornmeal, butter, and salt. Place mixture in buttered 8 inch by 8 inch cake pan; bake for 25 minutes or until done. Cut into squares and serve.
We thought we needed something more to our meal than just the stew, bean mix and bread so we decided to gather up some more homegrown ingredients to add to the meal. I had the idea to make Mint tea because going through all the Native American recipes on the Internet I had read a lot about natural edibles and their cures/remedies. Mint helps with nausea associated with acid reflex, pregnancy and indigestion. It is also said to boost the immune system because it is nutrient-rich in phosphorus, vitamin B and calcium.
Christine, being the squash lover in the family wanted to cook some of the fresh squash picked from Grandma's garden. We also needed to come up with a dessert for our meal, how can a meal be complete with out one? So Christine came up with our "warm fruit salad."
Mint Tea
5 leaves per cup of hot water
Honey for taste (if desired)
Warm Fruit Salad
4 cups Apples
2 cups Blackberries
1 cup Honey
2) Gathering/hunting/harvesting
After we finalized the recipes we would be using we had to see if we had all the ingredients necessary. Luckily for us a lot of the ingredients (fresh produce and herbs) would be able to come out of the pantry, fridge and mainly my Grandmother's garden. For the ingredients that weren't readily available such as the buffalo meat, corn, cornmeal and green pepper, we went to our local Grocery outlet and Whole Foods Market. All the ingredients we bought were fairly cheap, (the buffalo being the most expensive) all around $15.00.
Documenting our adventure to Whole Foods.
Assortment of buffalo (steaks, ground meat, etc).
Label promising the buffalo meat was all natural
(no antibiotics, no added hormones, vegetarian diet, etc).
$9.45 and a pound of buffalo later, and we're ready to cook!
3) Processing and preparation
Christine and I started cooking around 9:30am. We divided up our duties evenly and set to work and didn't take a break until around noon. We had a lot of chopping to do of vegetables, cubing of the buffalo meat and potatoes. We both struggled over cutting the onions and we both ended up spilling or knocking food onto the food at one point or another. The easiest recipe was for the stew which was essentially to throw your meat and veggies in a large pot and cook on low all day. The Nokake was a struggle, the first go round we didn't follow the recipe correctly and ended up with runny cornmeal water and the second go round....well I'll explain that in the consumption section. The succotash was a little tedious with boiling and re-boiling of the buck-eye beans but not too bad. The tea consisted of gathering and plucking the leaves. Very simple. The fruit salad consisted of a lot of peeling and chopping but again not so bad. Over all it was a very do-able meal but next time I wouldn't have done so many different dishes, but I suppose for a two woman team it was pretty realistic!
Black-eye Beans from Grandma's pantry
Blackberries from Grandma's garden
Onions in Grandma's garden
Yellow Squash grown in Grandma's garden
Grabenstein Apples from Grandma's orchard
Buffalo meat
Onions from Grandma's garden
Green pepper for the stew
Carrots, red potatoes, corn for the stew
Cornmeal for the Nokake
Celery
Apples
Mint leaves
4. Consumption
Buffalo Stew: Two thumbs up! Was SO delicious! I'm definitely going to make this again. It was colorful, tasty, the veggies were cooked just right and the buffalo meat was tender and moist!
Succotash: Can't really give this a thumbs up or down. I wouldn't make it again but if added to the stew it could be eaten up. It was appealing to the eye, I expected it to have more color and it was very bland.
Nokake: Thumbs down. Not edible. The 2 tablespoons of salt ruined the bread. At first we thought it was our own fault, reading two tablespoons instead of teaspoons, but as it turned out it was a typo in the recipe itself.
Squash: Always a thumbs up! Squash is very simple to cook and it's very hard to ruin. Just slice and boil and voila!
Mint Tea: Thumbs up. Total success. We drank the tea after dinner and it really did settle the stomach. Very soothing and tasty as well!
Warm Fruit Salad: BIG thumbs up! Kudos to Christine and her little food experiments. The fruit mixed with the honey and then cooked down was so delicious! Very filling for a dessert. We're going to eat the leftovers tomorrow morning for breakfast, maybe with pancakes! Yum!
The Final Product:
Back row(L to R): Fruit salad, buffalo stew
Front row (L to R): Nokake, succatash, squash
Mint tea