Chow Chow

the essential companion to a New Year's agrarian meal

If you want to live life as an artist for the long haul, you better get used to living frugally. Luckily, most people have had to eat frugally since the dawn of time and have come up with palatable ways of doing so. Take the traditional New Year’s meal granting good luck and prosperity, black-eyed peas and collard greens. There might be no meal that is quite so inexpensive and nutritious; a huge bunch of collards at my local Food Lion costs ninety-nice cents. I quite like black-eyed peas but I also acknowledge that some describe the experience as akin to eating wet dirt.

Enter chow chow! The perfect foil to both the peas and the greens. Heap a big spoonful on either and you have a real zinger of a dish! One day I’ll give you a recipe for collards, but on this snowy day I offer you my grandmother’s nineteenth century recipe for chow chow. Lena Mae was born in 1877 and married my grandfather Alexander Martin in 1898. My mother made this recipe every fall and now I do, too. Last year, my youngest daughter took up the tradition. So, here’s Lena Mae’s four-generation chow chow.

Ingredients

15-30 green tomatoes (1/2 gallon)

1 head of cabbage

5 green peppers (sub in a red one for color if you can)

5-6 stalks of celery

4 onions (day 2)

Sauce

5 cups sugar (My handcopied recipe says 6, Mom’s says 5)

2 tablespoons of flour mixed with the sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

4 cups vinegar (my writing says 5 cups - this is art not science)

1 box of dried mustard

1 box (the small mustard-sized box) turmeric

cayenne, black pepper, celery seed, mustard seed (you can vary this according to taste I use 1.5T, 1T, 1T, .5T respectively)

1-2 dried red peppers

Preparation

Cut up all the vegetables except onion and dried peppers, (do not be tempted to use a food processor, that will be too fine – this is a Zen operation, embrace it) stir with a wooden spoon and cover with 1/2 cup salt. Cover and let stand overnight

Day 2, Stir vegetables. If there isn’t much water add 1/2 cup. Chop and add onions and dried pepper

Bring to a hard boil, cook briefly, then pour off all water through a colander - mash all the water out with a wooden spoon

While veggies drain, mix all the dry ingredients for the sauce then add the vinegar and boil gently for 15 minutes, then add the vegetables and cook briefly

Pour into sterilized mason jars and process normally in a boiling water bath

Pour yourself a glass of wine