I'm not entirely sure why Native American was made an option. It's not like people think "Mmm, I'm craving some Indian food!" And if they do think that, they're talking about food from India.
Either way, it was the first cuisine drawn for the year. It was tricky to find recipes (most Native American searches resulted in breads or soups). Eventually I found the winning recipes for the meal.
Appetizer: Chippewa Bannock (type of fried bread)
Main Dish : Isleta Pueblo Buffalo Roll
Dessert: Maple Popcorn Balls
For the
Chippewa Bannock I used a recipe pulled from
ocbtracker.com.
2 c Flour 3/4 c Water
5 T Bacon drippings 1 ts Baking powder
1/2 ts Salt 1/4 c Cooking oil
- Sift together the dry ingredients, then mix in the bacon drippings and water.
- Heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet until a drop of water sizzles.
- Drop the batter from teaspoon, flatten into cakes and cook 3 to 5 minutes on a side or until well browned.
Sounds simple, right? Well that's because it is. The only thing that was a little confusing was the bacon drippings. I'm not sure if there's some better way of getting that much bacon grease, but we ended up just frying up a whole package of cheap bacon (heard from a source that cheap bacon gives off the most grease). Even if that's not the correct way, we ended up with a bunch of yummy bacon to munch on while cooking, so ha! We won anyways.
The advice that the cooking oil is ready when a drop of water sizzles is dead on. But it scared the crap out of me when I let a drop of water fall from my finger into the skillet. Fun fact: oil might not APPEAR to be cooking, but that sucker is HOT. If you've never cooked by frying an item in oil, just keep in mind that water and hot oil will not mix. Instead, it will try to jump out and attack you.
The end result was a tasty snack. Even though it only said to brown one side, I flipped them over and let them barely brown up on the other side as well.
chippewa bannock & our extra bacon
While I was frying up the appetizer, the boyfriend unit was working on the ingredients for the
Isleta Pubelo Buffalo Roll. I'm just going to confess now that the original recipe was supposed to be
lamb, but when we got to Whole Foods they didn't have pre-ground lamb. But they
did have buffalo. (And what's more Native American than buffalo... right?)
1 1/2 lbs ground lamb (or buffalo, if you wanna be totally awesome like us)
1 1/2 t salt
1/8 t pepper
1 garlic bud, mashed
1 medium onion, chopped
2/3 c milk
1 roasted green chile, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/2 c crushed corn chips or toasted tortillas, ground to fine crumbs
1 1/2 c canned whole kernel corn
1/4 c catsup (ketchup works just as well, too. True story.)
- Mix together meat, crumbs, onion, milk and seasonings
- Pat or roll out to a 12-inch square
- Combine corn and green chile & spread over meat
- Roll to a cylinder, sealing edge and ends
- Place on rack in uncovered pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes
- Brush all sides with catsup, and bake for another 30 minutes
Besides using buffalo instead of lamb, we also substituted green chile for shredded cheese. We also only used half an onion, since nether of us are huge fans of that vegetable. We bought a garlic masher and had another "wtf are we doing" moment when we couldn't decide if the smaller parts of the garlic were the bud, or if the entire thing was a bud. Fun fact: The whole garlic is the bud. The smaller pieces inside are called cloves.
Make sure you don't spread the meat mixture too thin - when you start to roll it with the corn, the sides will try to tear apart.
End result was a good meal. The buffalo meat seems to brown darker than beef and has a stronger/bolder flavor as well. This was our first time trying buffalo, and I think it was a good choice for this recipe.
Isleta Pueblo buffalo roll
Now for the most difficult of the three. The
Maple Popcorn Balls. The recipe was pulled from
recipegoldmine.com, which was the site that made me think that Native American would be an interesting cuisine option.
1/4 cup popping corn
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
1 cup maple syrup
1 1/2 teaspoons butter
- Pop corn according to package directions. Season with salt, if desired.
- Heat syrup and butter in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring constantly until temperature reaches 250 degrees F on a candy thermometer or until a few drops form soft balls when dropped in cold water.
- Remove pan from heat and pour mixture over popcorn.
- When mixture is cool enough, toss popcorn with syrup and mold into balls
First off, I need to invest in a candy thermometer, because we could not figure out what it meant by "soft balls" in water. I let the butter & syrup keep heating up until it was bubbling and a very soft brown foam. I couldn't tell if it needed to thicken up before it was done. After roughly half an hour of constant stirring, we decided to dribble the sauce over the popcorn. I guess it got hot enough, because the tip of my silicon mixer-spatula was melting off. Fun fact: Do not use a silicon mixer-spatula for items cooking on the stove. For the popcorn we bought kernels and popped them in a sauce pan on the stove. We put a clear lid over the pan so we could watch them pop (it was cute!). We didn't really succeed in forming neat balls of popcorn - maybe we didn't evenly pour the sauce over the popcorn before trying to shape them. Or maybe we didn't let it cool enough before being handled.
Either way, the result was... eh. I don't plan on making popcorn balls again any time soon.
maple popcorn balls
Thus our first cuisine of the year is done! Over all, Native American was an interesting cuisine for cooking. I would very much recommend the appetizer and main dish ideas.
Next month: British cuisine. Cheery-o!
