Otoe Mush (Way-Tuh)

Recipe attributed to "Chief White Cloud Pow Wow Grounds" in Ke-Gan-O Zin-E-Gan (Cookbook), put out by the Indian Center of Topeka, Inc. It has no date, but some of the board members listed for the center have died, one possibly in 1975.

Most of the people I can find out about in Internet obituaries were Prairie Potawatomi (the largest tribe in Kansas) or from Southwest tribes. So this is the first recipe, and I don't know if it comes from the small Otoe tribe, or was attributed to them by the Potatwatomi (as "Crow gut" is a dish in Blackfoot and Lakhota cuisines), or if it is just named in their honor.

2 cups ground, parched corn
1 cup sugar or honey

"The corn is first parched brown, then ground.
Wet the ground corn with water. Pour into 2 quarts boiling water;
stir in slowly the sugar or honey. Do not let it get lumpy.
Cook for 25 minutes, or until it is thick.
May be served as potatoes or cereal or rolled in flour and fried in deep fat and eaten as pancakes."

author, The American Ethnic Cookbook for Students and The American History Cookbook, webmaster, Culinary Historians of Boston

Cynthia: I think the ubiquity of cornmeal mushes among Native American groups would support your thought that this recipe is old (older without sugar, of course). The history of grain usage worldwide pretty much started with mushes and gruels, and while maize was not as hard as most other cereal grains, older varieties certainly required some processing. So antiquity of this, or at least a close relative, seems a good bet.

comment left Apr 02

MZanger: That's a good modern method. One of the traditional methods was to shell the corn and mix it with sand or ashes, then build a fire on top. After the fire burned down, you could wash it off and then keep it whole or grind it. Another method was to heat sand in that frying pan and stir in corn, etc. And probably before cast-iron pans, flat rocks and soapstone griddles were use, and whole ears of dried corn could be parched in ashes.

Parched corn was a very portable ration for hunting trips or war parties, since very little cooked up with water was filling and nourishing. Tribes who had a lot of maple sugar (which may or may not have been before contact, but wasn't long after) mixed that in, and this is documented quite early by explorers and settlers. So this Otoe Mush could be quite old!

comment left Mar 17