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.

Great Apple Salad

We have traded enough apple dessert recipes for each of us to have gained a dozen pounds. Here is an older Apple Salad recipe that isn’t so calorie laden. The dressing is not sugar laden, and the salad is quite good with no dressing at all.

Apple Salad:

4 large apples–mix of colors is nice
½ cup celery
½ cup small green grapes–seedless
½ cup chopped nuts, walnuts are best

Dressing:

2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk

Whisk the egg and milk with a whisk. Pour flour and sugar in a saucepan and then stir in the milk mixture. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook for several minutes until thick. Pour in covered plastic container, and store in the fridge.

Mix the apples, celery and green grapes in a bowl. Add dressing and toss. Sprinkle nuts on top.

Serves 10.

Unusual Fall Apple Salad

Max, dear, you are so right about the fresh apples and fresh spices. I could not live without my nutmeg grater.

If you are looking for an unusual salad for the ladies, try this one. It is easy and blends some of my favorite foods: apples, peanut butter, and cream cheese. You can dress this up with a lettuce leaf as the base for the salad, or you can place a few purple, seedless grapes on the side, or some mandarin orange segments. Just about any fruit will work.

The Bretton Woods Dressing (wasn’t that a World War I battle? Or was it one of those arms reductions treaties that lead to WWII?) is good on most fruit salads and very nice on tossed lettuce ones too.

The leftover cream cheese-peanut butter bland makes a nice dip for apples and other fresh fruit.

Apple, Peanut Butter, and Cheese Salad:

2 Red Delicious Apples
6 ounces of cream cheese–room temp
½ cup chunky peanut butter

Blend peanut butter and cream cheese well, and form into small balls.

Polish and core the apples and slice into ½ inch thick slices just before serving.

Place apple slices on salad plate (lettuce leaf underneath is optional). Place peanut butter balls in center of apple slices. Drizzle Bretton Wood Dressing over.

Bretton Woods Dressing:

1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon paprika
½ cup apple juice (or another other fruit juice. If very sweet cut out sugar)
¼ cup lemon juice
½ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons sugar

Place all in a small mixing bowl. Chill and let set for several hours. Just before serving, beat dressing hard with a hand whisk.

Dressing is good on most fresh fruit salads and lettuce salads. The dressing helps keep the apple slices from turning dark.

Serves 4 generously

Illinois Central Salad Dressing

Erma, I can always depend on you to have an “alcohol enhanced dessert” that you call medicinal. Who, but you, would have a “cure” for heat that is really a booze pie? I’m so sick of the heat that I’m about to take a double dose of your Brandy Flip Pie. It may not bring the temperature down, but after two slices, who’ll care?

Since we seem to be living on salads this week, I am sending you a real treasure. It is the old Illinois Central Railroad Salad Dressing. This was the only recipe that included the railroad’s name and was always prepared fresh on the train. When I make it, often in double batches, I look at the original directions that said to allocate 45 minutes to prepare, and I see how fast I can put it together. Imagine standing there in a swaying railroad dining car kitchen with a large chef’s knife “chopping fine” all those vegetables? And you know that they didn’t make it up one quart at a time. Some poor beginning cook probably spent hours of his day making up gallons of this dressing. What that fellow (I don’t think there were ever women chefs on trains back then) would have given for a food processor like the KitchenAid 7-Cup Food Processor. Just throw in the veggies, hit the pulse button a couple of times, and voila, it is “chopped fine.” Mere seconds.

Illinois Central Salad Dressing:

2 tablespoons celery
2 tablespoons green pepper
1 teaspoon green onion
2 tablespoons dill pickle
2 tablespoon pimento
2 hard boiled eggs
2 cups mayonnaise
1 cup chili sauce

In my original recipe, the directions said to chop all the ingredients fine. Today we are lucky and can use the food processor and cut out all sorts of chopping time. In a large bowl mix all the vegetables and the eggs and then add the mayonnaise. Slowly stir in the chili sauce. Chill well, and store in a one quart storage container.

Makes one quart. Use any place one would use a Thousand Island like dressing.

Original directions say this will take 45 minutes to prepare. See how much time a good food processor will save you?.

Make up your favorite recipe for 6 muffins

That is a real helpful recipe, Erma. “Make up your favorite recipe for 6 muffins.” I know, you don’t measure either, when you fix cornbread. I will have to try it though. Cheese and fresh corn would be an interesting addition to corn bread.

Here is something from one of my grandmothers. She used to make this Pasta Shell Salad for a Crowd to take to family reunions, only she used regular macaroni. I don’t think shell pasta was around in her day.

Pasta Shell Salad for a Crowd:

1 16 ounce package shell macaroni
4 carrots, grated
2 green peppers, chopped
2 onions, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 cup mayonnaise
1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
½ cup vinegar
½ cup sugar
Paprika

Cook macaroni until al dente. Drain in a collander and rinse with cold water. Use a food processor to chop and grate all vegetables, and think to yourself how much faster and easier this is than the original recipe which hand chopped all of them. Mix vegetables and shell macaroni in large mixing bowl.

Whip the mayonnaise, condensed milk, sugar and vinegar in a small bowl. Stir into the macaroni with a large spatula. Chill overnight. When serving, sprinkle on paprika.

Serves 20

More old ways to cope with summer heat

Max, you are so right. The effeminate younger generation does not know how to deal with the heat, except for turning up the air conditioner.

We also planned our kitchen use in the summer. We picked those vegetables at the crack of dawn so they were cool and wet from the dew. Our meals were almost entirely fresh vegetables and like you, we planned to eat a lot of leftovers for supper. When possible, we tried to can in the mornings before the kitchen reached triple digit figures.

Cool, hearty salads were a big part of every meal. Here is an example from an 1880’s cookbook of dealing with summer’s heat. Note that you can make this up hours, or a day in advance when it is cooler, and being served cold, it tricks the mind into thinking cooler. The difference with this potato salad is the pimientos. They are not there just for the red color, but if you have real, fresh pimientos, they add a rather different flavor. Cooling the potatoes in the oil and vinegar hints of a German Potato Salad, but then you add a little mayonnaise, which produces a rather traditional potato salad. I think you will enjoy this different salad.

I really don’t know why more people don’t raise their own pimientos. Canned pimientos are rather expensive and the fresh one taste so much better, and they are easy to prepare and freeze.

Potato and Pimiento Salad From the Victorian Period:

6 large potatoes
2 small cans pimientos, or 1 large red pepper (pimiento if possible)
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons parsley
2 tablespoons onion
2 hard-boiled eggs
salt and pepper to taste
4 tablespoons mayonnaise

In large pot like the KitchenAid Covered 3-Qt Pan, cover the potatoes with water, bring to a boil, and cook until just tender. Drain well and peel the potatoes. As soon as you can handle the potatoes, slice them and add the oil and vinegar. Stir and let stand for 1 hour.

Meanwhile in a food processor, mince the parsley, the onion, pimientos, and chop the eggs. After an hour, stir these ingredients into the potatoes along with the mayonnaise. Taste. You may want to add more onion, or mayonnaise. Store in refrigerator.

Congealed Pineapple and Cucumber Salad

Most Derby Breakfasts include a selection of salads, but this old gelatin salad is a favorite. It was already a standard before World War II, and has the advantage of being prepared days before the Breakfast. You doubt its age? Max, look at the name. When did you last hear of a gelatin salad that was called “Congealed”?

Congealed Pineapple and Cucumber Salad:

Pineapple Layer:
1 cup drained, crushed pineapple–save liquid
3-ounce package of lemon Jello
Pinch salt
½ cup grated carrots

To the drained pineapple juice add enough water to make 1 ¼ cups liquid. Bring liquid to boil and dissolve the Jello. Chill until slightly thickened. Stir in the salt, carrots, and pineapple. Chill overnight in a 8 x 13 casserole.

Cucumber Layer:

1 envelope unflavored gelatin
¼ cup cold water
1 cup mayonnaise
½ cup light cream
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon finely grated onion
12 cup chopped celery
½ cucumber, grated and drained
Green food coloring

For this layer, soften the gelatin in cold water. Combine the remaining ingredients, then add the gelatin. Add one drop green food coloring. You may need a second drop, but the effect is to be a delicate lime green. Pour this over the pineapple layer and chill until firm.

Cut into small squares and garnish with a mint strip, and perhaps a strawberry slice. At a regular meal this serves 6 to 8, but at a buffet it serves 10 to 12.