Mennonite Comfort Food

Erma, your Mennonite Chicken Thigh Casserole reminded me of another classic Mennonite recipe. Our local Mennonites call this Cabbage Salad. Most anyone else would call it marinated cole slaw, and there are dozens of recipes for it. What makes this one different is that the cabbage and onions sit for a while with the sugar to make a kind of sweet brine.

This Mennonite Cabbage Salad would be perfect with your Mennonite Chicken Thigh Casserole. Like the Pennsylvania Dutch (after all, most Mennonites came from the same regions of Germany), our Mennonites like to combine sweet and sour dishes like the Cabbage Salad with a soft bland one like your casserole. Both of these recipe illustrate a facet of Mennonite cooking that you forgot to mention. Not only are their recipes inexpensive and use common ingredients, but they can be fixed whenever there is time and set aside to eat later.

Mennonite Cabbage Salad:

One large head of cabbage
One onion
1 cup sugar

Shred the cabbage and onion in your food processor. Stir in the cup of sugar and let sit for 10 to 20 minutes for sugar to melt into the cabbage liquids. Then make the Dressing

Dressing:

2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon celery seed
¾ cup vinegar
½ cup salad oil

Mix all in a sauce pan, and bring to a boil. Pour at once over the cabbage and let sit until completely cool. Stir several times. Place in a plastic refrigerator container and chill at least overnight before serving. This will keep for at least a week.

Makes 10-14 servings.

Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Coleslaw

Erma, as always, you can find a way to “alcohol enhance” anything! I would never have thought to dress up that old faithful, “Welsh Rarebit” with English ale. It is too bad that Welsh Rarebit seems to have become a forgotten recipe. It is so easy, and is wonderful for the budget. Seems like I recall fixing it a lot in our younger days. Like when the budget was more than a little strained? Of course, I never thought to put beer into it.

Since we are both on a bit of a railroad kick the last few days, I have been looking through some of my old railroad pamphlets that they used to hand out as publicity, and you know what? I have been impressed with the quality and taste of so many of their recipes. They evidently cooked “our way.”

Take a gander at this Chesapeake & Ohio Mexican Style Coleslaw. Now, today putting Mexican in the title would indicate lots of hot peppers, and a dish guaranteed to burn all the way down. I suppose in the 1930’s grinding up two green peppers was enough to call it Mexican? Still it is a nice version of basic coleslaw.

Coleslaw is another dish that seems to have gone out of fashion. Too bad. All the experts say that raw cabbage is really healthy–good for the heart, or something.

Imagine the train cooks, ratcheting along in a swaying railroad kitchen with huge chef’s chopping knives, chopping cabbages, onions, and peppers.

Did you know that many dining car’s staff included 4 cooks in those tiny kitchens? Think what they would have given for a good modern food processor? Chesapeake & Ohio

Mexican Style Coleslaw:

1 head cabbage
2 small green peppers
2/3 cup mayonnaise
1 ounce white vinegar
1 medium onion
2 tablespoons parsley
16 strips pimento
Salt to taste

Shred the cabbage very fine in a food processor. Same with the green peppers. Mix the cabbage and peppers in large mixing bowl. Mince the parsley and onion very fine in the processor. In smaller bowl blend the mayonnaise, vinegar, onion, salt, and parsley. Let stand for several minutes. Stir into the cabbage and chill. Serve with a pair of crossed pimento strips on top.

Makes 8 servings.

Coleslaw for a Hot Day

Erma, you never cease to amaze me with the recipes you can add alcohol to. About the only thing you don’t seem to pickle are salads, and you have boozed up some of those.

For Father’s Day and a big family barbeque, I was asked to bring a triple making of Aunt Betty’s Creamy Coleslaw. We call it Aunt Betty’s in the family, but it really should be Grandmother Heffelfinger’s Coleslaw as it was her German recipe. I defy you to add bourbon to this.

Coleslaw and cabbage in general are in dire need of a good public relation’s campaign. Most people think of coleslaw as that side dish that comes with fast food fried chicken and fish. If only they knew the truth: Coleslaw is a health food and comes in many tastes and varieties. Because it stores well (like months, if you know how), cabbage, and carrots, which also are a coleslaw staple, were about the only “fresh” vegetables available during the winter months.

Another advantage to coleslaw is that most recipes will hold nicely in the refrigerator for a couple of days, which is not true of many lettuce salads. Aunt Betty’s is a good example.

Aunt Betty’s Creamy Coleslaw:

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
dash of salt
4 cups of finely sliced (not grated or chopped) green cabbage
2 medium carrots
2 green onions

Clean and roughly grate with a grater the carrots. At once scrape the carrots into the mayonnaise and let stand while preparing the rest of the slaw. Stir several times. The carrots tint the mayonnaise a pale orange.

Either slice the cabbage or use a food processor with a slicing attachment. Finely chop the green onions including all of the tops.

When the mayonnaise is pale orange, stir in the vinegar, sugar, celery seeds and salt. Mix well; then fold in the remaining vegetables. Store in the refrigerator in a covered container like these Pyrex Storage Containers for 2 to 24 hours. This makes about 6 servings.

Aunt Betty used Grandmother’s wooden kraut cutter to get that uniform thin slice of cabbage so necessary for this recipe. There are metal devices out there that claim to slice as well. Remember in the Fifties and Sixties there was that 3 legged round slicer that every modern housewife had to have? It must have been one of the first T.V. promotions. You had to hold the vegetables down with a plunger in one hand and turn a crank with the other. Most of the time it didn’t slice very well, it just jumped around on the counter. It was too small and the slicing disks were not sharp. The invention of the food processor retired that “labor saver” to the antique shelf along with cherry pitters and apple peelers.