June 18 – June 24, 2023

Monday:                   Grilled Hot Sausages with Chow-Chow and Barbecued Beans

Tuesday:                   Curried Chicken Fried Rice with Chilies

Wednesday:            Sweet and Spicy Grilled Vegetables with Burrata

Thursday:                 Rigatoni with Trader Joe’s Marinara Sauce (doctored-up)

Friday:                       Kelly’s Birthday Party at the Fairmont

Saturday:              Dinner at Hilda and Tim’s with Julie

Sunday:                Grilled Strip Steak, Summer Salad

Note:  In addition to Juneteenth, the other great celebration of last week was Kelly’s birthday – a giant, casual, friendly party at the Fairmont.  Her kids and Duffy and Dana’s and Hoby and Stacey’s and their friends made it the youngest group of people I’ve been around since high school.  And Kelly and Patrick’s friends, who are not that young, couldn’t help but treat us as old.  It was great to be included in the festivities despite our age.

A Great Day in History and Pickles

 The Declaration of Independence, the ratification of the Constitution, the end of the Civil War and, just before that, the Emancipation Proclamation – in the first  century of our nation, these were the great moments.  (Yeah, yeah, I know that the Northwest Ordinance and the Louisiana Purchase and the building of canals and railroads were deeply significant, but without independence and the functional government created by the Constitution none of that would have happened, and without the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, none of that would have mattered to a fifth of our fellow citizens.)

You already knew this, and I can’t possibly add anything to the glory of these events.  But I’d like to sandwich in a small culinary event that must have occurred sometime in the early days of our country – well, really in the colonies, even before we were a country. 

I’m talking about the origins of a pickled condiment known as ‘chow-chow,’ a staple in the South and the perfect item to put on your red hots on Juneteenth, the national holiday celebrating emancipation.  Wikipedia and other sources trace chow-chow variously to England (it resembles but differs from English ‘piccalilli’), to the Cajuns who migrated from Canada to Louisiana, and even to Chinese railway workers who had stolen chutney from their southern Asian neighbors.  What this means, of course, is that nobody knows where chow-chow originated or when.

So I think it’s perfectly reasonable to imagine that the original English piccalilli was modified by the African Americans who made southern cooking into an art and who, to this day use it on fish cakes, hamburgers, hot dogs and, well, pretty much anything that needs a little kick in the pants to make it tasty.

We were feeling like a picnic and I was calling around Pittsburgh to see if I could get some half-smokes – a coarse-ground dog with red pepper flakes – like they serve at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, DC.*  It’s traditional to serve red foods on Juneteenth (I don’t know why) and since it would not be possible to please the elegant and perennially svelte SWMBO with red velvet cake (a Juneteenth staple), I thought maybe the half-smoke hot dogs (also known as red hots from the color and the taste) with a nice watermelon and feta salad might work.  As an extra treat, I thought, I’ll make some Southern chow-chow to dress the dogs.

*Alas, no half-smokes were available – but I substituted hot Italian sausage which is not far off the mark. Well, Billy came out and we had a fine meal and everything was appreciated, but the hit of the night was the chow-chow.  We used it liberally on the sausages and then for the next few days on turkey and ham sandwiches.  It is the pickle of the moment at Casa Stuarti and will become a staple for us on any variety of what Tony Bourdain called ‘meat in tubular form.’

The recipe below will make enough chow-chow to last for some time – we have at least half of it one week later.  So you might want to cut the recipe in half.

 

Chow-Chow

(adapted from Washington Post)

 Timing:                             6 hours, most of it inactive

Ingredients:

1 Green tomato (12 oz. would be perfect)

½ cup chopped Vidalia onion (about 2 ½ cups) – we used red onion

½ green bell pepper, chopped

½ red bell pepper, chopped

1 serrano pepper, stemmed and chopped

2 ribs of celery, chopped

2 cups, chopped green cabbage (we used a cole slaw mix and removed most of the carrot slivers)

1 ½ tablespoons kosher salt*

2 ¾ teaspoons yellow mustard seed*

1 teaspoon celery seeds

½ teaspoon ground allspice

½ teaspoon ground turmeric

¾ teaspoon yellow mustard powder*

2 cups white distilled vinegar

½ cup granulated sugar

*3/4 teaspoon always bothers me, and ½ tablespoon drives me up the wall – do you have a half-tablespoon measure?  Look, just eyeball these things – you’re not baking and the measurements don’t have to be exact.

Prep:

Chop all of the vegetables

Start the chow-chow:

In a food processor, combine the tomato, onion, green and red bell peppers, the serrano and celery and pulse until finely chopped.  Now add the cabbage and salt and pulse until the cabbage is finely chopped (5 pulses or a bit more).

Put the mixture into a non-reactive (glass) bowl and refrigerate for at least 4 hours – overnight is just fine.

Finish the chow-chow:

Strain the mixture in a colander set over a bowl to capture the excess liquid – save that liquid!

Toast the spices (mustard and celery seeds, allspice, turmeric and mustard powder) in a small skillet over medium.  Stir until fragrant – 2-3 minutes.  Pour into a small bowl.

In a medium saucepan over high heat, combine the vinegar and ½ cup of the reserved liquid and bring to a boil.  Stir in the sugar and the toasted spices until the sugar dissolves, then bring it back to a boil and cook until it reduces slightly – about 3 minutes.

Now add the vegetables and cook, stirring often, until the mixture returns to a boil, then reduce the heat and cook, uncovered, until the mixture reduces by one-third.  The recipe says this will happen in 20 minutes – it took us about 25 minutes.  Note:  the one-third reduction is guesswork.

Remove from the heat and let the chow-chow cool to the touch – 15 or 20 minutes.  Transfer to an air-tight container and refrigerate until use.