Local Recipes - “Peasant” food

Contributed by Don Siegel Thanksgiving dinner is an important family event at the home of Don Siegel, owner of Warwick’s Kokopelli Native American Gallery. “”We invite about 20 guests and I do all the cooking,” he said. Siegel has a few suggestions. Prepare as much as you can in advance, rent everything you need and hire someone to do the serving and the clean-up. He also believes plain “peasant” food is better than fancy gourmet dishes. And although he offers his guests the traditional stuffing, candied yams, cranberry sauce and so forth, he also serves one simple dish from a recipe borrowed from his Czechoslovakian born grandmother. “It has a Czechoslovakian name, but let’s just call it ‘cabbage and noodles,” he said. Take a medium head of cabbage and chop by hand. Add two medium sized onions, also chopped by hand. Place the cabbage and onions in a skillet with a little oil, season with salt and pepper to taste, and sauté until tender. Meanwhile, boil some broad noodles in a separate pot. Then mix everything together and continue to fry. “It sounds simple,” said Siegel, “but, like most peasant food, it’s always a big hit.”