Dear Church,
During this month, we’ve been inviting members and friends of First Congregational to reflect on their families, their cultures, the communities that raised them. In conversation with the work that Pastor Sharon is doing on her sabbatical, we want to take a look at our heritage, and reflect on what we need to hold on to, and what we need to reckon with.
One of the symbols of this work we’re sharing is the growing store of recipes and stories in the narthex, which we’ll also make available online. Some of them are stories from grandparents or great-grandparents. Some of them are stories of cross-cultural encounter and learning. Some of them are stories about reaching for recipes out of necessity, making something new together because times were challenging or even desperate.
I believe we’ll need all our best recipes, metaphorical and otherwise, in the days to come. Some of the recipes we’re sharing at church these days are simple; some have a lot of steps. One is a song! Together we are adapting, prayerfully sharing, and learning again, each time it goes in the oven, what is nourishing, what is sustaining, and what is delicious, for us and for our children.
If you’d like to join this sweet festival, I invite you to share a story and a recipe with Susan Huffman, susan@fccb.net I can’t wait to see what else arrives, and to try some of them myself. Here’s mine:
After my first year of grad school I was blessed to move into a cooperative house on the south side of Chicago. More than a dozen of us shared a big old former farm house, probably built in the 1880’s, and as architecturally funky of a home as I have ever seen. I am deeply grateful to the community that nurtured me as a young person, but when I think of my food life, I often think of Haymarket. We took turns cooking for each other, bringing cuisines from very humble to very fancy, and cooks from all kinds of backgrounds and cultures. I panicked a bit when I first got there, as I wasn’t much of a cook, but I found my way around that warm, weird kitchen. Whenever I was cooking, somebody would walk by, usually a few times an hour, and I could ask them for help or advice. My meals didn’t always turn out, but they were always my attempt to wrap my love for my community up in some bites, to let my passion for my friends simmer for a few hours on the back burner, to profess my wild, simple love with every tasty or not-so-tasty spoonful.
Haymarket Stuffed Peppers
Okay, so it’s your turn to cook and you’re feeling a little uninspired. But, you’ve got some basic staples and you don’t mind popping out to the market for some bell peppers. Let’s make Haymarket Stuffed Peppers! Note: I’m gonna suggest ingredients, but most of the things in your cupboard will taste good if you throw some seasoning on and cook them in a pepper for an hour. I don’t’ think I’ve ever made this the same way twice, to the frustration of anybody who’s had it once and liked it! I’ll share my usual process:
Most of the ingredients you need:
- A cup of quinoa (you should cook this in a rice cooker. If you don’t have a rice cooker, seriously consider getting a rice cooker. You can have rice! And it comes out every time! And it also works for quinoa which is honestly what I mostly make in mine these days.)
- Like a half dozen bell peppers. Various colors is fun, but really whatever’s cheapest is cool. I like to do at least two peppers per person who’ll be eating; this meal is good leftover. (If it’s not good leftover I stop making it cause what’s even the point.)
- A can of chopped tomatoes or a few dozen little cherry tomatoes. Yum. Optional but so good.
- A block of tofu: pop it out of its wrapper, wrap it in a kitchen towel, and then put it between two plates. Weigh it down with three 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks for twenty minutes. I suppose you could use other books for this, or even just something else heavy, but I’ve never tried.
- Maybe a diced and sauteed onion? I’m not saying this recipe needs it, but it would be good there, and having leftover diced and sauteed onion in your fridge is like having a kitchen superpower.
- Bragg’s or soy sauce or some kinda thing like that
- Some garlic, maybe some ginger, whatever other spices you want
Steps
- Okay, get the quinoa going ‘cause that’ll take a while, and go ahead and press that tofu while you’re at it. Then do some dishes or take a nap. The tofu has to get pressed for twenty minutes but if you leave it for longer it’s probably fine.
- Cut the peppers in half like longwise. There’s a cool way to do this where you basically hold the stem and cut out from there, bisecting it, and then most of the internal guts stuff comes out all in one piece. I can show you sometime if that description makes no sense.
- Take a baking dish like you’d use for a lasagna. Throw some oil in there if you wanna get fancy, but it’s probably fine without.
- Put the pepper halves in the baking dish like so many soon-to-be-delicious boats. Preheat the oven to, oh, say, 400 degrees.
- Okay, now it's time to flavor the filling! Chop the tofu into one-inch cubes (or so, it's tofu so it's flexible.) Put it in a big mixing bowl and throw maybe a few tablespoons of soy sauce, Braggs, or tamari on there. (I like Braggs cause that's what we used at Haymarket.) In the mix, throw some chopped garlic or garlic powder, chopped tomatoes, maybe some nutritional yeast flakes, and whatever other spices sound good. (These days I usually throw some sriracha in, but that's true for most of my cooking.)
- Mix it all up with the quinoa and stir it real good. Take a little taste and see if it needs more spice or something. Maybe some ginger? Just a titch of sesame oil? Trust your heart or wait for one of your co-op buddies to walk through and ask them.
- Then throw the whole quinoa tofu spicy batch into your peppers. It might overflow and even surround the peppers on the baking dish- that's good! Hopefully it'll be delicious. Bake it for thirty-five minutes and then take a look. Check it every ten or twelve minutes after that until the top of the quinoa mix is crispy and golden brown. Yum!
- Serve and enjoy! I've been known to like it with a little steak sauce, but it's likely plenty flavorful on its own right now. Should be vegan and gluten free, depending on which sauces you used. Keeps well in the fridge for four or five days, but hopefully it's so delicious it won't even last that long.
Lemme know how it turned out and what you added that made it extra tasty!
Pastor Davi
