TRADITIONAL ALGONQUIN NOKAKE

2 cups water

2 cups cornmeal

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon fresh dill, chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 F. Bring water to boil in a saucepan. Add cornmeal, salt, butter, and dill (if
used). Please in buttered 8" x 8" cake pan and bake for approx. 25 minutes. Cut into squares and
serve.

ALGONQUIN NOKAKE: HOE CAKES

Ingredients

2 cups water

2 cups cornmeal

2 tsp. salt

2 Tbs. butter

1 Tbs. fresh dill, chopped (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 375. Bring water to boil in a sauce pan. Add cornmeal, salt, butter, and dill (if
used). Pour into buttered 8x8 inch cake pan and bake for approximately 25 minutes. Cut into
squares and serve.

Yield: 16

ACORN BREAD

1 c. acorn meal

1 c. all-pupose flour

2 t. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

3 t. sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 c. milk

3 t. oil

Sift together, acorn meal, white flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. In separate bowl, mix
together egg, milk, and oil. Combine dry ingredients and liquid ingredients. Stir just enough to
moisten dry ingredients. Pour into a greased pan and bake at 400F. for 30 minutes. Yield: 1 loaf

ANISH-NAH-BE PAKWEJIGAN (REAL INDIAN BREAD)

1 recipe soft bread

2/3 cup sunflower oil

1/2 cup blueberries -=or=- raisins

Let the soft bread dough cool to room temperature. Mix in the blueberries; put the dough into a
bowl. Chill until it thickens. When the dough is firm, cut it into 1/2" slices; fry until it is a golden
colour. Serve hot with maple syrup. Yield: 4 servings

EPANGISHIMOG PAKWEJIGAN (SHUSWAP BANNOCK)

3 c All-purposes flour

1 tb Baking powder

1 ½ ts Salt

1 ½ c Water

1 c Blueberries

Mix the dry ingredients together, the add the water quickly; continue to stir. Spread batter on a
pie plate; put in a preheated oven heated to 425F. Bake for 20 minutes. Cut in pieces; serve hot or
cold. Excellent with mint tea. The recipe doesn't say when the blueberries should be added, I
would assume that it would be before mixing in the water.

GRITTED CORN BREAD

6-8 ears fresh corn on the cob

3 boxes Jiffy brand cornbread mix

Remove the husks (save them! see below) and silks. Using the coarsest holes on a regular kitchen
grater, grate the corn off the cob into a bowl (save the corn AND the juice). Mix up the cornbread
following the directions on the box. Stir in the grated corn and it's "milk". Pour into a greased
13x9" baking dish and bake per box directions. Because this cornbread has a higher moisture
content than normal, you may have to bake it longer than the directions say. Serve hot with fresh
butter. You can serve it with honey, jelly, etc., but it really doesn't need it. This is the sweetest
cornbread you'll ever eat. "Gritting" was literally scraping the corn cob over something that would
do the same thing as your grater. Gritted breads were made by adding ground meal to the gritted
corn until a "dough" was achieved. Save those green husks! You can dry them by clothes-
pinning them to a line or towel bar. Corn husks or "corn fodder" are used in a number of dishes.
The silks were sometimes used as smoking material, but I don't have any info on it. Yield: 6
servings

SOFT BREAD Inagami- Pakwejigan

1 3/4 cups water

2/3 cup white corn flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

margarine or shortening

sunflower seeds

Bring the water to a boil. Mix together the flour & salt. Pour the boiling

water onto the dry ingredients while stirring. Continue to stir until the

mixture becomes thick & uniform. Serve in a bowl topped with margarine &

the sunflower seeds. Yield: 4 servings

INDIAN CAKE (Bread)

6 cups water

2 cups precooked yellow corn meal

1 cup sprouted wheat

4 cups precooked blue corn meal

1/2 cups rasins

1/2 cup brown sugar

Put 6 cups of water in pan and boil. Add 4 cups precooked blue corn meal. Add 2 cups precooked
yellow corn meal. Add 1/2 cup rasins. Add 1 cup wheat, sprouted. Add 1/2 cup brown sugar.
Blend well; dissolve all lumps. Pour into baking pan that is lined with foil. Cover with foil. Bake at
250 degrees for 4 hours. Note: Cake must cook slowly! Yield: 10

PIKI

The Pueblos have the distinction of making what must be the thinnest bread in the world--piki. It
does rather an injustice to it to call piki simply "paper bread," for its layers are at least as thin as
tissue paper and often look like they are composed of more air than bread. In the traditional

recipe, a thin batter is made from blue cornmeal and water that has been soaked with juniper ashes.
The cook sits before a flat stone that has been heated in a fire, armed with no other implement than
one whole sheep's brain. This she uses to grease the stone, after which she spreads a thin

layer of piki batter across the entire surface with a deft sweep of her hand. When the papery sheet
of corn batter crinkles and dries, it is lifted off. Three or four stacked sheets rolled together into a
scroll make one piki. As it turns out piki is easy to duplicate at home if you have any size skillet
coated with a nonstick surface (a 7-8" pan is ideal). The batter is brushed onto the pan bottom with
a bristle brush (nylon might melt) and lifted off in layers as thin as gossamer. Suprisingly, the
procedure is not delicate at all, because however fragile the piki looks, it is strongly bound by the
gluten in the cornstarch. If you can pour crepe batter and are adventurous enough to experiment
with homemade tortillas and sopaipillas, you will have no trouble with piki.

For 8 scrolls of bread, serving 4 people:

5 T. Masa Harina

2 T. cornstarch

1/8 tsp. salt

1 C. hot water

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, pour in the hot water all at once, and whisk the batter for a few
seconds until it is smooth. Arm yourself with a 1" bristle brush, preferably a good-quality pastry
brush or, failing that, a paintbrush. Heat a nonstick skillet over low heat until it is warm, but do

not grease it. The size does not much matter, since small pikis and large ones are equally easy to
lift once they dry thoroughly. The pan should not be made so hot that the batter sizzles when yu
try to brush it on, for the action of the nonstick material will then cause it to bead up. What you

want is a layer of batter spread onto the pan like a layer of paint. Take the skillet up in one hand
and brush on a layer of batter, using this at right angles to it--in other words, you are painting in a
crosshatch. Do not worry about holes in the surface, since even a coating almost imperceptible to
the eye will cook into bread. Return the skillet to the heat and cook for about a minute. The batter
has to sizzle and evaporate all its moisture before it is done. As soon as the hissing stops and the

surface of the bread looks dry and crinkly, peel it off with your fingers by starting up one edge
with a table knife, then grasping it by hand and pulling up on top. The layer will peel away easily.
Lay it on paper toweling or a baking rack to dry completely and proceed to make 3 more

pikis to lay on top. Do not place the piki on a plate once baked, since further steaming causes
them to become too sticky--a few moments on paper towels completes their drying out. Once you
have 4 layers, roll them loosely into a scroll and set aside. Cook the breads in this fashion until you
have made 2 per person. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature with a good sals and your
main-course dish, preferably a Pueblo stew.

NOTES: One small problem abut baking the piki is that a skillet hot enough to dry out the dough is
too hot to brush with more batter right away. It helps to have two pans on hand, one to cool
while the other bakes. Also, piki dough tends to become gummy on the brush, which needs
washing once that becomes a nuisance. Finally, if the batter in the bowl looks too thick at any
point, you can dilute it with water or simply make up a new batch.

VARIATION:

Piki in Blue, Yellow and Pink: In ceremonial and festive use, the Pueblos often color this bread,
using blue cornmeal for the blue, ground coxcomb for the pink and safflower for yellow. For blue
piki, make a batter from 3 T. blue cornmeal, 2 T. Masa Harina and 3 T. cornstarch, plus the water
and salt in the basic recipe. For pink and yellow breads, simply add a few drops of food coloring
to the basic batter as you whisk it up.

Native Breads