Homage

Recipes and Stories from an Amish Soul Food Kitchen

Chris Scott, Sarah Zorn

• Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781797207759
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Culinary Arts

Chapter 1 Seven Sweets and Seven Sours

Traditional Amish meals follow a set format. You have your proteins and your starches. Your breads and desserts. But most important of all, you have to have your sweets and your sours.

Like many hardscrabble communities, Amish folk primarily ate what they could grow and produce themselves. So no wonder pickling, canning, and preserving have such deep roots in the culture. Fruit was turned into jams, chutneys, and compotes. These are the “sweets.” For “sours,” the Amish are best known for chow-chow, a cooked, vinegared relish made from whatever could be salvaged from the garden before the last frost (Southerners also take credit for chow-chow, making it an obvious staple in African American households like mine). Corn is the most common variety, frequently served alongside stewed tomatoes and a variety of pickles, such as cabbage, beans, beets, or even eggs.

As commonplace a table setting as salt and pepper, sweets and sours are either eaten as is or used as condiments, sauces, or spreads. They are meant to lend balance to each dish—a custom that very well could have started as an analogy for life, about taking the sour along with the sweet. And there really are supposed to be seven of each on the table. Of course, regularly setting out all fourteen is a pretty heavy lift in modern-day, non-Amish households. But incorporating the sweets and sours on your table is a practice that’s easy to adapt to one’s lifestyle (as I’ve adapted it to mine). Every easy, one-pot recipe in this chapter can be made once, stored in your pantry or fridge, and used year-round to elevate even the most basic of meals.

This interplay of sweet and sour underlies everything I make. If I’m cooking a slow braise of pork or beef, I might pair it with tomato chow-chow, flavored with cloves or allspice to give it a wintry depth. If I’m working with fish, I know I’ll want something light, bright, and acidic, like cabbage or corn. My wife is Korean, so kimchi (and various versions of it) has found its way into my repertoire as well. And I’ll always think of Nana when I whip up a batch of prune compound butter. It’s an homage to her regular snack of prunes, toast, and super-sweet tea.

The deeper I go in exploring Pennsylvania Dutch culture and my family’s Southern history, the more I’m compelled to look at things in reverse and trace the migration of flavors all the way back. Back to before my people were slaves, to discover what they ate in the Caribbean (which is why I’ve started making Preserved Mango, page 43), or in South America, or back home in Africa … and how that’s shaped what we eat now. So from Apple Butter (page 39) and Rhubarb Chow-Chow (page 50) to Sweet-and-Sour Green and Wax Beans (page 61) and Green Tomato Confit (page 59), every jar and bottle actually contains the story of the journey, of how the contents came to get there.

PRUNE COMPOUND BUTTER

1 cup [180 g] dried pitted prunes

⅓ cup [65 g] packed brown sugar

¼ cup [60 ml] fresh orange juice

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

½ tsp kosher salt

1 dash ground cloves

1 dash ground allspice

1 dash ground nutmeg

1 dash ground cinnamon

4 cups [904 g] butter, at room temperature

It was no secret that my Nana had a hardcore sweet tooth. One of her vices was hot tea (Bigelow’s Constant Comment) and a couple of Pecan Rolls (page 225), accompanied by soft butter and a small dish of prunes. She’d smear the pecan rolls with the butter, top it with the prunes, and go to town.

As a nod to Nana, I made this butter our house butter at my restaurant Butterfunk Kitchen, served with the biscuits and cornbread. It always evoked a sense of calm in me, similar to what I felt watching her sitting there, collecting her thoughts with a pecan roll and some soft butter. She had an aura of peacefulness that just flowed into your spirit.

MAKES 9 CUPS [2 KG] In a small saucepan, combine the prunes, brown sugar, orange juice, lemon juice, salt, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Add ½ cup [120 ml] of water and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Turn the heat to low and cook until thick and jammy, about 40 minutes. Place in a blender with the center cap off, draped with a kitchen towel (to let steam escape) and purée until super smooth. Let the purée cool to room temperature.

Add the purée to a mixing bowl along with the butter, and whip by hand or with a mixer until completely combined. Spoon into small mason jars or airtight containers, or use wax paper to roll the whole mass into a log. Store the butter in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks or in the freezer, well wrapped, for up to 2 months. Bring to room temperature before using.

APPLE BUTTER

6 green apples, peeled and cut into chunks

¼ cup [50 g] granulated sugar

¼ cup [50 g] packed dark brown sugar

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

¾ Tbsp kosher salt

¾ Tbsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

I don’t think it’s possible to grow up in the North without a deep appreciation of apples. I know I eagerly anticipated...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• A Letter for Us, To Us
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Seven Sweets and Seven Sours
• Chapter 2. All Day, E’ery Day
• Chapter 3. Greens, Beans, Tubers, and Grains
• Chapter 4. Hard Times Foods
• Chapter 5. Celebration Foods
• Chapter 6. Breads and Flours
• Chapter 7. Shugga’s
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Authors