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Ozarks
food Some home-grown recipes for home-grown food By R.D. Hohenfeldt Autumn means it’s time to harvest apples, winter squash, turnips and pumpkins. Some of us are also harvesting potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots. Thank goodness we live in a part of the country where we can grow a lot of our own food or buy it fresh from local growers. That
freshness gives us higher nutrition and truer flavors than store-bought
canned goods. Plus, we just like the idea of being self-reliant enough
to grow as much of our own food as we can, right here in southern For this month’s recipes, I’ve gone through a bunch of cookbooks and gleaned out what sounds good. No, I haven’t tried any of these specific recipes yet, but I will. First, let’s look at fried apples, an Ozarks tradition. Now, I have fried apples frequently in my life, even back in my college days. My method was just to slice apples and fry them in butter. Here’s a better recipe, though, from Breakfasts Ozark Style, by Kay Cameron: FRIED APPLES 3 tart cooking apples (unpeeled) 1 or 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil (our ancestors used bacon grease) 2 Tbsp. sugar 2 Tbsp. brown sugar (to taste) Wash, core and slice apples. Add to hot oil, cover with lid and cook on medium until apples are tender. Add sugars after apples are tender, stirring to blend. Remove from heat. Serves 4. Optional method: add sugar before apples are tender; reduce heat because sugar makes them brown faster. Adding sugar before apples are tender produces firmer, chewier apples. This is also the pumpkin time of year. Now, recipes usually call for canned pumpkin, but why not try some fresh pumpkin instead? Find a sugar or pie pumpkin, which is small and sweet with dark orange flesh. A medium-sized sugar pumpkin should give you around 1 ½ cups of mashed pumpkin. To puree it, you can bake, boil or microwave it. With the baking method, you halve the pumpkin and discard the stem and stringy insides. Don’t throw away those seeds! Roast them later for a snack. Put the two havles face down in a shallow baking dish and cover with foil. Preheat the oven to 375 and bake for 1 ½ hours. After the pumpkin has cooled, scoop out the flesh and mash it with a potato masher or potato ricer. You can also puree it in a food processor. If you choose to boil it instead, chunk the pumpkin after halving it and discarding the stringy insides. Place in a saucepan, cover with water, bring to boil and cook until tender. Cool the chunks and then puree. Using the microwave, you halve the pumpkin, discard the stringy innards and microwave on high for seven minutes per pound before cooling and puree it. The puree will store in the refrigerator for three days or in the freezer for six months. Make up a bunch now and have it all winter. Now here’s a pie recipe that I got from the The Best of the Best Recipes, a cookbook published by the ABLE Commission in Rolla. PUMPKIN PECAN PIE 1/3 cup finely chopped pecans 1 cup light brown sugar, divided 3 Tbsp. soft butter or margarine 2 eggs 1 cup fresh pumpkin puree (or canned pumpkin) 1 Tbsp. flour ¼ tsp. ground cloves 1/8 tsp. mace ½ tsp. cinnamon ½ tsp. ginger ½ tsp. salt 1 cup light cream 1 pie plate (9 inch) Preheat oven 400 degrees. Blend pecans, 1/3 cup brown sugar and butter and press gently into pie plate with a spoon. Beat eggs with mixer in medium bowl until frothy. Add pumpkin, remaining 2/3 cup brown sugar, flour, spices and cream and beat only until well-mixed. Pour filling into pie shell. Bake 50 to 55 min. or until knife comes out clean. Here’s a cushaw squash recipe from my wife, Delaine, that she remembers her mother making frequently. Although it calls for cushaw squash, and that’s what her mother used, Delaine says you can substitute butternut squash, sweet potatoes or pumpkin. CUSHAW PIE 2 to 3 cups cooked cushaw, mashed ¾ cup granulated sugar ¾ cup brown sugar 5 beaten eggs 3 tbsp. margarine 2 tbsp. dark molasses 1 tbsp. pumpkin pie spice 1 ¼ tsp. salt 1 ¼ cup milk After cleaning, cut the unpeeled cushaw into smaller pieces.
Now you can either boil these or bake in an oven at 350º until
tender. After cooling a bit,
remove the meat from the skin and mash.
Then add the remaining ingredients and mix until smooth
consistency. Pour mixture into a piecrust and bake in oven at 450º for 10
minutes, then crack open the oven door to cool it down.
When peen temperature reaches 350º, shut door and continue
baking at 350º until a knife or toothpick inserted in the middle comes
out clean, about 30-45 minutes depending on pie size. Remove pie and let
it cool on rack. Place in
refrigerator for several hours to set. I love turnips. My favorite way to eat one is just peel it, slice it and eat the slices with salt. I’ve also been known to cook turnips. The newspaper where I used to work had a Sunday edition at the time, and I worked all day Saturday along with the sports editor and a couple of other staffers. We’d work 15-18 hours every Saturday to put out a high-quality Sunday morning paper, and we’d get mighty hungry. For years, I took a Crock-Pot to work and cooked beans or chili for supper. One time, a reader gave me a mess of turnips. I made up my own recipe of sliced turnips, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions and celery, along with a lot of spices. It was delicious, but I was the only one who ate it. It also had what I thought was a wonderful aroma that pervaded the whole building and lasted for about a week. I called it RDH’s Turnip Surprise, but I was asked never to prepare it again at the office. Here are a couple of turnip recipes from another cookbook by Kay Cameron, this one titled Grandma’s Ozark Legacy: Hand-Me-Down Recipes. These are old-timey recipes written in the old-time way. STEWED TURNIPS Turnips were more likely to be served sliced rather than mashed by the mid 1900s. This recipe is from a cookbook printed in 1885. Wash and peel several medium or small turnips. Slice them in ¼ inch slices. Place in small amount of water in a stewpan. Boil until tender; season with about 2 tablespoons of butter or bacon grease, about 1 teaspoon of sugar, pepper and salt to taste. Another old book, printed in 1917, cautioned us not to add salt when cooking them, and not to over-cook. “Turnips cooked in salt water become pink and develop a bitter flavor.” MASHED TURNIPS Wash and peel 8 or 10 medium-sized turnips. Cut in slices, cover and cook in a small amount of boiling water until tender, about 20 minutes. When turnips are tender, drain thoroughly, add 1 teaspoon of sugar, butter or bacon grease the size of a walnut, and a dash of pepper. Mash and serve hot. Those of you with productive gardens giving you potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots right about now might be interested in these recipes. The first one is another from Kay Cameron’s old-time book, Grandma’s Ozark Legacy: POTATO BISCUIT This
recipe is from a cookbook printed in 1903. Boil and mash 1 good-sized potato, having them free from lumps. Sift 1 ½ cups flour, ½ level teaspoon salt, 4 level teaspoons baking powder, add the potatoes and rub in the ¼ cup shortening. Mix to a light dough with the egg and milk, roll out a little thinner than ordinary biscuits, and bake in a hot oven (350-400 degrees). Serve as soon as done. This sweet potato casserole recipe comes from Heavenly Dishes, published by the women’s ministry at Calvary Assembly of God in Rolla: SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE 3 c. mashed sweet potatoes 1 c. sugar ½ tsp. Salt 2 lightly beaten eggs ½ c. margarine ½ c. milk 1 Tbsp. pumpkin pie spice Mix ingredients and pour into well-greased baking dish. Sprinkle on top: ½ c. melted margarine 1 c. brown sugar 1/3 c. flour 1 c. chopped pecans Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Can substitute pumpkin for sweet potatoes. Finally, here’s a carrot salad recipe from the ABLE Commission’s cookbook: CARROT SALAD Mix: 4 cups grated carrots ¾ cup Miracle Whip salad dressing Add: 3 cups mini marshmallows 1 cup coconut 1 cup sour cream 1 cup chunk pineapple 1 cup raisins Thoroughly mix. Let stand over night. Serves 12
Branson woman compiles historic recipes Kay Cameron, who operates a bed and breakfast at Branson, has been compiling recipes for many years. She has published three cookbooks, so far, and they’re still in print. They are: Breakfasts Ozark Style, 155 pages, $7.95; A la Rose, 100 pages, $4.95, and Grandma’s Ozark Legacy, 100 pages, $5.95. The breakfasts book contains recipes of dishes served by various Ozarks Mountain Company bed and breakfast hosts, as well as those from friends, guest, relatives and ancestors. The A la Rose book features Ozarks recipes from the time of artist Rose O’Neill, so these recipes range from the late 1800s to the 1940s. Grandma’s Legacy is filled with very old recipes, written in the old-fashioned way, when they were called “receipts.” The
books are available from Cameron’s Crag Bed and Breakfast, More about the books and an order form are available at www.camerons-crag.com . |