Recipes

This Ain’t Chow Chow

/ cigarman501 / 10 Comments

“Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.” ― Ruth Reichl

As I placed the fork full of what I thought was goodness in my mouth, my thought became “this ain’t chow chow” …or chowchow, chow-chow or any other spelling. Nope, nope, nope.

I was given some Amish chow chow. It was touted as “Best Gourmet Chow Chow is the South’s Most Famous Relish that goes great with your favorite comfort foods!” Nope.

Not that it was bad, it wasn’t. It just wasn’t Aunt Alta’s chow chow. I would like to point out that Amish Pennsylvania is not the South, and that should have been a dead give-a-way like salsa made by a company in New York City.

Looks good but “This ain’t chow chow!”

My bride and I had also been gifted a plate full of salmon patties and I thought anything advertised as the “Best Gourmet Chow Chow” would make a great accoutrement. I even used the French pronunciation, A.ku.tʁǝ.mɑ̃ , in my head. French is so sexy…even when discussing a condiment.

The chow chow wasn’t bad, and it did spur some research, but it wasn’t what I remembered from the best chow chow made by my Aunt Alta Rodgers. First the research.

In my part of the world, chow chow was a way to turn excess green tomatoes into something eatable other than “fried green tomatoes” or “green tomato chocolate cake.” Yes, that is a thing. It is quite good.

Just before the first killing frost, green tomatoes were collected, ground, or chopped, combined with ground or chopped cabbage, onion, peppers, and pickling spices. The relish produced would garnish about anything and is a big deal in the South…or it used to be important in the South, and I have no understanding of how it found its way to Pennsylvania.

Chow chow posssibly came to the southern United States by way of French Acadians fleeing Nova Scotia after The French and Indian War in 1763. Forced to leave their homes by the victorious British, they settled primarily in Louisiana bringing with them the word “chou” which means cabbage.

French words of endearment include “mon petit chou” which translates to “my little cabbage.” See, everything sounds better in French even a vegetable.

The dish’s origins are widely debated, however. According to the magazine Southern Living, Southern food historian John Egerton believed its origins weren’t Acadian, but could be traced to piquant sauces brought over by Chinese railroad workers in the 19th century. I don’t like this story. Piquant doesn’t sound as sexy as the French “chou.”

It is reasonable to make the short leap that the word “chou” became “chow”. Not so reasonable is why it became known as chow chow. Nor is it reasonable to think there is a set recipe…there isn’t.

So, what is it? As in what is chow chow?  Chow chow is a pickled relish dish that was used to preserve summer vegetables for later in the year. Recipes for the relish are regional, and tend to be generational recipes, passed down through families. Check any old Methodist or Babtist cookbook and you will be likely to find a recipe. While no one batch is the same, most Southern chow chows use green tomatoes, cabbage, bell peppers, and onions.

Aunt Alta Rodgers Howie, my grandmother’s sister, made use of green tomatoes, cabbage, bell peppers, and onions. The Amish version was good, but I don’t remember green beans, lima beans, carrots, cauliflower, and corn. This Amish version was more of a pickled vegetable medley like Giardiniera…without the pearl onions.

Aunt Alta was typical of the Rodgers’ girls. Short and a bit squat in her later years, she had been blessed with a green thumb as her backyard flowers and shrubs attested, and an outstanding “cook’s” gene that might have skipped my grandmother.  Like the rest of the Rodgers’ girls, she liked to “put up” her own vegetables. Put up means can, and chow chow was one of her specialties.

Aunt Alta Rodgers Howie, Pretty in Pink

According to her daughter, Cousin Cindy, this is close to her mother’s recipe.  Enjoy but it is a time and labor-intensive endeavor as are most things worth their salt.

Aunt Alta’s Chow Chow

Ingrediants

  • ½ gallon green tomatoes, Chopped
  • 1 small cabbage, Chopped
  • ½ pint onion, Chopped
  • 1 Red Bell Pepper, chopped (Add Cayenne or Jalapeno if you want heat)
  • 1 Green Bell Pepper, Chopped
  • All the above can be ground together using a food processor
  • ⅙ cup salt
  • 5 cups vinegar
  • ½ cup water
  • 3 ½ cups sugar
  • 2 tsp mustard seeds
  • 1 ½ tsp celery seed
  • 1 ½ tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp pickling spices

Directions

  • Grind the green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers together using a food processor. Aunt Alta used a hand grinder I am sure.
  • Place the veggies into a stainless steel, glass, or porcelain container and sprinkle with salt. Cover and let them stand overnight.
  • Using a colander, drain and rinse well.
  • Using a saucepan, bring the vinegar, water, and spices to a boil in a stainless-steel pan. It needs to be a constant boil and the sugar needs to dissolve. Stir frequently so that the spices are well mixed.
  • Add green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers and bring back to a boil.
  • Simmer at a low roll for 3-4 minutes
  • Prep sterile pint jars using Ball lids. Boil lids for at least 10 minutes, jars at least 25 minutes and keep them simmering until you are ready to use them.
  • Fill pint jars up to the mouth, cover with lid, tighten with band, and process jars using a boiling water bath for at least ten minutes.

Don Miller hopes to release his new book, Food for Thought, within the next month. Until then, https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0-51cAJ7NDk3eySsF4aRNY7ezrdpOmbqi8VGtzOdbHQvWcdv81AOTASeg&ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Oysters….

/ cigarman501 / 11 Comments

“He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters.” – James I

I do wonder what the first person to crack open an oyster thought. “Look, Look, Look! A slick, gray loogie! Let’s eat some.” Why in the world would he or she decide to put it in their mouth much less chew and swallow…must have been very hungry.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they did. I love oysters…raw, roasted, smoked, fried, with spinach in Oysters Roc, and the oyster dressing I wrote about earlier. I especially like oyster stew which is what I am craving at this moment. It is a cold New Years Eve, a fine night for oyster stew.

Oyster stew has been a New Year’s tradition in our house since we began celebrating it by sleeping through the midnight ball drop. That tradition is on hold as Linda recovers.

A history lesson. “Gather ’round chilin’s!”

Had it not been for the oyster the Jamestown colony might not have held on during the “Starving Times” of 1609. Jamestown prevailed only because sixty or eighty of the First Families of Virginia dragged themselves downriver from their original swampy landing site where they subsisted on little but Crassostrea virginica, the native American oyster.

The English weren’t fans of the oyster…Europeans in general weren’t fans. The generation that founded Jamestown regarded oysters as poor fare. Shakespeare described oysters as “foul” and linked them with the poorhouse. King James I is the earliest candidate for the authorship of the assessment that “he was a valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters.”

I agree with James I but am so glad all of that changed…it took a while for me to jump onto the bandwagon. I know some of you are not fans, but the lowly oyster has gone from “poor folk” food to being coveted by the rich and everyone in between.

I get triggered by memories, but I am unsure where this one came from…well, it is a cold evening, perfect for oyster stew.

When I was a kid, my mother would sometimes make oyster stew. It was very basic. Butter, milk, oysters, salt, and pepper. My father might add a bit of hot sauce or catsup to his. I didn’t find it particularly filling unless I added half a sleeve of crushed soda crackers to it and to be honest, I wasn’t a fan of oysters at that age.

My grandmother would never make oyster stew, she would make salmon stew. It was much cheaper than oysters, came in a can, and fit in with her Depression Era frugality. I was probably a bigger fan of the salmon stew but used a half sleeve of crackers with it too.

Thinking about oyster stew, I looked at my bride who was snoozing. She is recovering from her sixth chemo treatment and a week later stroke and needs to be snoozing. As a blustery wind blew, I thought about a raw and blustery night some thirty years ago on the coast of Carolina. It seems some of my most perfect memories occurred on raw and blustery coastal nights.

We have a love affair with the coast of South Carolina. I thought we would end up living there…we had our chances, but they never quite panned out. The timing was always wrong. Now we have found our little piece of heaven to be as far from the coast as we can be and still be in South Carolina. Not so far that we don’t have access to oysters…mountain oysters.

This day began with a football game at Myrtle Beach. The North-South Allstar Football Game is played there, and I was lucky to have an athlete honored. It was gray and misty and by the time the game was over, dark, and cold.

We had decided not to spend the night and would make the four-hour trip back home afterwards, but one does not come to the coast without sampling the coastal faire and it was a perfect night for oyster stew.

We went to the Sea Captain’s House because we knew of its oyster stew was great or we went because it was close by. The key was that we went. The stew was oyster and artichoke. The company was great and that probably made the stew great.

This was the mid-Eighties and the Sea Captain’s House hadn’t been crowded by tall hotels yet and gone through modern renovations and enlargement. During those days it was truly an old house.

We sat in what once was the old residence’s Florida room and watched as the sea birds rode the waves in the light cast by the spotlights on the side of the house. It was quite romantic. Holding hands listening to the wind rattle the storm windows and sitting hip to hip watching a fire roaring in the fireplace…life’s little and simple pleasures. Oh, and there was oyster stew too.

We stayed too long…or not long enough and didn’t drag ourselves home until four in the morning. I miss the years when we were young and foolish. I am making a promise. I will be old and foolish just as soon as my bride recovers her strength.

Reality check: I made the mistake of pulling up the Sea Captain’s House’s website. They no longer offer oyster and artichoke stew and judging from the prices, we couldn’t afford it anyway.

Basic Oyster Stew for Two

Ingredients

One pint of oysters

Four cups of whole milk (For creamier stew substitute half of the milk with half and half)

¼ cup of butter

Salt and pepper to taste

Crackers (Oyster or Saltines)

Parsley

Directions

Put a colander over a bowl; drain oyster juice and reserve juice.

Rinse oysters gently in a colander to rinse away any shells…be sure to check for pearls.

Melt the butter in a soup pot or large saucepan over low heat.

Add rinsed raw oysters and gently warm for a few minutes never taking heat off low. Let the oyster edges curl.

To the oysters and butter, add whole milk, oyster juice and stir.

Gently warm soup (low simmer), stirring occasionally until heated through. THIS IS KEY: Do not boil and do not scald milk.

Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Garnish with parsley and serve with oyster crackers or saltines.

Don Miller’s works may be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Images from Canva and Shutterstock

Ruby’s Oyster Dressing…Well, Maybe.

/ cigarman501 / 3 Comments

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”
― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

I’m one of those guys who likes to leave Halloween and ease into Christmas. Are you aware that there is a holiday in between? Despite the Christmas decorations being sold at Wally World a week after the Independence Day celebration there is Thanksgiving to celebrate. Family, friends, football games and glorious food…and a turkey induced nap in the afternoon.

It is never too early to plan for the Thanksgiving feast. For some reason I was triggered…might have been a Butterball turkey advertisement or just the pig trails my mind wanders down.

In a time warp long, long ago, I sat down with my first set of in-laws for the traditional Thanksgiving feast. I would later have two different sets of in-laws before I finally got matrimony right, but this pig trail isn’t about in-laws or ex-wives; it is about oyster dressing…and a little forgiveness.

Oyster dressing. I had never had it before that fateful day…not unusual for me, I didn’t eat my first pizza until my freshman year in college and really didn’t understand the bounty I was receiving until the pizza arrived in front of me. I was truly “country come to town.” I continue to eat dishes I hadn’t heard of in the late Sixties…and a lot of them still resembles pizza.

To my sorrow and loss, I haven’t eaten oyster dressing since my first set of in-laws turned in to my first set of ex in-laws…ex-laws?

I intend to change this fact myself this year but have a quandary since my ex-mother-in-law is no longer in the land of the living. Which recipe?

Ruby isn’t around having gone to that great kitchen in the sky a couple of decades ago, and I’m not going to contact my first ex-wife, the red-headed one, to find out what the recipe was. She was not the stereotypical redhead, but I will take no chances.

What a conversation I’m having in my head with one of the many voices residing there:

“Hey, Dianne. Longtime no…see.

“Yeah, I know, I’m the scum of the earth but I do hope you are doing well.”

“Well, that’s a bit harsh.”

“Uh, I need a favor. I need Ruby’s oyster dressing recipe. Can you oblige me?”

“When hell freezes over, you say?”

No, I don’t think I’ll be making that phone call.

Instead of making the phone call from hell, I have perused many recipes online but none of them seem quite right…and stuffing ain’t dressin’! I think I’m going to have to combine certain parts of certain recipes into one. I thought I had found one, but it uses tarragon instead of sage. Who uses tarragon instead of sage in their cornbread dressing? Blasphemy to the angelic hands of my Southern foremothers…or is it heresy?

So, I require suggestions or maybe some gentle criticism. This to be a pretty simple recipe for a pretty simple process, I think. In the back of my head, I hear my grandmother’s voice saying, “It’s not about the process Boy, it is about the outcome.” I also hear her saying, “Nothing is ever as simple as it looks.”

Ingredients

8 cups crumbled cornbread. I will make my own the day before…or rather Linda will, and it will be made in a cast iron skillet.

1/2 teaspoon each, Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

3 1/2 cups chicken stock

6 large eggs

1/2 cup chopped Italian parsley, this I’m not sure of.

One large yellow onion, chopped.

4 stalks of celery, chopped.

5 cloves of garlic chopped.

1 teaspoon of dried sage, I might stub my toe and put in a little more, but I like sagey, sage dressing.

1 pint of small oysters and their juices.

Directions

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9- by 13-inch baking dish.

In a large cast-iron skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. (I might cheat and use a little bacon grease with the butter.)  When the butter is foamy, add the onion and celery, and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, 6 to 8 minutes.

Stir in the garlic and cook until aromatic, about 1 minute. Stir in the crumbled cornbread and cook, stirring, until lightly browned, then remove from the heat.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs until smooth. Whisk in the chicken stock, parsley, and sage. (I’m still not sure about the parsley.) Stir in the cornbread mixture and the oysters. Pour the dressing mixture into the prepared baking dish and bake until dressing is set and golden brown, about 1 hour. (Alternatively, cover the mixture and refrigerate overnight before baking. Cornbread will soak up more goodness.) Let rest for 5 minutes before serving.

***

Ruby, I’m gonna make this in your honor. You were a good mother-in-law…better than I was a husband to your daughter. Please forgive me. Uh, you wouldn’t want to come to me in a dream maybe and let me in on your recipe? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Don’s author’s page is at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true