native american indian recipes

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i'll be putting native american recipes in here if you have or find some please feel free to post them to!

[swampiewolfess]

MAHNOOMIN -- Wild Rice, Sacred Gift -- the Story



Nutritional value of wild rice as established by the University of Minnesota per a 100-gram (3.5 oz) serving of wild rice.



50 calories (approximately)

14.1 grams protein (about twice that of brown or white rice)

75 grams carbohydrates

340 miligrams phosphorus

45 miligrams Thiamin (vitamin B-1)

0.75 miligrams fat

4.2 miligrams iron

63 miligrams riboflavin

7 miligrams sodium

6.2 miligrams niacin (B-vitamin)

18 miligrams calcium

220 miligrams potassium



Compare with UDSA Nutrients: WILD RICE, COOKED


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Basic boiling (onzaan): Boil (covered) one part (cup, etc.) of wild rice (after rinsing it) in 4 parts (cups etc.) of water slowly, about 45 minutes. It should absorb all the water, as it is done. Don't salt it. Actually, cooking time varies according to the variety and how it was processed; if it's black it takes longer. Taste a few grains. If you're going to use it in a stuffing, stew, soup, casserole, or salad, don't boil it all mushy. Taste it before you stir in any salt afterwards, some kinds really don't need any. You can use wild rice in any recipes you usually use regular rice for, especially if the recipe calls for the rice cooked separately first. You can serve it plain with butter, and stir or fluff it up when done, because once it's cooked or cooking it doesn't matter if the long grains get broken. (It's still a big thing with elder ladies that some rice with perfect grains be prepared for First Rice offering.)



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Two of my secret recipes:

Spinach-rice casserole (about 2 1/2 quarts):


4 cups cooked wild rice 2 lbs washed fresh spinach

4 eggs 2 big bunches green onions

1 tsp salt 1 Cup sunflower seeds

1/2 tsp pepper 4 Tbs chopped parseley

1/2 lb cheese grated fine 2 Tbs sesame seeds

4 Tbs butter



Beat 4 eggs with salt, pepper, stir into rice. Stir in cheese and parsley. Tear stems .from spinach and chop these tough stems very fine. Fry them lightly with 2 big bunches of green onions chopped fine (including most of the green part). Tear up or chop coarsely the spinach leaves and stir them into the frying pan to wilt a little. Then stir it all into the rice mix. Stir in some sunflower seeds. Taste for seasoning. Pack into 1 or 2 greased heavy casseroles. Top with toasted sesame seeds and 2 Tbsp melted butter sprinkled around on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes, uncovered. Goes well with sweet-baked squash, pumpkin or candied sweet potatoes.


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Wild Rice and grape salad: (about a quart and a half)



3 cups cooked rice

1 cup seedless green grapes, halved

1 small can water chestnuts, sliced

1/2 cup celery chopped medium-fine

1 big bunch green onions choppeed medium fine

1/2 cup slivered or sliced almonds

1 cup Hellmans mayo, do not use substitutes



Stir vegetables and mayo into rice, stir grapes in gently. If too thick, thin with a little milk. Taste for seasoning. Refrigerated, this will keep several days. Improves it to make it the day before, so the mayo sinks in and blends a little. If you do make it in advance, don't add any more seasoning until you taste it the next day. You can also put leftover chopped up chicken or turkey in this salad, If you're going to take this somewhere, be sure to keep it chilled in a cooler until time to eat.


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Pancakes: Form cooked wild rice into thick pancakes or thin patties. Fry in butter. Serve with maple syrup. If you don't have any, heating brown sugar, butter and a little water (1 part water to 4 parts brown sugar) makes a better syrup than the kind you buy. Ricecakes are also good with berry syrups or honey, or at a main meal with butter or gravy..


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Breakfast cereal: Serve cold or warm cooked rice with sugar or honey and cream. Stir ins: sunflower seeds, chopped apple, peach, pear; choppeed dried fruits.


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Bird Stuffing: Fry green onions, celery, add chopped nuts, chopped unpeeled apples, chopped dried fruit or berries, sunflower seeds. Rice stuffing won't absorb fat the way bread stuffing does, but wild birds usually aren't very fat anyway, and neither are small chickens and most turkeys. Taste stuffing, add whatever seasonings you like with it. Use no conventional poultry seasonings, and remember too it doesn't need so much salt as regular rice, maybe none. Remember that one cup of raw rice cooks up to 4, and make an amount somewhat larger than needed to stuff your birds, because people like it a lot, so put some in a (covered) casserole too. Before you stuff wild birds wash inside and out very well with water that has baking soda and salt in it, then rinse. Then rub the cavity with butter.

Stuffing for a big fish: Use quite a bit of coarsely chopped celery, green onions, tarragon, parsley, chervil and fry it lightly before mixing into the rice. Almonds is the best kind of nuts to put in a stuffing for fish. Put some little lumps of butter all through it. Rub the inside of the fish with lemon juice mixed with a little butter, sprinkle with dried tarragon. Stuff the cavity with rice and skewer or sew it shut. Put the fish whole in a buttered covered baking dish, pour in a mixture of lemon juice. bouquet garni, chopped shallot, olive oil, fish stock, and a mixture of lemon juice and water if you don't keep wine around your house, otherwise use white wine. The mixture should have the fishes resting in at least 1/2 inch deep liquid but not covered by it. For several 4-lb pike (gaawag), bake in a 400 oven for 15 minutes, remove the cover and bake 15 minutes longer. Make add a cup of cream sauce from the juices, pressing them through a sieve. If it's a really big pike or muskie, cut a board with slanted ends to fit diagonally into your oven, cover it with tinfoil while it bakes, guesstimate the time based on lies about its weight, don't cook any fish too done,


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With deer-meat: ground deer meat partly-fried can be mixed into cooked rice with chopped fried onions and simmered as a kind of stove-top casserole. You can also make the ground deer meat into little meat balls and serve with a gravy over the rice. Of course you can do this with hamburger too, but fry off some of its fat, first.


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Gagoonz--Little Porcupines



1 lb ground venison or ftaless round steak

1/3 cup uncooked light brown wild rice

1 small onion minced very fine

1 seeded green pepper minced very fine

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 can tomatoes

1 can tomato soup



Combine meat, uncoooked rice, onion, green pepper, salt, pepper, mix thoroughly. Shape into 1& firm meat balls. Bring soup and tomatoes in their liquid to a boil in frypan with tight cover, put in meat balls, reduce to very slow simmer. Simmer tightly until done with rice popping out of balls like porky quills -- about 40-45 minutes. -- Olga Masica, Minneapolis


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Not exactly a recipe -- a pie for leftover meat or cooked veggies: About 2 cups of cooked rice. Pat a rice shell into a pie pan -- you can add nuts, sunflower seeds (chopped), and even an egg to hold it together better, if you have eggs. Toast lightly for 10 minutes in preheated 350-degree oven. Fill this pie shell with leftover chopped meat (just about any kind) in a sauce or gravy, or cooked vegetables in a light white sauce. (Broccoli in cheese sauce, very light on the cheese, cauliflower, lima beans, corn). Heat in oven until sauce is bubbling and meat or veggies are heated through. One "pie" serves 4 not-too-hungry people; if they're hungry better make 2 or have a lot of other food such as soup, salad, big dessert, depending on what you have. For a fancy dinner, especially one where you are basically serving disguised leftovers because you are broke, put cut-out vegetable shapes brushed with melted butter on top of the sauce; tell non-Indian guests (especially French) it's an authentic traditional Native American Indian quiche. Make up some name for it with a lot of vowels.


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In soups and stews: usually better to cook iwild rice separately first, not completely done, then stir it in for the last 15 minutes of cooking

Habitant pea soup with wild rice -- Naboob: Make this the usual way (3 quarts of water to one lb dried peas soaked overnight if whole, 1/2 lb salt pork, chopped carrots, onions, turnips, rutabagas). Add vegetables after bringing peas and pork to a boil and skimming. Simmer covered 4 hours, stir in cooked wild rice the last 15 minutes. The combo of peas and rice actually contains more biologically-usable protein than either the same amount of peas plus the same amount of rice, eaten separately, because of amino acid (components of protein) complementarities.


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Popped wild rice: I've only been able to make this work with reasonably fresh real Indian rice. I don't think you can pop commercial black rice. If it's too dried out (from being broken, then heated) it can't pop. Test your rice before doing a lot. Put some fat in a frying pan, sprinkle in a little rice and stir it carefully so it doesn't burn. Maybe it will pop. (It won't fly around like popcorn, it slowly puffs itself into a long fat pillow.) If it doesn't (and you didn't burn it) throw it in with the other rice and boil it. If it does, you can eat it like popcorn for more healthful snacks, and for breakfast cereal.


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Pop-rice (in deer tallow or bear fat) was traditional. They usually make it at First Rice feasts at ricing camp if anyone is there who knows how. Somebody told me the name for it, but I forgot. They poured maple syrup over pop-rice (from the tied sheaves) at sugar camp. Also in winter they melted hardened sap-candy over it and made it into balls. For winter travel, pop-rice was crushed and shaped into cakes with some deer fat and quite a lot of melted sugar and dried berries. It was lightweight, filling, nutritious, and could be eaten without a fire if enemies were around. It didn't have to be packed into pieces of clean gut, like pemmican.

If preparing wild rice soups or casseroles to sell at powwows, do not skimp on the rice and serve some kind of tasteless, watery mush. Put some onions and meat into it, too! Cook the rice in meat broth. Put onions in it, wild onions was traditional, but onions are usually left out for cheap, selling it at powwow booths. I've had some really awful wild rice glop from vendor booths at powwows. They start running out, they just put more water in the pot. Indian tacos is just hamburger in sauce on fry bread, it's OK to pad or stretch that out, but wild rice is a sacred gift. Do it right or don't do it. When you run low, serve the last of it and close up, don't put a lot of water in to stretch it so you can sell more.

If you are a city person, you can buy "tame" rice farmed in paddies. Chances are this will look very dark, which most likely means the rice laid around quite a while, drying, before it was parched (in a commercial oven) and husked (by a machine). It will always be completely broken up. Such rice may take a long time to cook. If you belong to an alternative foods co-op, you may be able to get them to contact an actual tribal or native supplier of wild rice. Most tribes who live in rice areas do have a tribal rice enterprise, and for many large families who go ricing every year, it's a cash crop, as well as a personal food supply and a pleasant excursion. Many tribes now process commercial rice in mechanical plants, though. It isn't paddy rice, but there's not that much difference. And sometimes it is paddy rice, too. Hybrids seeded in artificial or real lakes, by tribal contractors. This is economically helpful, but I still don't like it.

If you have a chance to try different varieties of truly wild rice from many different lakes, you will see that it can have quite different flavors. People still trade their local wild rice for another tribe's from elsewhere. Unfortunately, elders from Northern Minnesota ricing areas report that nearby off-reservation commercial paddies are experimenting with different laboratory-breeds of zinzania aquatica which are cross-breeding with the natural tribal wild rice, and the natural types are being replaced by undesired new hybrids on many lakes. Nobody likes this, but there doesn't seem to be anything we can do to stop it. Tame, paddy rice is big business for large food corporations, today, so the Jolly Green Giant is taking over from the Manidos who gave the rice to the people.

[swampiewolfess]

TEAS, HERB FLAVORINGS







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CAUTIONS, DISCLAIMER, AND OPPORTUNITY
There is a lot of modern interest in "Native plant medicines" both from big drug companies and from people who want simple treatments, inexpensive, and without the harmful side-effects that are sometimes manifested in chemical or synthesized medicines. These pages may occasionally mention traditional medicinal values of certain plants, but in general plant medicines is not a topic I'm going to go into here, for several reasons.

1. It can be dangerous. If you are a city person, or for that matter a reservation resident ignorant of plants, and go out hunting and trying to use "medicines" you can make yourself or others very sick, even die. Plants are not in and of themselves "healthy" or even necessarily safe. There are very powerful plant poisons, and some of the most powerful chemical poisons were originally developed from those of plants. There is also a consideration of how the plant parts must be processed or treated proprly, what parts to use, what proportions, and what mixtures.

2. Another reason to avoid this subject is that a sacred or religious aspect is involved in much Native plant medicine, of most kinds, and for most tribes. The principal repository of medical lore for Anishnabeg peoples is Midè an untranslatable word, usualy translated as Grand Medicine Society. One of the principal teachings of Midè is that every plant has a use -- but not necessarily as a medicine or food! All the uses have to be learned, which was part of the instructional lifeways of traditional upbringing -- now almsot entirely lost. The Midè initiate (usually someone who was sick and needed to be cured that way) used to be taught a sort of general medical course, general health. Other medicines were held by individuals, and most knew only a few. Ojibwe medicines tended to be complex, mixtures of many kinds of different parts of plants (almost always roots, though), gathered and treated at different times of year, mixed in specific proportions, and administered in scheduled doses of particular size and dilution. This was never public knowledge, and much of it was learned only by apprenticing to a particular doctor to learn his or her particular medicines.

True doctors were all specialists: they knew a few remedies, and those with different problems had to find the right specialist. This means -- for now -- that any old person who claims to be an "elder who knows all about all plants" is inevitably a fake, a charlatan usually involved with New Agers who want to believe everything is easy.

3. All native people who really know anything about uncultivated ("wild") plants know that prayers and thanks are to be given to the Great Mystery who provides and reveals their proper uses by people. Usually an offering is made of tobacco, sometimes silver is buried by the "chief plant" of a group, representing the spirit of those particular plants. This isn't just a gabble of some formulaic "prayer". All of this is part of an attitude, a culture, a religious outlook, a local society, and a history which it does not seem to me can or should be acquired on this medium. I will here present and discuss only foods and flavorings -- an adjunct to a cookbook. As in the wild rice section (a sacred gift), I will often try to show some of the history, feelings, etc., from my own experiences. I.e. our involvement with traditional foods shouldn't be like opening a can or microwave package. (but there's the practical aspect of feeding a family or lots of people.) But I'm no anthro, to talk of rituals and ceremonies. Discussions of history, etc., are likely to include accounts of arrests and harassments of Native people, bad laws and land thefts, environmental pollutions, destruction of Native lands and waters in respect of ability to survive from their natural gifts.

4. for city dwellers, in most major cities of the U.S. and some in Canada, there are health foods stores -- co-ops, usually -- where many herbal products are carried. Rarely, if ever, are these provided by Native people. There is a whole little industry of herb growers, gatherers, and distributors who provide quality, reliable, clean-processed non-standard plant products for these stores. It has occurred to me that this is an ideal mini-enterprise for some tribal people, including youth during summers. To learn the locally-available plants thoroughly, perhaps to garden larger supplies of some of them, to process and package them and connect with some of these co-ops and co-op product distributors. Such an enterprise would involve youth working with and learning from knowledgeable elders. In the sales and distribution of local herbs, youth would learn practical business methods too.

Users of traditional plants for flavorings, teas, and tonics should be aware that all of them definitely have a certain general health value: nutritional, vitamins and minerals. People of the north did not have green vegetables, fresh fruits, etc. available during hte long winters. Fruits and gardened vegetables such as corn, squash, pumpkins, beans, were dried, but these do not supply the full range of vitamins and minerals (although drying usually preserves what they do contain better than any other method). Anishnaabeg people mostly drank teas, rather than water, and these contained vitamin and mineral components not available to them during winters from other parts of stored or hunted food. So some of these can be thought of as vitamin/mineral supplements. Unfortunately, scientists usually haven't gotten around to analyzing such wild plants for nutrient content, unless they have become of economic interest to white people or businesses. (What we do know is that unless it were a general starvation winter, Native people didn't suffer from scurvy or any of the other deficiency diseases. They were getting quality nutrition when fresh plant foods were unavailable for many months.)

This is something that the Herb Research Foundation (associated with the American Botannical Council) may be able to help Native groups with. Read their mission statement, reports, and some ongoing projects on their pages.


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[swampiewolfess]

SWAMP TEA


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Lots of people, many kids, on northern reservations here and west into Montana, can show you what they call "swamp tea" though there are two different plants that different kids will show you. Only one of these is what was the traditional swamp tea, Muskeegobug, Ledum glandulosum, or Laborador Tea as its main common English name. The other was known as Odigadimanido, a special gift of the spirit or Manido powers. That's Ceanothus ovatus, or New Jersey Tea in its common English name.


Swamp tea or Muskeeg Anibi, botannically named Ledum glandulosum, common name Laborador Tea, is found from Greenland to the Rockies, and Northwest coast. In Minnesota it doesn't usually flower this big. This tea grows everywhere in the north, a weed 1 - 3 feet tall. Most reservation people know about it. It contributes vitamins and minerals, contains both thyeine and caffeine for a pick-up and to still that coffee craving. Tea can be made from crushed green leaves.
Here's a swamp tea plant (not in bloom) from around this area.Dried to keep (which few seem to do any more) it is best gathered when the plant's in flower (late July, August), and dried in the shade. Its Ojibwe name, Muskeegobug Aniibi, translates directly as "Swamp-growing" tea. The word "muskeg" has entered English, meaning northern swamps.

That's Ledum groenlandicum just above, ometimes called Laborador tea because it flourshes in long snowy winters, comparatively cold wet conditions. It's known, found, dried and drunk by tribal people all over the Anishiinabeg range, and I've heard that they like it as far nmorth as it grows. This plant's leaves contain both caffein and tannin. On White Earth when some was brought over, I was told "When we can't afford coffee, we can always get this."

This is ledum palustrium, another variety which seems to flower more showily than we see around here. Its leaves are perpendicular to the stem -- like Groenlandicum -- but are narrow- rolled at the edges, and darker green. This variety of "Indian tea" grows in the west, in drier areas whose winters are warmer.

Around here, the ledum is known as "the real swamp tea" but another plant is also referred to as "the other swamp tea."



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Ceanothus ovatus, common name New Jersey tea, is called in Ojibwe Odigadimanido, top gift from the Manido powers. No use trying to look at a big photo. Herb Foundation's big JPEG is damaged. I extracted this picture full-size from part that was undamaged.
You can see the characteristic curving leaf ribs quite well here. This tea (leaves picked when flowering, July here, dried in shade) tastes most like Oriental tea of any, but it contains no thyeine or caffeine; it isn't a stimulant. It is medicinal but the use there is 5 " of the dried root grated, boiled in a pint of water, with a small dose (one sthingyful for respiratory problems). Name and dosage both indicate the medicine is powerful and shouldn't be fooled around with. But the leaf tea is just a nice-tasting tea from a common plant. Its range is much wider (further south) than swamp ta and it like sandy, gravelly soil and full sun; it is easier to find among roadside weeds.
The powerful name given to this plant by Ojibwe women indicates the great regard it was once held in as a medicinal tea. There is nothing in any analysis of the plant to suggest why this might have been, and no one I know remembers any more anything about preparation (of roots, rather than the leaves). Dried leaf tea (and crushed green) are drunk now just as a good-tasting tea that may be easier to get at -- grows in more accessible places -- than the ledums.

It actually tastes very close to ordinary store-bought Chinese (green, unsmoked). But the one-time medicinal use from which it its powerful name is derived seems to have vanished in time with the women who once knew the proparation and uses. New Jersey leaf tea is popularly drunk by hikers and others all across the US. and Canada. Perhaps this is a vague remnant of its once-known medicinal powers, perhaps it only means that it tastes good and is easy to find.

[swampiewolfess]

MINT FAMILY


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Mint, as used by Ojibwe women of the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, from 1907-1923, when Frances Densmore interviewed them with Mary Warren English of White Earth as interpreter and (really) co-researcher, was identified (in one or two specimens) as Monarda Mollis L, with two Ojibwe names: bibigwunukuk ("looks like a flute") and waabinowusk (" comes from the dawn, east"). I have found no pix of this species. That would be important if the mint were to be considered medically, but its medical uses were not heavy-duty: treatment of burns and boils, and a very strong tea to expel worm parasites (intestinal infestations from bad meat). Densmore identified Koellia virginiana (Mountain mint), Ojibway name Namewuskons (Little Sturgeon-fish plant) as a food plant, especially used in cooking fish, with another plant that has a fish name, Wild Ginger (Namebin) I'll treat on another page.

Women used mint teas for women's medicines, too -- settlers referred to certain mints as "squaw-mint" (a pejorative way of saying the Ojibwe word ikwe meaning woman). Usually with medicines there was a mixture of several herbs, and in general root-scrapings were part of most medicines. For pleasure, and a food-value beverage, many species of wild mint were used. They had many names -- individuals often named a plant themselves, and plants were given different names according to the function being named. We are considering herbs and plants only for pleasure/nutrition, here, not medicine.

Photos below show some common wild mints. They were taken by several professional photographer-herbalists for the Herb Research Foundation (associated with the American Botannical Council), and are available in larger sizes on their image database, which is slow to access and slow-loading.


Monarda menthaefolia, Wild Oregano (of the Sierras). See/save a large original JPEG from the image database. This photo shows good identification characteristics for most of the mint family: the square stem, the opposed lance-shaped leaves. Crushing and smelling are good field tests. Mint species taste somewhat different. This one goes well with tomatoes raw or cooked (used a lot in southwest native cooking). It doesn't have coolness we call minty..

Wild horsemint, Monardia punctata (another common name is spotted bee-balm). Big JPEG original of this photo from the Herb Research Foundation's images database. To recognize this mint by its leaves and stems when it's not in its bright yellow flower (late spring/summer), it would be a good idea to examine the Herb Research foundation's big picture.

Catnip, Nepeta cataria, is a mint family member said to be an import that went wild and now flourishes everywhere. It grows about 2' tall. The leaves are downy above and below, a little larger than peppermint leaves. By the 1890's, Ojibwe women were using it. It had a Native name, Gajugensibug, and was said to be a good tea to drink to bring down fevers, as well as pleasant-tasting. Big JPEG original of this photo from the Herb Research Foundation's images database. Mentha piperata (peppermint) and Mentha viridis (spearmint) are two other imports -- both quite good and strong-flavored -- that escaped to flourish in the wild.

To use fresh mint in cooking, remove leaves from coarse stems, chop or crush. Because the flavor oil is volatile and driven off by heat, it is best to add mint -- fresh or dried -- near the end of cooking soups or stews. To make a fresh mint tea chop and crush tender stems and leaves both, use about 1/2 cup packed for 4 cups of boiling water. Don't boil the tea, pour boiling water over the leaves and steep for 5 minutes.

To dry mint, remove leaves from stems; dry in shade for about 2 weeks. To make a tea, use about 1 tablesthingyful of crushed, dry leaves per cup of water. Pour boiling water onto it, steep, don't boil. Mint tea does not reheat well. Mint teas can be drunk with cream or sugar or honey, but perhaps the best "tea" use of mints is to add flavor to other plant teas.

To grow your own: chop a stem about 4" down from the head off clean slightly on a slant. Place sprig of mint -- found or bought -- in a small jar of clean water in a sunny window.( Almost all members of the mint family like sun.) In 2 weeks, there will be a mass of roots. It's better to root them this way than to try to dig up found plants with their old roots. Pot the mint plant and water well. To keep it bushy cut it off often from the top branches, and use it in cooking most everything, or set the cut tops aside to dry. Leaves (and stems) of all the mints can be gathered any time during the summer; some feel the flavor is strongest when the plant is not in flower. Fresh young spring shoots from the perennial roots can be cooked and served with butter and salt. Mint leaves and tender springs can be mixed with any fresh salad greens, and are used a lot in Middle Eastern cooking.



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CORN, CORN-MEAL, HOMINY

Myths and Legends of the Sioux: Forgotten Ear of Corn--One of the corniest Indian legends I've ever seen, transcribed as part of the e-text project of Univrsity of Virginia library. This is a whole collection of alleged "Sioux" alleged myths most of which obviously aren't Sioux (like this one isn't). They were written up by a 19th-century Army Indian Service wife, whose grandma was Mdewakanton. Missus McG's hubby is the McGlaughlin whom Hunkpapa of Standing Rock and Mdewakanton of Minnesota and Nebraska know about. His census rolls, which "define" tribal descendants' membership for the US government have caused enormous trouble. The McGlaughlin rolls omitted legitimate Indian people McGlaughlin didn't like and included 100% whites who bribed him or were drinking buddies seeking to get Indian land allottments. Was she ignorant of that? No! She was his official interpreter, on the U.S. Army payroll. She drafted all that stuff, the government stufrf, I mean. Not much nutritional value in this here corn, and there's dozens like it there. A (white) South Dakota newspaper just loved 'em in 1916.

USDA CORN NUTRIENTS--all kinds here, meal, masa harina, but no indications about dried corn traditionally treated with wood-ash lyewater or lime water to increase availability of proteins and vitamins.

Nutritional Data for SUCCOTASH; (CORN AND LIMAS), CND, WITH WHOLE KERNEL CORN, SOL&LIQ--This is succotrasch from canned corn and limas; has less B and C vitamins than if you cook fresh and more sodium because of salt used in canning.

Nutritional Data for HOMINY, CANNED, YELLOW--Canned hominy has little food value. In reality, the traditional preparation, with wood-ash water (up north) or lime-water (southwest and meso-America) greatly icnreased the protein available from sun-dried corn, and made its vitamin B-3 (niaacin, somewhat scarce in foods) more biologically available. This is probably true of the Mexican-style hominy in the Posole recipe, whose author says it's readily available in stores in the southwest.


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Roast New Corn on the Cob for (outdoor) Powwow

The key to this is fresh corn from the field just that morning trucked in to the powwow ground before noon. Cut it with an 8" stem attached to the cob. A big bed of coals with a grill over it that has removable pieces so you can keep adding wood or charcoals through the afternoon. Several big tin gallon cans to hold melted butter to dip the roasted ears in. LOTS of big plastic garbage bags for the discarded husks. Pull the husks down and strip off some silk and MAKE SURE YOU GET ANY WORMS. Pull the husks back up, put the ear on the grill. Turn it a couple times. Usually about 7 - 10 minutes it's done, but this varies with the type of corn (and freshness). Husks should blacken slightly at their edges, but not turn brown. Push done ears off direct heat. When serving: pull off husks (into garbage!) and dip ear into melted butter. Wrap paper towel around stem and hand to customer. Have several sprinkle-cans of salt on counter. Don't do this if you can't get long-stemmed fresh corn; it just doesn't work.

EMAIL from a corn-on-cob expert: Yes it does work! We can only order loads of it from a farmer, not control its cut. Make sure your grill is very hot, so it roasts, not steams, the corn. Don't strip off the husks, to get the silk, they come off very easy when hot. Grill the corn about 7 minutes, so the edges of the husk blacken, then holding it with a dish towel, strip off the husks and silk and dip in butter. If worried about them seeing worms, turn your back to them.

Oven roasted in husks: You can roast it anywhere from 9 to 45 minutes, a lot depends on the variety. The more sugar in the corn, the less roasting time. 45 minutes at 400 degrees turns the husks all brown and dry, just beginning to burn the edges. You might strip the husks, then grill it under the broiler till it turns reddish brown, this is really roasted corn for traditional recipes. It's not dried out. The kernels scrape off the cob really easily.

Microwaving corn in the husk: Again, it depends on the variety, how much sugar is in it. Also microwaves are different. Usually 7 minutes on high is about right, then strip off the husks, using a dishtowel to protect from the heat. The silk will come off easily, too.

Here's a recipe for "brown corn". Bake 6 ears in husks at 400 for 15 minutes. Fry a cup of sliced mushrooms with 3 cloves garlic chopped fine in olive oil.. Then shuck the cooled-off corn and brush it with olive oil. Broil it, turning a couple times about 10 minutes till it turns light brown, then cut off the kernels. Mix corn, mushrooms, and 3 tablesthingys olive oil with 2 TBS chopped cilantro, 1 tsp marjoram, and some mild chile in adobo sauce chopped fine with sauce from the can -- not more than a couple tablesthingys. How much sauce how much chile -- how hot do you like it? Squeeze in juice from 1/2 lime. Stir it all up. tossing to coat it all evenly like a salad.. Add about 1/2 tsp salt (taste). Serve either hot or at room temperature (room temperature: let sit for a couple hours is better) as a relish with chicken or meat.

-- From A. Nonny Moose (by request) from WI

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PosoleStew--This recipe (on Indian Health Service page) uses a southwstern form of hominy, and it's also for outdoor grilling of the meat. You an use canned hominy or perhaps you can find dried whole hominy at a health-food store; if you use canned, naturally don't cook it before you add it to the final stew phase, and only put it in for the last 40 minutes. Dried hominy will cook up to a volume of 3 times, so 1.5 lbs dry would equal an addition of at least 2-3 quarts canned (this is whole hominy, not grits). Also, the meat can be roasted in an oven, and the peppers carred under the broiler or in a very hot oven in a paper bag. This recipe resides on the Indian Health Service server, which gives promise of more, I'll keep checking back.


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Simpler Posole, Navajo -- serves 4-6


2 cups blue dried posole (dried whole hominy)
1/2 cup mild fresh green chiles, roasted, peeled
amd chopped or 1 4 oz can
1 - 3 fresh or canned jalapeños, peeled, seeded, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, chopped
1 -2 peeled, seeded, chopped tomatoes (about 1 cup)
2 - 3 lb boneless pork roast
2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 cup choppeed fresh cilantro
Salt to taste


Rinse posole in cold water until water runs clear. Soak for several hours or overnight in cold water. Place posole with water to cover in large heavy covered pot or Dutch oven. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and summer, covered, till posole pops, about 1 hour. Roasat the peppers (if fresh) in a paper bag in a 400° oven for about 10 minutes , remove, cool, peel (skin slips off easily). If using canned posole (about 8 cups) or frozen (3 lbs), omit the cooking step. Add everything but the herbs and salt. Simmer, covered, 4 hours. (3 if using canned or frozen hominy). Remove meat, shred, return to pot, add herbs. Taste for seasoning, add salt to taste. Simmer, covered, 1 more hour.

This recipe is from Marilyn Yazzie, Navajo, Tsenjikini (honeycombed rock) mother's clan, Tachiinnii (Red runs into the water) Father's clan. She favors using only fresh chiles, and likes it hot. She uses lean pork and no salt, for health reasons. If you're not so sure about fiery southwestern foods, use only 1 jalapeno, or use only mild green chiles, no jalapenos. This and many others can be found in Spirit of the Harvest: North American Indian Cooking (see main RECIPES page, cookbooks section).

Because we don't have the taste for such hot foods up north here as they do in the southwest, when I make this posole I omit the jalapenos entirely, and added the cilantro to Marilyn's recipe. I cook up a bowl of hotter sauce for those who like it, and serve a (small) bowl of chopped jalapenos on the side for the real cast-iron gullets among us. I probably never will make the 2-day posole on the IHS server (seems kind of like you either have to live on a rach or in a sururban house with a backyard barbeque), but I've made Marilyn's many times, once 10 times the amount (in 4 pots) for a large crowd.


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Posole Soup -- Serves 12

Broth:
6 lbs pigs' feet cracked or cut
3 TBS fresh organo leaves,or 3 tsp dried
2 large onions sliced
6 bay leaves
2 heads garlic cut in half
3 tsp black pepper
10 whole mild red chiles
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt
5 gallons water
Fixings:
1 head garlic
1 TBS fresh oregano, or 1 tsp dried
2 lbs prepared posole
2 lbs lean pork diced
Garnish:
1 head cabbage, very thinly sliced
12 radishes sliced thin
1/2 cup red chile or ranchero sauce

Simmer broth ingredients in water 6-8 hours, skimming to remove excess fat and scum the first 2 hrs. Strain, reserve stock. Remove meat from pigs feet and return to stock.

Add posole, pork, oregano. Simmer 4-5 hrs, adding more water as needed, and skimming. Remove garlic head, taste for salt. Ladle soup and fixings into large bowls, garnish with cabbage, radishes, ranchero sauce, and if fresh oregano is availabl, a sprig of that.


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Making hominy

I have no way to get wood (oak) ashes (and I think the southwestern kind is made in limewater), I'll give this recipe which was used up north 20 years or so ago, somebody try it with store-bought popcorn or health food co-op dried corn, see if it works, if you can get the ashes.

This is the method for making hominy from traditionally sun-dried corn as done up north on Ojibwe reservations here for many years. It's from Ona Kingbired ( Red Lake). I've never tried it.

Use sun-dried corn. But I'd like to know if dried pop-corn grain will work. Multicolored kernels have the most flavor.

Put 2 double-handfuls of ash from oak, maple or poplar wood fires into about 2-3 quarts of water. Boil for 1 hour and let it set all night to settle the ash out. In the morning, boil dried corn in this water, strained if necessary, until the skins slip off and the corn turns bright yellow (1-2 hours).. Rinse 3 times in fresh water. This fresh hominy can now be used immediately in soups and stews. The dried corn will absorb 3-4 times its volume of water. Hominy can also be dried for storage and cooked again (it swells up about 4 times and absorbs at least 4 times its quantity of water).

So, I'd like to hear from someone who can try this with wood ash and the kind of dried corn you can get in stores.

Southwestern tribes made hominy by cooking the dried corn kernels in a lye water made from a mix of corn-cob ashes and powdered lime in water, I'm informed. Either way, the net effect on the nutritional value of the corn is that while some nutrients are leached out, those weren't in available forms anyway. The treatment greatly increases the amounts of usable protein, usable vitamin B (especially thiamine, rarest among vegetable sources), and adds a considerable amount of usable calcium and potassium to the resulting food. (This is probably not true of the way factory-canned hominy is made.) If corn is the staple of your diet, it is hominy you will mostly eat. White people were unaware of this, because relatively little scientific attention was given to nutrition, and no scientists were willing to learn from so-called primitive people with their so-called irrational customs. In the 1920's and '30's, there was widespread pellagra among poor whites, especially in the south. Pellagra is a serious, eventually fatal, disease caused entirely by nutritional deficiences that arise from eating diets largely of of milled cornmeal, chemical hominy, and corn-off-the-cob or canned. Corn was bum-rapped by scientific nutritionists because of the pellagra epidemic. They didn't realize that traditional people, whose diet often consisted almost entirely of corn and beans knew how to handle it to get the best food values from it.


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Corn casserole (serves 4-5 as main dish)


3 cups Monterey Jack or similar grated cheese
6 slices whole wheat bread torn up
1 lb canned creamed corn
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 cup corn
3 eggs beaten with:
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
6 drops Tabasco sauce
1/2 tsp dry yellow mustard


Fry the onion and celery together. Layer the bread (bottom) vegetables, and cheese in an oiled casserole dish. Pour the creamed corn over the top. Then pour the egg mixture over that. Let it stand 30 minutes, then bake in a 350° oven for 1 hour, placed in a pan of hot water.

As a main dish, this supplies about 40% of a day's protein requirement. By protein complementarity, the available amount can be increased to 55% by adding 3/4 cup sunflower seeds, but some people don't like crunchies in it.


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Frypan Corn/bean Fork Bread Serves 4-6


1/2 cup dry beans (kidney or black)
3/4 cup bean stock

1 large onion chopped
2-6 cloves garlic, minced

1 egg beaten
2 tbs corn oil
1 cup cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1 - 4 Tbsp chili powder

3/4 cup grated cheese
1 tomato cut up very fine
a few green onions cut up
1/4 cup black olives sliced


Cook beans covered, with a bay leaf, in 2 1/2 cups water so about 3/4 cup liquid will remain when they are very tender. If you bring them to a boil, then turn off the heat and let them cool off an hour, you can then boil them without soaking all night previousy. Add salt the last 15 minutes only. Fry onion and garlic in a little corn oil, in a big skillet that can go in the oven. Leave half of it in the bottom of the skillet. Mix the cornmeal, other dry ingredients, egg, beans and bean stock with the other half of fried onions/garlic. Mix thoroughly and pour into the skillet on top of the fried onion/garlic left in it. Bake at 350° for about 12 minutes, then sprinkle on cheese, olives, tomato and onion, bake 5 minutes longer. This is a fork-eating, not a pick-up corn bread. The corn and beans combine protein complementarity to make one serving about 20% of a day's protein requirement. However, you better make 2 skillets of this for your family if this is the main dish.


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Indian cornmeal pudding serves 4-6

There must be several hundred recipes for this. East coast tribal people taught settlers how to make it. Settlers sometimes calld it "Hasty pudding" kind of a joke, because the stone-ground cornmeal required many hours of baking. This recipe adds a small amount of soy grits -- precooked soy beans ground up to a fine quick-cooking meal. Through protein complementarity, that greatly increases the availability of proteins in this dessert.


4 cups milk
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/4 cup soy grits soaked in 1/2 cup water

1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup light molasses
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup fine-chopped dried apples (optional)
2 eggs


In a big pan, bring the milk to a boil, then add the cornmeal and soy grits gradually stirring rapidly to keep lumps from forming. Lower heat and beat vigorously until it starts to get thick (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat. Add butter, sugar, molasses (can use maple syrup) and spices, let cool somewhat. Stir in 2 beaten eggs. Pour into buttered baking dish, bake 50-60 minutes at 325°, until pudding is firm. Serve warm with cream, vanilla icecream, or plain yoghurt.

If soy grits is used: one serving is about 30% of a day's protein requirement. Some kinds of cornmeal (stone ground) have more protein and other minerals and vitamins, though it depends on where/how it was grown.


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Corn Soup, Serves 6-8

This is another one where there's a million recipes, plus the fact you can throw in whatever you have on hand.


1/2 lb salt pork
2 big onions, sliced
3 cups diced boiled potatoes
2 cups boiling water
2 cups cooked corn, fresh or canned
4 cups hot milk
1/2 tsp salt, pepper to taste
chopped parsley garnish


Cut pork into 1/2-inch dice, try out. Add onion, cook slowly 5-10 minutes, stirring, until transparent but not bfowned. Add potatoes, corn, boiling water, hnot milk. Season to taste, serve with garnish. Other things to throw into this soup: cooked carrots, rutabagas, turnips, leftover beans, canned tomatoes. Leftover ham, chopped. Use a broth made from any bones instead of water. To make a thicker chowder, make a roux of 2 Tbs butter and 2 of flour, frizzled, stir this into 1 cup of the milk, cook and stir until thickened. Stir this white sauce into the rest of the liquid as you add it to the vegetables. Like most soups and stews, corn soup is mostly an idea rather than a recipe. What you put in it depends on what you have.


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Mohawk Corn Soup -- Chris Kahon:wes Deer, Mohawk

Mohawk Corn Soup--Chris Kahon:wes Deer -- Kahnahwake (Canada) Mohawk, is a college student who maintains a very informative homepage (and soon will be producing a Mohawk Nation page). He posted this recipe on the personal section of his homepage. I very well demonstrates what I said about my own corn chowder recipe: Soups and stews are ideas, not recipes. Put in what you got! Put in what you like! Put in enough to make enough to feed everybody! And after you've checked out his recipe, look at the rest of Kahon:wes's Mohawk Home Page highly informative!



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New Corn-Stuffed Tamales (Tamale de Elote) -- Mayan, makes 8 tamales


1 1/2 cups roasted fresh corn kernels, scraped from cobs
1/2 cup milk
1 cup masa harina (Lime-water prepared cornmeal)
1 cup softened butter
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 -3 mild canned green chiles, seeded and chopped fine
1/2 cup grated Monterey jack cheese


Masa harina: This is cornmeal that has been prepared with lime or wood-ash lye water. It's different from ordinary cornmeal, cooks up softer, absorbs lots of fat during its cooking, holds together better in tortillas, etc. It's available from Mexican food stores. Masa differes from cornmeal in another important way. As with hominy, the treatment by lye or lime water balances the corn's amino acids, so there is actually more available or usable form protein. Corn got a bad rap nutritionally when the invaders, not recognizing the nutritional importance of this treatment (which was universal among corn-growing tribes) skipped that step and lived off of plain ground cornmeal -- what's available to you, mostly, in stores. Many suffered from the eventually fatal nutritional deficiency disease pellagra (if became almost synonymous with poor white trash in the rural south).

Properly treated and cooked, corn, which was a native dietary staple almost everywhere it grows, for 4,000 years, is as nutritious as wheat, and may be more so if what is grown in minearl-depleted soil with chemical fertilizers. Fresh corn nowadays has been bred up to be much higher in sugar -- 2 - 4 times higher -- than the colorful, traditional 4-colors corn, which is still a taste treat (and nutritional bonanza) if you can get it.

To roast the fresh corn: just put them (in their husks) in a 400 degree oven for 5 minutes. Husks and silk will peel off easily. Then scrape off kernels, standing cob in a big frypan to catch them. Depending on the ears, it will take 2-4 ears to make 1 1/2 cups of kernels.

Cornhusk tamale wrappers: The ones you just prepared are probably dried out and frizzeled. If you've saved and dried husks, steep them in boiling water to cover (poured over them, not cooked) while roasting and scraping the corn. Otherwise, you'll have to use foil wrappers.

Simmer milk and corn for about 10 minutes. Strain the corn, reserve the milk, and puree 1/2 cup of the kernels with this milk, reserving the rest for putting in the tamale dough. Add the puree to the masa, mix vigorously with sthingy and whisk. In a separate large bowl, whip the soft butter, baking powder, and salt together until very fluffy. Start adding the masa mixture about 1/4 cup (guesstimated) at a time whisking and beating vigorously after each dough addition. Spend 15 minuts at least beating the masa mix into the butter. Fold in the green chile, the remaining cup of corn kernels, and grated cheese.

Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces, about 4 Tbsp each. Pat each piece into a rectangle on a trimmed cornhusk to form a square or rectangle, leaving a husk border at the edges of the tamale at least 1 inch. Now fold up the rectangle along the length of the cornhusks and pinch it into a roll, loosely. Roll the husk up completely around the dough roll. Tie the ends with strips of cornhusk (traditional), or string (easier). The wrapping shouldn't be totally tight, so steam can get in. Place the wrapped tamales seam-side down on the rack of any kind of steamer (wok with a rack and tight cover will do, I use big enameled cast-iron frypan with tight lid). Tamales shouldn't touch the boiling water. Steam for 30 minutes. Let cool slightly and serve (diners unwrap their own) with any kind of hot tomato or other type of sauce. Those celebrating New Corn eat it without sauce, but fat or butter is sometimes available.

[swampiewolfess]

FRYBREAD (Zahsakokwahn)-- Staple of Powwows, Symbol of


Intertribal Indian Unity Frybread: Just a couple out of hundreds, but all basically alike. The first makes 8-10 small ones or 5 big flat ones for Indian tacos.

2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
Deep hot fat in frypan or fryer


Sift dry ingredients. Lightly stir in milk. Add more flour as necessary to make a dough you can handle. Kneed and work the dough on a floured board with floured hands until smooth. Pinch off fist-sized limps and shap into a disk -- everyone has their own characteristic shapes.(Shape affects the taste, by the way because of how it fries). For Indian tacos, the disk must be rather flat, with a depression -- almost a hole -- in the center of both sides. Make it that way if the fry bread is going to have some sauce over it. Smaller, round ones are made to put on a plate. Fry in fat (about 375°) until golden and done on both sides, about 5 minutes. Drain on absorbent paper. (Phyllis Jarvis, Paiute)


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My Version for A Batch of FryBread--Makes 16-24


4 cups flour
1/2 teasthingy salt
2 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup oil
1/2 to 1 cup powdered milk (don't use the
commercial kind, if you cn get commodity)
2 cups water (a little more if more milk is used)


Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl, make a well in it and pour in the water and oil. Knead thoroughly to a stiff dough. Add more flour -- it shouldn't be sticky. Flour in bread varies by moisture in the air. Take a handful and pat it into a flat round with a depression in both sides of the center, or make a twisted round. Depending on the shape and how much you knead and twist and pull it, the fry bread will taste quite different. Slap it around plenty, and make sure that dought isn't sticky.

For Indian tacos (or to serve with wojape berry pudding over it), make a flat taco, about 8-9" in diameter and 1 1/2" thick at the edges, with a depression in the center of both sides (to hold the sauce).

Fry it in hot oil, either a fryer or frypan with at least 1 1/2" of oil in it. Keep crumbs and such skimmed off the oil. Oil temperature should be about 375, not smoking. Breads will puff and turn golden. Flip over to fry on both sides. Remove to drain on paper, don't stack them on top of each other until cool. Even if you're going to make thousands for a powwow, this is about the right size for a working batch. Make batch after batch after batch..... It will be noticeable that the ones different people shape come out different even if making them from the same dough. If feeding kids, work more powdered milk into it. How many it makes depends on the size you make them.

Cleanup and saving the frying oil: skim out all crumbs on the top. Cut up an apple and fry slices in the fat. Cool it. Pour through a funnel lined with a cloth towel back into can, discarding the brown sludge at the bottom.


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"Modern" Wojape--a berry pudding to eat with fry bread. From Stacy Winter, Crow Creek (SD) Lakota . She calls it modern because of using any kind of frozen berries; we moderns often use government commodities gallon cans. This recipe makes enough for about 20-30 people who have 1-2 fry breads. It resides on the Indian Health Service server.


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Indian tacos -- sauce etc. to serve over fry bread, at community feasts, and powwow booths.


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Frybread animosh (dogs): This is like corn dogs. The dough is rolled out into a 1/2-inch thick wrapper for each hot dog. Grill the hot dogs first, then place on wrapper and seal. Pinch tightly closed along seam and ends. Use more salt in dough -- about 1 tsp in proportion to my batch ingredients. The above batch will do about 2 dozen - 30 dogs.


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Health and diet-conscious people will note that fry bread is not very "healthy" food, with its high-fat content, and nothing but white flour. (The milk is water in more trad rez recipes. Who could get milk? Now you can get commodities powdered milk. For kids/school affairs, I add extra dried milk powder if I can get it) Frybread was developed by Indian women in response to commodities issue on early reservations, which included little more than flour, salt, sugar, coffee, and corn oil. It does taste quite good, and is very individual even though almost everybody uses just about the same proportions of ingredients because it tastes different according to how you knead and shape it (and what kind of oil it's fried in).

Frybread began as Indian women making the best of what was often poor-quality issue of rations in the new prison camps (reservations). The traditional part -- frying in oil -- does predate rations, using bear and deer tallow to fry cakes made of various seed meals, but frying in deep oil post-dates iron frypans obtained in trade goods.

FRYBREAD POWER!

[swampiewolfess]

FRUIT, BERRIES

USDA database has only jams, pop, sweetened stuff for strawberry, other berries and fruits. Their food value is mostly just sugar calories. Handbook #8 has more info.


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"Modern" Wojape--a berry pudding to eat with fry bread. From Stacy Winter, a Crow Creek Lakota woman, who says to dip fry bread into it. We usually serve it over the fry bread, but then people pick it up and scoop around in the wojape. She calls it modern because of using any kind of frozen berries; we often use commoddities gallon cans. This recipe makes enough for about 20-30 people who have 1-2 fry breads with it. It resides on the Indian Health Service server. See the fry bread menu, where I'm probably going to add several other versions of fry bread.


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Wild Strawberries in chocolate fondue

Well, you take about a pound of expensive bittersweet chocolate, shave it and melt it in a little coffee with a tablesthingy of butter stirred in. Keep it warm in a foudue pot over a little burner for the pot. And about a quart of delicious little red-all-through wild strawberries, chiilled. And one fondue fork per person. Swirl a berry in the chocolate. Other bland, crisp fruits can stretch the berries if you don't have enough:
Apple slices (Green Granny Smith), Pear slices. Sprinkle these slices with lemon juice so they won't turn brown. Small cubes (1 inch or less) of French bread (especially crust) is also good. Then -- frog out on it!

A little cultural explanation, here, of that picture. Midè teachings about death is that the spirit will, on its road toward the Milky Way, encounter the temptation of a giant wild strawberry. If you are too greedy there (like you were in life), your spirit will turn into a frog, right there, eating more from the base of the berry and croaking futile warnings at other spirits coming along there. I always figured I wouldn't be too greedy, except that wild strawberries are so much better than those big white tasteless things from the store.

Still, I could maybe pig-out or frog-out on just a F - E - W bites, then move on. But, if they got a pot of melted bitter-sweet chocolate, and a fondue fork to swirl that incomparably delicious red berry meat with right by that giant strawberry there, I think they got me. Still, I figure chocolate fondue strawberries is not traditional, so probably they won't have any, I'm safe.



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Sweet Blackberry Blue Corn tamale -- serves 8

Try to get blue corn masa harina for this; white or yellow will do, but blue looks prettier. Don't use ordinary corn meal; masa harina is treated with lime water and cooks differently. If you have dried corn husks, you can steam the tamales in them, otherwise use aluminum foil.

Tamale dough
3/4 cup strained blackberry puree
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tablesthingy maple syrup or molasses
1 cup blue corn masa harina
2 tablesthingys softened butter
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
8 big dry husks, or 10" aliminum foil squares

Filling:
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans or black walnuts
2 tablesthingys maple candy rolled into crumbs OR
2 tablesthingys almond paste
Topping:
3/4 cup sour cream, do not use yoghurt
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
2 cups fresh blackberries "destemmed" and washed
2 TBS sugar

Bring puree, water, sugar and molasses to a boil. Whisk in masa harina and stir mixture over low heat at a slow-popping bubble for 10 minutes. Stir in butter and lemon juice off heat. Mixture should be a firm, dry dough. not sticky, not crumbly.

Roll and pat dough into 8 squares on the foil or husks, leaving 1-inch edge margin at the sides and slightly more at the ends (to tie up or twist-flod closed). Use about 4 TBS per tamale. The dough should be about 1/2 inch thick or less. Now lay out a row of filling along the long center of the tamale (parallel to long sides of husk if used). Fold up each edge around it to meet in the middle -- a fat rectangle, rather than a roll -- and press edges of tamale closed at ends and top. Fold up and tie husk ends (if using),or fold up and seal shut foil. Steam tamales for 10 minutes in a steamer or wok.

While steaming, whip cream, starting with whipping cream and adding sour cream, form soft peaks, add sugar and flavorings. Remove tamales, cool slightly, open them up and put on big serving plates. Pour a little juice from berries (if some has formed) over each tamale, top with some berries (1/4 cup each) and the cream, saving a few berries to garnish each dish.

If you can find blue corn masa harina, these tamales will be a very interesting purple color from the corn and berries. It's prettier if you use maple syrup, not molasses. Note that you can use several other kinds of fillings: blackberry jam mixed with nuts, just nuts with sugar (but it tends to fall apart), nuts with some sugar and egg to hold it together, etc. You can also use a different kind of jam or jelly (strawberry, raspberry) with the nuts for a red color when the tamale is broken open. In my opinion, using jam or jelly makes it too sweet and overpowers the corn/blackberry flavors. You can also use raspberries instead of blackberries, but they are more sour, so use jam or jelly with the nuts, and don't use blue corn masa, use white or yellow corn masa, so the tamale will be pink.


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Fresh juice from cranberries

Unless you have access to a bog with a lot of wild cranberries, you'll probably buy them and only make a small amount of fresh juice, so canning it isn't necessary, you'll drink it all before it spoils (refrigerated). A pint a day, for 4 weeks, if treating a urinary tract infection. Don't bother with this unless you can start with at least 4 quarts of berries.

Cook cranberries in an equal amount of water until their skins burst -- about 5 minutes. The less cooking time, the less vitamin C is destroyed by heat. Strain through cheesecloth folded or sewn into a jelly bag, dont squeeze or the juice will be cloudy, let it hang and drip. Add 2/3 cup sugar for each quart of berries used to the juice and heat to 180 degrees (below boiling). At this point, you can refrigerate it in large glass jars.

This juice is rather strong and sour; you may want to dilute it or sweeten it. Cranberry juice thingytail (bought in the store) is about 1/4 cranberry juice, the rest is apple juice, water, sugar.


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Berry Canning Procedures

Canning, if you have a lot: Because cranberries, like most berries, are highly acid, they don't need much heat to be safely canned (or bottled). You can process them in sterilized jars or bottles for 20 minutes in boiling water (vegetables, meats, other non-acid fruits are not safe to can this way, you should process in a pressure cooker). Water bath (non-pressure) processing can be done in any large, deep pot. Put the jars on a rack in the bottom so they don't touch the bottom. You will need to use the type of glass jar that has a zinc cap and a rubber washer ring. If you can find them anywhere any more. Leave at least 1.5-2 inches empty at the top of the jar, put on the ring and cap, screw it tightly, but then turn it back 1/4 inch, so it's sealed against the water but can vent a little pressure. Water must be at least 1 inch over tops of jars. Bring to boil, and boil for at least 20 minutes. Remove jars. Screw lids down very tightly while still hot, so cooling juice will pull it down to a tight vacuum.

This same canning procedure can be followed with high-acid berry jams and jellies, but for low-acid foods (including tomatoes) use a pressure cooker. Right they didn't use to have them, they used to have a lot of spoilage and food poisoning. Traditionally, fruits were preserved by drying. Pressure cookers began to be used on Minnesota rezzes during the early years of World War II when Native people prepared big "victory gardens" and even supplied food to white people for the wartime efforts. A few pressure cookers were shared among many women. (Red Lake ladies also formed a home defense rifle brigade.)


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What to do with the leftover pulp?

1. Mix with mayonnaise (only use Hellman's), 1 cup cranberry pulp stirred into 2 1/2 cups mayo. Use this mayo on fruit salad or with broiled fish (good with salmon steaks).

2. Make ketchup out of it: 4 cups pulp, add 1 cup water, 1 cup vinegar, 1/4 tsp allspice, 1/2 tsp cloves, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp salt, 2 cups brown sugar. Heat to boiling to dissolve the sugar. Process in blender until all mushed up. If you'r going to can this, heat the ketchup to barely boiling for 10 minutes, put in sterile jars and process in watrer bath as explained for juice.

3. Cranberry sauce: Boil 1 1/2 cups sugar, 2 cups water per 4 cups pulp until sugar is dissolved throughout. You may be disappointed unless you add some lemon juice, orange juice and grated rind, as a lot of flavor has already been cooked out with the juice.


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Sweetpotatoes Stuffed with Cranberries -- Serves 6

1 1/2 cups of cranberry sauce
3 TBS butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Bake potatoes until tender and easily peelable (about 30 minutes). Peel just the skins, cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out some of the insides and reserve. Stuff both halves, holding the potato back together with toothpicks. Put in greased oven pan, mound the removed insides mashed and heaped around them. Mix sauce, nuts, sugar, butteer, salt and pour over. bake at 350 uncovered until lightly browned, about 20-25 minutes. Goes well with turkey, roast chicken, or duck. If you want to take less trouble with it, don't hollow and stuff the potatoes, chunk them and pour th cranberry sauce over them.


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Custard pie made with cooked berries:

2 cups cranberries pulp
1 cup water
1 can (1.5 cups) sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 well-beaten egg yolks
1 baked 9-inch pie shell
1/2 cup whipping cream
3 TBS sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix pulp with water, force through seive or puree in blender. Combine puree with lemonjuice, milk, eggs, mix thoroughly. Pour into pastry shell and chill till set. Whip cream to soft peaks, add sugar and vanilla, top pie with it.


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You just want cranberry sauce for a turkey? OK, per 4 cups of fresh berries. Boil 1 1/2 cups sugar with 2 cups water for 5 minutes to make a syrup. Add berries and boil without stirring 5 minutes (skins will burst). That's it! 4 cups of sauce (about).


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Try a raw relish, instead of cooked cranberry sauce:

2 large oranges
4 cups cranberries
1.5 cups honey

Peel the orange zest, then peel off most of the bittr white under-rind. Cut the oranges across to remove any seeds. Force zests, cranberries, and orange sections through a food grinder and mix well together. Stir in honey. Make this several hours before using, so flavors can mingle sitting at room temperature. Makes about a quart of relish.

Whole raw cranberries can be used in most kinds of baked goods -- muffins, quick breads, pancakes -- the same as blueberries. They are much more sour than blueberries, so it's best to use them in rather sweet mixes. They are quite nice in banana bread, for example.