fry bread with maple corn hash

A few weeks ago on a road trip gone awry, we ended up at the Lincoln Cabin Historical site in Illinois. We went on a whim, not expecting much, but were pleasantly surprised to find a fantastic educational experience... complete with a museum and reenactors! As a souvenir, I bought the Cookbook they had put together. It has some historical recipes and some modern (I'm fairly certain they didn't have potato chips for potato chip cookies in the 1840's... In fact I learned such in the museum!)

A simple corn recipe caught my eye... "Mohawk Corn," in reference to the Native Americans, not the hairstyle. Corn, lard, maple sugar and black walnuts. The idea of nuts and maple in summer sweet corn sounded pretty good... so I looked for other ways to make it a meal. Further in the book there is a recipe for Navajo Fry Bread. I have had Fry bread at various fairs and Native American festivals. What's not to love? Fried Bread. So here is my Native American-style dinner via a Lincoln log cabin.

Navajo Fry Bread

-4 cups all-purpose flour
-1 Tablespoon baking powder
-1 teaspoon salt
-1.5 cups warm water
-vegetable oil for frying

Combine the flour, salt and baking powder. Add the water, stirring, until it becomes a soft dough. Knead until soft but not sticky (I had to add quite a bit of flour to knead without sticking). Break off pieces of dough and roll into golf ball size balls. Flatten into a disk, tear or poke a small hole in the center and fry in 1 inch of hot oil on each side until golden brown.

Maple Corn Hash

-1 medium red onion, diced
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-1 red bell pepper, diced
-2 smoked chicken thighs, meat chopped, skin separated and chopped
-corn cut from 5 ears of fresh sweet corn
-2 Tablespoons pure maple syrup
-1/2 cup black walnuts, roughly chopped

-cook the onion and garlic with the chicken skin and a little bit of oil until onions are soft and translucent. Add in the red pepper, corn, syrup and walnuts and stir over the heat until everything is just heated through. Serve with Fry Bread.

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