For years, I heard members of my mother’s family refer to “chow chow”, with no idea what it meant. The name itself gives no hint, really. What could it be? And why did I only hear about it from them? Why wasn’t my father’s family talking about chow chow?
One clue lay in my mother’s maritime roots. She was a northern transplant, after all. She was born and raised in Saint John, New Brunswick, where food roots run deep. Living far away in Yellowknife, my mother often reminisced about steamed fiddleheads in butter, lobster rolls, scallops, matrimonial cake, salt water taffy, and Ganong’s chocolates.
When September rolled around this year and I realized that the heaps of green tomatoes I had growing in our garden were never going to ripen, I began searching for ideas on what to do with them. I turned to one of the oldest cookbooks I have on my shelf, a copy of The New Purity Cookbook: The Complete Guide to Canadian Cooking. In it, I found a recipe for green tomato relish which, I later learned, is also the recipe for Chow Chow.
I had enough green tomatoes to fill eight 500ml jars with chow chow. Sour and sweet, this relish took my huge bowl of unripe tomatoes and transformed them into something absolutely delicious and versatile.
Like my mother, my Nana also lives far away from the East Coast now, but her eyes and voice always brighten at the mention of the place she loves so dearly, and the food traditions she has always held close to her heart.
“You made chow chow? Good for you, my dear,” she says to me over the phone. The sound of her voice tells me she is smiling.
“I always love chow chow with pork, but your mother, she loves hers with scrambled eggs.”
Now it’s up to me to find my favourite thing to go with chow chow. That relish is so good, though, I think I might just like it on its own and by the spoonful.
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