The old Improvement Era often published cooking tips, usually tucked into the back pages among the advertisements and the conclusions of featured articles published in more prominent parts of the magazine. Often these cooking columns had a Mormon twist – multiplying recipes to serve a large gathering, like a ward dinner; Word of Wisdom-friendly party drinks; ways to use that wheat storage.
In 1948, the column reminded readers in early spring that “This is the time of year to take an inventory of your bottled and canned fruits and vegetables, which remain upon your pantry shelves. Budget their use so you will have variety from day to day until canning time comes again.” “Canning time” will not come soon for Little White Lab Rat, so he explored the recipes for … for what?
For canned vegetables??
Little White Lab Rat turned up his bewhiskered nose at such an idea – what recipe is needed for canned vegetables? One opens a can, one dumps the contents into a saucepan, one heats and serves. Who needs a recipe for that?
But that, my friends, is the point! Why settle for that, when a little creativity can turn tasteless canned green beans into this:
1 onion, sliced
1 Tblsp. butter
1/2 green pepper, sliced
1 can tomatoes
1 bay leaf
1 whole clove
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
1 can green beans
Today’s supermarket cans are 14-1/2 oz.; I don’t know what they would have been in 1948. I used diced tomatoes without added seasonings, and cut green beans.
The recipe instructs us to “combine all ingredients except the beans and simmer for 15 minutes; add beans,” but your guide to old Mormon cooking believes they left out one step. What is the butter for, if not to saute the onion? So I sauted the onion until it was soft, then added the other ingredients.
Little White Lab Rat was skeptical. What could one clove, or one teaspoon of sugar do? Ah, my friends, a very great deal, it turns out!
The beans were delicious, with undefinable, subtle flavors. They were not sweet, but finished somehow, with the clove and bay leaf lending a hint of sophistication.
It is not a pretty dish, with its strings of peppers and its long, soft twists of onion. I think I shall try dicing the onion and pepper to match the dice of the tomatoes. It will be prettier with the green beans backed by the other vegetables, uniform in shape but varied in color.
So easy, so fast – little more effort than serving those bland vegetables directly from a can. But so tasty! Little White Lab Rat will certainly make this recipe a frequent part of his dinners.
[Update, 23 November: Made this again today, dicing the onion and pepper. Much prettier dish, by far. And still tasty.]
This is great, Ardis. I well remember my mother’s annual bottling rituals. (I wonder how many people still bottle?) She made the best bottled grape juice from grapes grown in our own backyard … and then I realized how much sugar she’d put into each bottle!
That actually sounds good, and I was wondering what to do with some extra tomatoes that aren’t going very fast now that it’s gotten cold. (Does it violate the spirit of LWLR and the post-war kitchen if I make it with fresh tomatoes and green beans?)
As my dad would say, “Have a little grape juice with your sugar, Maudie.”
Dreaming of fresh produce, Amy …
A lot of people still bottle food, including me. I have a Concord grapevine in my yard, and I make juice almost every year, WITHOUT added sugar. It is delicious. I also usually make applesauce, sometimes make old fashioned chili sauce (no chilis present!), bottle blue plums from my tree, and I give serious consideration to bottling peaches because they are so much better than store-bought canned. But they are so work-intensive.
I have a wonderful corn chowder recipe that was my grandma’s, and you can use canned corn & tomatoes in it. Blah, blah, blah. I do go on.
You’ve piqued my curiosity, Elaine — how does one make old fashioned chili sauce with no chilis?
I don’t know what recipe Elaine uses, but my extended family still uses a recipe from my step-great-great-grandma Eliza Turner Green:
http://heritagerecipes.blogspot.com/2011/11/meatloaf-with-chili-sauce-heritage.html
My mother’s and grandmother’s recipe:
CHILI SAUCE
1½ tsp. allspice
1 to 2 tblsp. cinnamon
1½ tsp. cloves
1 gallon chopped, peeled tomatoes
1 cup chopped onions (2 medium)
1½ cups chopped green peppers (4 medium)
1½ cups chopped sweet red peppers (4 medium)
½ to 2 cups vinegar (I use ¾ cup)
1 cup sugar
3 tblsp. salt
Combine vegetables and spices and boil until mixture is reduced to half its original volume. Stir often while cooking to prevent scorching. (Cook with lid off to allow steam to escape, and aroma to brighten up the neighborhood and tantalize all who come within a half a block.) Add vinegar, sugar, and salt; boil rapidly 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour immediately into sterile jars and seal.
Yield: About 5 pints
So you use peppers, but not hot ones. Interesting, Amy T. and Ardis!
Lets see, you both have a reduction of a tomato base with onion and peppers, plus vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices. Is it kind of like ketchup, but with some added onion and bell pepper flavor?
It’s far more than ketchup; the thick texture is not smooth, but is that of chopped vegetables, like salsa, only softer, not crisp. It’s sweet and spicy; the vinegar, at least in the low level in my recipe, doesn’t make it pickle-y at all, but just cuts the sugar so that it isn’t too heavily sweet.
It’s commonly used on meatloaf, as in Amy’s recipe, or on hamburger patties (not necessarily in buns). My family ate a lot of beans, or beans-and-hamhocks, with this chili sauce spooned on top and a wedge of onion on the side to spark it up. My dad liked chili sauce on crusty bread, too.
Even though I don’t have the facilities to can or store bottled food, I still make a batch of this chili sauce every couple of years, storing it in the refrigerator rather than bottling. It’s worth it for the heavenly smell.
I can bear testimony of the heavenlyness of Ardis’s chili sauce. And her bread and butter pickles. Strangers knock on the door to see what that wonderful smell is. Literally.
On may way to get beans and hamhocks . . .
My mom always bottled chili sauce. I think that most people don’t do this now because they bottle salsa.
Horror of horrors, we always bought our chili sauce – one of Heinz’ 57 varieties. I used it in place of catsup whenever we had it.
Still pretty good, wasn’t it? Salsa, catsup, good. Chili sauce, wunderbar!