So much food... too much food
What year is it, who's president?
I can't feel my legs...
As you may know, yesterday was Thanksgiving, and my room mates and neighbors in my apartment complex decided to have a feast. The goal was to have everyone make a dish and have a potluck of a feast, a few of us decided to create a dish that had to do with our heritage, so I decided what would be more appropriate than embracing my Native American roots for Thanksgiving. I use to eat this bread as a kid on the native American reservation that I would visit in eastern Oregon, it's always reminded me of my history and also is a delicious dish.
In the end our thanksgiving meal had an expansive selection from Armenian food to Stuffed Italian Mushrooms to Cinnamon Sangria. We couldn't find any cranberries anywhere, however, we did find cranberry juice, so we had vodka cranberry to celebrate the evening, a good call indeed. A few of my flatmates parents were in town and decided to randomly drop some cash on the situation, we ended up having an accordion player named Maurice (or at least I think it was that, it could have been Murry or Mario) play while we cooked and ate appetizers, but I digress, I'm here to tell you how to make my dish:
NAVAJO FRY BREAD:
This is a pretty simple dish and requires very few ingredients, but ends up being a fantastic side plate for any big meal this can serve up to about 8 people. What you'll need is
-Some vegetable oil for frying (I used corn oil, I'm gonna try peanut oil next time) (In Italian: Olio di Mais)-2 cups of flour (Farina)
-1/2 teaspoon salt (Sale)
-2 teaspoons powdered milk (latte in pulvere)
-2 teaspoons baking powder (lievito)
-1 cup water (Acqua Naturale)
-Butter
-Jam
Mix together all of the dry ingredients in a bowl, pour all of the water into the bowl at once, stir it all together until the dough with a fork or a butter knife until it is completely lump free and one solid piece of dough. Toss that shit into the fridge.
STOP RIGHT THERE PILGRIM. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO PUT ON THAT BREAD?!
The best things that go with indian fry bread, in my opinion is huckleberry jam and butter, so here's your intermission and the next step to the meal. Unfortunately I couldn't find huckleberries in Italy, so I thought I'd use Lingonberries, which you know are, if you've read my earlier posts, dank. Unfortunately I couldn't find that either. So I chose to make a qucik blackberry sauce for the bread.
What you'll need:
Sugar
Blackberries
Take about 4 hand fulls of blackberries, toss them into a cooking pot and begin cooking the berries, while that's going on take a fork and crush the berries, crush them until the berries turn into a sauce, pour in about a tablespoon of sugar, let the berry sauce reduce a little and let the sugar soak in. You can either stick the berries into a jar and freeze it so it goes cold with the bread, or put the flame on simmer so you have a hot berry sauce to go ontop. (I prefer the latter)
Now back to the bread.
Pour the oil into a large pot and heat it up until it's at a good frying temperature, you can tell if it's ready by taking some dough and tossing it in, if the dough begins frying then your ready. OR you can stick in a wooden spoon, if the oil starts to bubble around the spoon then you're set.
The next step is to get a cutting board and some extra flour for your hands and the board (Be generous with the flour, this shit is real sticky). Flour the board and flour your hands, take a handfull of dough and toss it on the board, flatten it as far as it can go without breaking. it should be just a half centimeter thick give or take a few milimeters, think the thickness of a coffee plate, and a few inches in diameter, it should be thin and long, and it doesn't have to be round. Grab the dough and toss it into the hot oil (Remember to turn the heat down on the oil once it's reached the required temperature or else it will begin to burn, which will make the bread taste burnt). The dough will fall into the oil, sink, then rise quickly, it will quickly expand and the dough will become airy. Once one side is fried flip the floating dough and keep it going. Once it's finished toss it onto a plate with wax paper or a paper towel on it. Continue with the rest of the dough, if you have enough room in your pot toss in as many pieces that can fit, as soon as they're done frying they're ready to eat, the warmer the better.
Slab on some butter and pour on some berry sauce or jam, and feast. Bam, Navajo fry bread.
Now onto other matters of business...
ART
My sculpture got alot of progress done this week, and I can finally see it coming to an end, and even more this week I did some of the small details on it and had fun doing it, it was more than refreshing IT WAS INSPIRING.
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| The mapvelopes, my knife that I use for everything (including cutting out the maps), and a postcard from Florence. |
My amulet of the man in the ring is coming along well, I finished carving all of the wax and all that is left to do this weekend is cast them, then next Wednesday I will solder the pieces together, ad a tube for the chain and then the chain will be put through the tube so that one (I) can wear it.I will also try and carve out an anchor, and a sun being enveloped by the moon and have those finished by the end of the semester. Here's my small man:
My last project which I started doing, even though it really doesn't have anything to do with art, is me translating a short Italian book, La Verità (The Truth). My Italian is still shitty at best, but I have a dictionary, and I'll have some time during my travels to translate, and hopefully it will really help with my Italian. Alongside that I purchased Zaire by Voltaire, which is in French. Once I finish La Verità I will most likely be traveling through Paris before I head home, so this will help me refresh with my French as well. The goal of this year is to be fluent in Italian and to be re-competent in French. Here are the two books I picked up in an ancient bookstore hidden away in a nearby street.
Also I think I'm going to paint my Ukuklele.
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST
MUSIC:
OK Thanksgiving has now passed which means that we are all in on winter. So it's time for some frost filled melodies. They're mostly acoustic and folksy, because that's how winter should be, deal with it.
Le Bleu et L'ether - Stranded Horse: I love a good music video, so of course I love La Blogoteque. They capture the unsurpassed beauty of music when it's natural and (a)live. Please, if you love a good song and a good video visit their blog.
Matches the mood of winter, put this song on a playlist for that special someone and you'll see snowflake shaped fireworks.
Fleet Foxes are the new kings of the folk world. I don't need to say much more, they're from my hometown, they're the kings of my favorite music genre, and they are perfect for any situation. I love this band and all of its members, and I hope you do too.
I picked up this album out of coincidence when looking at a random blog and I like it. If you like these guys head over mhyear.
Great song by Elliott Smith, I've already told you about him, no more need be said.
Mhmm
The Connor Oberst brainchild band Monsters of Folk has some great range and some good music to boot. If you havn't heard of this band I suggest you look em up and check out their song "Dear God"
More acoustic melodies.
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Well that is about it for this week folks, I've got stuff to do and food to digest, so I'll catch up with you later next week. Stay warm.
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