Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Below are a few Native American Christmas foods from all over the Americas.  Yum!  Have a great celebration everyone!!

Torejas Guatemala

Native Christmas Cookies

Navajo Frybread

The Turkey!

Abenaki Quiche

Mexican Christmas Salad

Corn Wrapped Tamales:  Mexico

Christmas Plantains

A Traditional Christmas Plate From Peru

Apache Acorn Soup

Caribbean Christmas Bread

Micqueca:  Brazil

Kiviak:  Greenland

Banana Wrapped Tamales:  Guatemala

Kalua Lu'au Pig:  Hawaii

Beautiful Winter Rose Hips

Scare Me On Fridays: Theme Recipe: Weird Mexican Christmas Eve Salad

This is from my horror blog.  I blog on Fridays for Friday Night Frights with a different theme every week; and I try to include a recipe every week that matches whatever theme is for that particular Friday.  Right now we are in the midst of Christmas Frights--it's a really special time of year.  The most recent strange Christmas recipe that I posted happens to be in the Native vein from Mexico--it's a salad for Christmas Eve that features a New World treatment of a very Old World food:  Beets.

Scare Me On Fridays: Theme Recipe: Weird Mexican Christmas Eve Salad: I didn't get a chance to post my silly theme recipe last night because I just ran out of steam! I'm getting over a really bad stomach vir...

Easy Spicy Hot Chocolate For The Holidays

Or for any cold weather for that matter!  This, again, if from famed Native American food writer and ethnobologist E. Barrie Kavasch and her festival cookbook Enduring Harvests.  This is really more of a suggestion that an actual recipe and it can easily be varied depending of the type of chocolate mix or hot chocolate recipe you favor.  It really very, very simple!

Simply make a recipe of you favorite hot chocolate, whatever that may be.  Get out a mollinillo or other whip or whisk and froth with some real vanilla extract and some pure powdered allspice.  That's it!  You may garnish with additional allspice.  Of course, the variastions here are almost endless!  Any other native ingredient may be whisked in; and, of course, it will depend on what type of chocolate you are using in the first place.  Honestly, I think this is a great way to spruce up some of the powdered mixes that are easy to make, but leave quite a lot to be desired as a finished product.

Yum!  Christmas Chocolate!

Pueblo Christmas Pecan Crescents

This is adapted from E. Barrie Kavasch's important festival cookbook Enduring Harvests, which in turn has been adapted from numerous old "pecan sandy" recipes from over the decades, both native and non-native.  What sets these apart, and it's a nice touch, are the oats.  These little gems have become an important taste treat, along with other dainties on plates for the various Holiday dances at the various Pueblos of New Mexico.  Most of the pueblos open up to visitors during these dances, provided that protocols are observed.  But Indian being Indians, none of them are going to allow people to wander or observe hungry!!  When you come to my house, I feed you...my grandmother taught me this!

Snowy Vanilla Pecan Crescents

If you don't bake, don't worry, these are easy to make!!

1 cup powdered sugar, divided in 1/2

2 sticks, or corn margarine if you must, softened

1/4 tsp. salt (optional, but helps with the nuts!)

2 tsp. real vanilla extract

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 1/4 cups rolled oats

1/2 cup pecans, finely chopped

1.  Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.  In a large bowl, cream half of the sugar into the softened butter, then add the salt and vanilla, creaming well.  Next alternating, add the flour, oats and chopped nuts.  Blend very well.

2.  Flour your hands and roll bits of dough into little logs, then bend into a crescent.  Bake these for 15 minutes, or until the bottoms are light and golden (my note:  this is all going to depend on you oven, I check every five minutes when I'm using an oven I've never used for these before).  Remove and cool on baking rack.  Gently sift the powdered sugar over the cookies, or better yet, dredge them in the sugar.

Variations:

You can dip these into chocolate (as above) or drizzle with chocolate.

You can add cocoa powder to the above recipe.

Orange zest makes a great addition!

Use different types of nuts.  Other native nuts include cashews, black walnuts, Brazil nuts, even "peanuts."  Non-native almonds are also very good.  

Roll in cinnamon sugar.

Add some native allspice to the cookie dough.

Basic Good Tamal Dough

This is a basic and very good tamal dough from Jaunita Casados, matriacrh of Casados Farms, located on the pueblo of Ohkay Owinge, formerly San Juan Pueblo.  The farm has been in business for nearly 50 years supplying dried three sisters products (corn, beans & squash) along with excellent products from the southwest's own fourth sister:  Chilli/Chile.  It was first published in Casados Farms own New Mexican Delights.  It was later re-printed Native Peoples magazine, and later re-published in the cookbook put out by the magazine Mind, Body & Spirit.  You can use any color of cornmeal for this; she uses white and blue, but yellow is common and some southwestern vendors, like Native Seed Search, sometimes sell red corn flour as well.  For yellow, follow directions for the white tamales with yellow tamal flour, for red--follow directions for the blue tamales.  Her's are made for a mixed meat filling, but by substituting vegetable ingredients for the meat ones, this dough can easily be made for vegetarian tamales of all sorts.

1 tsp.  salt
1/4 cup meat fat (you can get this from making a meat filling for 
    the tamales and reserve the fat, or use lard, bacon fat, suet or
    if you are vegetarian, pure vegetable shortening)
1 1/2 cup meat or vegetable stock


For White Tamales:


2 cups Masa harina white tamale flour


For Blue Corn Tamales:


2 cups blue corn flour (the fine type)
1 tsp. double acting baking powder

1.  Divide the salt, the fat and the stock in half between the two different colored cornmeals in separate bowls.  Using an electric hand mixer, beat each separately until thoroughly blended and "doughy."  That's it!  Hey presto, you have a perfectly usable tamal dough!

This can be used plain as tamal dumplings cooked in softened corn husks.  It is a perfect recipe for any type of filling from Picadillo to vegetable.  You simply spread some dough on a corn husk, lay in some filling, roll and steam.  Very simple.  I homemade or decent purchased chile sauce or salsa tops them well.  Different colors are great for Christmas!!

A Blue Corn Tamale with a meat filling and a roasted corn sauce.

Real Southwestern Pumpkin Bread

This is an authentic sweet pumpkin quick bread from the Pueblos of the southwest.  It calls for canned pumpkin because the government gave commodity foods to federally recognized tribes; stuff like lard, bacon, large jars of jelly, wheat flour, sugar, vegetable oils and canned meats, vegetables and fruits of all sorts.  Some groups got dried fruits of various sources as well; which explains why this bread has dates in it.  Date, of course, come from Arabia and they are not generally grown in the southwest, but they were once a popular treat provided from government rations.  This particular recipe comes from Marcia Keegan's important little cookbook Southwest Indian Cookbook.

SWEET PUMPKIN BREAD

3 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
2 cups canned pumpkin (if it isn't puree, mash it)
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup dates, chopped
1 cup nuts, chopped
1/4 cup water
2 greased loaf pans


1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix sugar, oil and eggs together, whisk to help the sugar to start to dissolve. Add the pumpkin and mix completely.


2.  Meanwhile, sift the dry ingredients together and add, alternating with the water to the pumpkin mixture.  Fold in nuts and dates.  Mix well.  Pour into the greased loaf pans and bake until done.  The original recipe calls for it to bake for 1 1/2 hours, I have found this is too much, so I put the timer on every 30 minutes, and then run a knife or cake tester into them; the amount of sugar in the recipe means that it will burn easily.  They may need to be covered after baking for 30 minutes.  The bread is done when it makes a hollow sound when you knock on it.  

Variations:

You can use roasted or boiled fresh pumpkin in this.

You can change up the spices, and allspice is always welcome in any Native American dish.

More natural sweeteners, like honey can be used in place of the sugar.  Brown sugar can be used too.

Different types of dried fruits are good in this and raisin always go well in any type of quick bread.  

They can be made with any type of winter squash that has been cooked first.

Corn And Huitlacoche Salsa

From chef Mark Miller's cute and helpful Ten Speed Press book The Great Salsa Book, this is really just a pure corn salsa.  Corn smut "infects" corn kernels and turn them into a fungus or mushroom, so it's one type of corn with another:  say, "weird" corn with "straight" corn.  I have cooked with Huitlacoche before--and my Cream of Huitlacoche soup is a household specialty of mine.  Corn fungus as a food ingredient is most often found as a quesadilla filling in an around Mexico City; though it is used as soup ingredient there too.  It also put into skillet dishes, such as with squash, which is used as a side dish or filling for tortillas (tacos); and it doesn show up in a Salsa de Huitlacoche, which is usually served as a sauce for chicken or meat.  Miller's salsa relies completely on the huitlacoche being bought frozen.  It is hard to come by in the this country any other way, unless you pick over farmer's markets or grow your own corn; I have even scored some by picking over corn piles in supermarkets, but not recently.  I guess produce managers are more picky these days--so frozen it is.  There are mail order sources for it.

I know this stuff looks rough, but it is delicious!!

Corn And Huitlacoche Salsa

4 Serrano chiles, roasted and peeled (don't worry if you don't get all the skin)

5 really ripe Roma or farmer's market tomatoes, chopped

2 cups huitlacoche (that's about 11 ounces), thawed, reserve all the liquid

1/2 cup minced white onion

4 cloves garlic roasted in skins

1 tsp. epazote, minced (if using dried, cut to 1/4 tsp.)

Cilantro to taste

1/2 tsp. salt

1 ear fresh corn

2 tbsp. water

1 tsp. adobo sauce (this is easy to come by if you buy canned Chipotle chiles)

1.  Chop the chiles with their seeds.

2.  Place the chiles, the tomatoes, the huitlacoche, any reserved huitlacoche liquid and onion in a skillet, heat and add the garlic, epazote, cilantro and salt.  Cook for 20 minutes, then transfer to a mixing bowl. 

3.  Shuck corn and cut the kernels from the cob.  Place these in the skillet with the water and adobo sauce, heat and then simmer for a few minutes.  Fold this into the ingredients in the mixing bowl.  This good warm with beef and pork.  Allow to come to room temperature and serve it with chips.  In fact, almost all of the salsas in the book can be served with chips if desired, and this is good in or on tacos.

Real Aztec Chocolate Drink Recipe

Spicy Real Aztec Chocolate Drink

It is a recorded that at the time of Cortez's arrival in Tenochtitlan that hot chocolate drinks were reserved exclusively for royalty.  The drink that the sitting emperor Motecuhzoma enjoyed was slightly sweet, made with water and chiles.  Today almost everyone substitutes the water with milk.

2 cups whole milk
4 oz. bittersweet Chocolate, chopped
1 oz. pure bitter Chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup grated Piloncillo sugar (or brown sugar)
1/2 oz. ground real cinnamon (canela) or ground Cassia ("regular" cinnamon)
1 tsp. ground red pepper (if you like it really spicy, use ground cayenne!)
1/4 tsp. liquid vanilla (optional)
Tiniest pinch of salt

1.  Slowly heat the milk and whisk in the chopped chocolate pieces.  Stir well and when it starts to melt, add all the other ingredients; continue stirring until the chocolate is fully melted.  Pour up and enjoy.

Variations

You can make the old way with water for full authenticity.

For a much milder and sweeter spicy chocolate with pure ground Ancho chile.

Omit the chile altogether and use 1/2 tsp. vanilla.

Garnish with sweet whipped cream, chopped nuts or any other favorite chocolate topping.

Substitute allspice for the cinnamon--that's completely native!

Brew favorite sweet herbs in the mixture--mint is good.

Harvest Ingredient 31: Pumpkin

IT'S THE HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN GALLERY