Pakistani Kima

This is the last dish I am posting for this Lenten blog. I expect to do some more blogging throughout the year, though. If you would like to receive notice of the next series, please respond to this post. Of course there will also be notices on the church website and in the Sunday bulletin.

As I read through the More-with-Less Cookbook, I was impressed with the number of international dishes. But it is understandable when one realizes that Doris Longacre (the book’s author) wrote to Mennonite friends around the world asking for economical low-meat recipes that would help North Americans reduce consumption by eating less animal protein and fewer highly processed foods. I think her approach has more merit than ever.

If you’d like to explore the cookbook and the community that developed through using it on the internet, you’ll find good information at: http://www.worldcommunitycookbook.org/more/

This is a website hosted by the Mennonite denomination and has recipes from its other successful cookbook, Simply in Season.

I won’t say that I saved the best for last, but this had a certain Wow! factor. I doubled the amount of curry and gave a generous dash where just a ‘dash’ was called for in the recipe.

Pakistani Kima

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons butter
1 chopped medium onion
1 clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 lbs. ground meat

1 can tomatoes (15 oz)
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 dash each: cinnamon, ginger, turmeric

2 cups diced and peeled potatoes
2 cups frozen peas or green beans
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin  

Method:

Sauté all spices in butter in a large skillet over medium heat a few minutes. Then add onion, garlic and ground meat and continue to stir mixture until slightly browned. Then add the stewed tomatoes and potatoes. Cover and simmer for 25 minutes over medium- low temperature. Add frozen peas or beans last and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.
Serve over rice.

From More-with-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre. Copyright © 1976, 2000, 2011 by Herald Press, Harrisonburg, VA 22802. Used by permission.

Sunday Chicken Dinner

The Joy of Eating Sunday Chicken

There was a time when the usual main course for Sunday dinner in many segments of U.S. culture was chicken. The meal was usually after church and was the largest meal of the day. It often involved guests. It seems that Sunday dinner has more or less passed from the scene these days. However, we continue it on Easter and a few other times of the year when we have family or friends over. I’m not lamenting the passing of Sunday dinner, but I do like the notion of a big meal once a week mid-day. Upsetting the routine of our meals, by changing time, setting, or menu gives us a chance to pause.

The following recipe, “Honey Baked Chicken”, from The More-with-Less Cookbook, would be a great Sunday dinner dish. The chicken cooks perfectly — the tender, moist meat falls off the bone with every prod of the fork, making a more civilized approach to its ingestion certainly an option. It is simple and easy to make.

Honey Baked Chicken

1 3-pound chicken, cut up (I used legs and thighs)
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup honey
2 tablespoons mustard
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoon curry powder

Arrange the chicken pieces in a 9 x 13 pan.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the rest of the ingredients, stirring until combined. Pour the warm sauce over the chicken pieces.

Bake the chicken, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 60-90 minutes, periodically spooning the sauce over the chicken pieces. The chicken is done when it is nicely browned.

Serve with rice.

Perhaps Dan Masterson’s poem “Sunday Dinner” could be read as a table grace.

Sunday Dinner

Linen napkins, spotless from the wash, starched
And ironed, smelling like altar cloths. Olives
And radishes wet in cut glass, a steaming gravy bowl
Attached to its platter, an iridescent pitcher cold
With milk, the cream stirred in moments before.

The serving fork, black bones at the handle, capped
In steel, tines sharp as hatpins. Stuffed celery,
Cut in bite-sized bits, tomato juice flecked
With pepper, the vinegar cruet full to the stopper
Catching light from the chandelier.

Once-a-week corduroyed plates with yellow trim,
A huge mound of potatoes mashed and swirled.
Buttered corn, side salads topped with sliced tomatoes,
A tall stack of bread, a quarter-pound of butter
Warmed by its side. And chicken, falling off the bone:
Crisp skin baked sweet with ten-minute bastings

Homemade pies, chocolate mints and puddings,
Coffee and graceful glasses of water, chipped ice
Clinking the rims.

Cashews in a silver scoop, the centerpiece a milkglass
Compote with caved-in sides, laced and hung
With grapes, apples, and oranges for the taking.

Dan Masterson

from All Things, Seen and Unseen. © University of Arkansas Press, 1999

More-with-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre. Copyright © 1976, 2000, 2011 by Herald Press, Harrisonburg, VA 22802. Used by permission.

Nixtamalization

You’d probably never guess the meaning of the word I’ve chosen for the title to today’s blog. So to save you the trouble of consulting dictionary.com I’ll explain. ‘Nixtamalization’ is the term for the process used to turn field corn into hominy.

My wife, Bethyl, and I have been looking for simple pozole recipe that we could make in the crock-pot. When we have had this soup in restaurants we have always commented on how much we like it. Growing up, hominy wasn’t exactly a staple in our home, but we did have it from time-to-time and I enjoyed it. Unfortunately The More-with-Less cookbook doesn’t have any hominy recipes so I have adapted a recipe from the newspaper. It was perfect during the waning cool days of winter. And if you have a good recipe using hominy pass it along.

 

Ingredients

1 tablespoon canola oil

1-2 lbs boneless pork loin cut into 1 inch cubes

1 15 oz can enchilada sauce

1 15 oz can white hominy

1 onion chopped

¼ cup green chilies diced

2-3 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon oregano

¼ cup cilantro

Heat the canola oil in a skillet over high heat. Add the pork; cook and stir just until meat is browned on all sides, about 5 minutes.

Place the meat in a 4 quart slow cooker. Pour the enchilada sauce over the meat. Top with the hominy, onion, chilies, garlic, and oregano. Pour in half cup of water.

Cover, and cook on High for 5 to 6 hours. Stir in the cilantro and salt. Cook on Low for 30 minutes more. Sprinkle with some chopped cilantro after dishing up.

Serve with warm corn tortillas and garnishes; such as chopped cabbage, sour cream, lime juice and green onions. 

Primitive Physic

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, had very wide ranging interests. Those interests extended to healthy living and healing. He wrote a very popular book entitled Primitive Physic, which was basically a collection of home remedies. The book went through many editions. He offered cures for an unbelievably wide range of disorders. I include the following from the book as an example:

The Gout in any Limb
378.  Rub the part with warm treacle [molasses*], and then bind on a flannel smeared therewith.  Repeat this, if need be, once in twelve hours.
- This has cured inveterate Gout in thirty-six hours.
379.  Or, drink a pint of strong infusion of elder-buds dry or green, morning and evening.  This has cured inveterate Gouts.
380.  Or, at six in the evening, undress and wrap yourself up in blankets.  Then put your legs up to the knees in water, as hot as you can bear it.  As it cools, let hot water be poured in, so as to keep you in a strong sweat till ten.  Then go into a bed well warmed and sweat till morning. --- I have known this cure an inveterate Gout, in a person above sixty, who lived eleven years after. --- The very matter of the Gout is frequently destroyed by a steady use of Mynsicht's Elixir of Vitriol." (Wesley, Primitive Physic, 69-70.)

Gout is caused by too much uric acid in the blood, which causes deposits of uric acid crystals in the joints, legs and arms, causing swelling. Even now it is thought to be triggered by rich foods, meat, and alcohol.  It is considered to be a disease of a highly civilized lifestyle, and has a genetic/hereditary component.  Wesley believed its discomfort could be decreased if it was hereditary, and cured if it was not.  Both John and his mother, Suzanna had it (Madden, Deborah A Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine' Religion, Medicine and Culture in John Wesley's Primitive Physic (232-33, 270). One of the ways to get rid of the uric acid  is to increase urination. 

#380 Therefore, hot bathing would stimulate urination of toxic chemicals and also relax arthritic inflammation. (Root-Bernstein, Robert and Root-Bernstein, Michele.  Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels: The Science Behind Folk Remedies and Old Wives' Tales (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997),

#379 Elder bud tea is helpful because it not only is a diuretic which makes people excrete urine, but it also has a tranquilizing effect (Madden, Cheap, 233).

With that rather lengthy introduction let me pass on the recipe for a barley/cabbage soup, from More-with-Less, which I think would meet with Wesley’s approval as a good choice.

• 1/4 cup pearl barley
• 4 cups meat or vegetable broth (I used beef bouillon)
• 1–2 tablespoons oil
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 3–4 cups green cabbage, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup parsley, chopped (optional)
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 4 cups milk
• 4 chicken bouillon cubes
• 1/2 teaspoon celery salt

Directions:

1. Combine pearl barley and broth in a kettle and simmer, covered, for 2 hours.
2. Sauté onions, cabbage, and parsley if using it, in oil. Cook until soft, but do not brown.
3. Make a white sauce with the flour, milk, bouillon cubes, and celery salt.
4. Add white sauce to barley and broth.
5. Stir in sautéed cabbage and onion.
6. Check seasonings. Serve sprinkled with bacon bits, chopped ham, or croutons.

From More-with-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre. Copyright © 1976, 2000, 2011 by Herald Press, Harrisonburg, VA 22802. Used by permission.

Curry Flavor

            Over the years, I have grown to love curry. So for a Meatless Monday, I used a curry recipe from More-with-Less. Curry powder, as you probably know, is not a single spice the way cinnamon or anise is, for example. Rather it is a blend. Most curry powder recipes include coriander, turmeric, cumin, fenugreek, and red pepper in their blends. Depending on the recipe, additional ingredients such as ginger, garlic, fennel seed, caraway, cinnamon, clove, mustard seed, green cardamom, black cardamom, nutmeg, long pepper, and black pepper may also be included. In fact, my favorite vegetable curry recipe, from the Moosewood cookbook, is just such a mixture. However, I have printed the simpler recipe for Garden Vegetable Curry from More-with-Less below.

Ingredients

·                   3 T oil

·                   2 medium organic onions finely chopped

·                   2 cloves garlic minced

·                   2 T curry powder

·                   1 t tumeric

·                   1 t whole cumin seed

·                   1 c chopped tomatoes

·                   1 medium head cabbage chopped

·                   3 medium carrots diced

·                   4-5 small potatoes cut into cubes

·                   3 c green beans

·                   1 T lemon juice

Heat oil in a 3-4 qt. saucepan on medium heat.  Add onions and garlic and fry lightly for 4-5 minutes (do not brown).  Add curry powder, turmeric, and cumin seed.  Continue frying 3-4 minutes.  Add chopped tomatoes and cook briefly until a thick sauce begins to form.  

Add vegetables.  Stir until everything is mixed well.  Reduce heat and simmer 30-45 minutes.  Add water any time the sauce is below 1/3 depth of vegetables.   

15 minutes before serving, add lemon juice and salt to taste.  Continue to simmer until ready to serve over rice.

I adjusted this to three tablespoons of curry powder and 2 cups of green beans. I also substituted cauliflower for the cabbage.

St. Paul, were he cooking today, might use curry powder as an image for the church. You can read why I say that in I Corinthians 12:12-31. After all, no one would want an all- cardamom curry.