Heritage Wheat

Early morning wheat harvesting by hand at Ramona Farms.

Heritage tomatoes with their odd shapes and color but superior flavor began appearing in mainstream markets about a decade ago. Now other heritage foods are becoming popular among them, wheat.  Smithsonian Magazine ran an article on the rise of artisanal wheat that you can read here. Last weekend I joined about a dozen others in harvesting two varieties of heritage wheat at Ramona Farms near Sacaton, just south of Phoenix.  The farm is owned by Ramona Button, who is half Pima and half Tohono O’odham, and her husband Terry, who is all farmer.  The wheat wasn’t ripe, but we wanted to get it at the green “milk” stage.

Durum wheat, prized by Italians for pasta.  The beards  (spikey parts) help with photosynthesis.

Pima club wheat is low in gluten and makes good cookies and pastry.

Wheat was brought to Sonora, Mexico, and eventually to Southern Arizona by Father Eusebio Kino and other Catholic missionaries in the sixteenth century.  It was a hit with the local inhabitants because wheat grows through the winter and gave the Native Americans something to eat in the spring when they had used up their wild foods  stored in the fall and were going hungry.  They didn’t wait for the wheat to all ripen, but began eating  it as soon as the berries were plump.  When they roasted the grain heads over a fire, the hulls blackened, but because the inside was moist, the grain itself just toasted.  Then they rubbed off the black part and ate the delicious, smoky-flavored interior. The name of this food was dagivin, which translates roughly “to prepare it by rubbing.”  Middle Easterners also prepare wheat this way and call it freekeh.

Jared McKinley of  the forthcoming Edible Baja Arizona doing some hand hand harvesting with a machete.

That’s Gary Nabhan behind all that wheat.

Jeff  Zimmerman, who runs Hayden Flour Mills in Phoenix, produces flour from heritage wheat grown in Arizona. Here he and his son-in-law work on roasting the wheat over a fire.  The story of how and why he began the business of stone-grinding heritage wheat in 2010 is fascinating and you can read it here from a story in the Arizona Republic.

Raking out the toasted wheat.

The roasted wheat.

Roasted wheat berries with blackened hulls rubbed off. Nutritious, tasty, full of fiber and B vitamins, but probably not for the average American palate.

Interested in more heritage recipes?  Check out my book Cooking the Wild Southwest for delicious recipes for 23  easily recognized and gathered southwest plants.  Find out how top restaurant and resort chefs are using traditional Southwest foods in new and exciting ways in The New Southwest Cookbook.  For a short video on some of the interesting plants you can gather, click here.

Elderberry Flower Season Again

When the last of the desert wildflowers have wilted, it’s time for elderberry bushes to flower and remind us that it is still spring.  This year it is most appropriate to gather elderblow (the word for the flowers) because 2013 is the Year of the Elder.  Later in summer, the blue black berries are an enticement to both birds and humans.

The following is written by Dr. Jacqueline Soule, adapted from her book Father Kino’s Herbs.

From Dr. Soule:

“Here in the southwest we have the Mexican elderberry (Sambucus mexicana). Common names include saúco, tapiro, flor de sauz, capulin silvestre (Spanish); shiksh (O’odham); and bixihumi (Nahutal). Elders are in the Caprifoliaceae or Honeysuckle Family, although some botanists now consider this the moschatel family, Adoxaceae, which includes Viburnum.

“Mexican elder is a deciduous tree that can reach 20 to 30 feet high, spreading to 20 feet wide when grown in full sun in average, well-drained soil and with ample moisture.  Elder is very versatile and various parts of the plant have uses that include: cosmetic, culinary, dye, edible flowers, medicinal, ornamental, and to attract wildlife.

“There are numerous species of elder found around the world, mostly in more temperate areas.  All species have more or less edible berries, although some species can be toxic without special preparation.  (Note from Carolyn: In one of my first forays into eating straight from the desert back in 1970, I made myself very ill by eating raw elderberries.  Hours lying on the bathroom floor wondering if I’d live.  Not everyone reacts this way,  but be very careful. Flowers and cook berries are fine.)

“Most European species of Sambucus are shrubby, thus early European explorers such as Father Kino must have been surprised to discover Sonoran elderberry trees thirty feet tall.  Undaunted, he encouraged planting the native elderberry trees in the mission gardens.

“The wood of elderberry trees has a lovely grain and tone and is prized for musical instruments, including drums, flutes and a didgeridoo-like instrument.  The nectar-rich flowers are harvested for elder champagne and other drinks. The flowers are also dipped in batter and fried or added to omelets and cakes.  Also, an edible fungus known as the jelly ear (Auricularia auricula-judae) grows on elder wood.

“In the Old World, virtually all species of elder flowers and berries have been used medicinally since at least Egyptian times.  The dried flowers are made into an infusion as a febrifuge (Note from Carolyn: that’s a medication that reduces fever).  The berries are said to help the immune system ward against and fight off infections, colds, and flus.  Berries for this are gently heated to make a syrup, made into tinctures, or dried and subsequently made into infusions.  Recent evidence indicates that black elderberry (Sambucus nigra) does indeed help the body fight off influenza, reducing illness to a mere two to three days as opposed to two to three weeks for those who had taken the placebo.”

If Dr. Soule’s information has you interested, you can try the following whether you are ill or not.

Spring Tea

For a refreshing spring tea, cover dried or fresh elderberry flowers, a little fresh mint, and some culinary lavender buds with boiling water.  Let steep overnight, drain.  Taste and dilute as necessary.  Can add club soda or sparkling mineral water. Serve over ice.

Interested in more recipes for wild desert foods?  Check out my book Cooking the Wild Southwest for delicious mesquite recipes as well as recipes for 22 other easily recognized and gathered southwest plants.  For a short video on some of the interesting plants you can gather, click here.

Bacanora – our local spirit

Agave plant in the plantation.

This last weekend an importer of bacanora was giving tastes at a Tucson festival. Bacanora is to Sonora as tequila is to Jalisco and mezcal is to Oaxaca.  Bacanora is the third, less-known sister of the triumvirate. Our sample was delicious and smokey with just enough fire to let you know you were drinking.  This is how bacanora is described in Tequila: a natural and cultural history by Ana G. Valenzuela-Zapata and Gary Paul Nabhan:

“Bacanora: A bootleg mescal made from the northernmost populations of Agave angustifolia var. Pacifica in sonora and adjacent Chihuahua, sometimes mixed…with A. palmeri. Named for the small rancheria of Bacanora near the pueblo of Sahuaripa, Sonora, this mescal was recently legalized and commercialized, but the clandestine cottage industry product by this name remains the pride of Sonorans.”

Last summer, I visted a mezcal-making exhibit — the process is the same.  These days most manufacturing is done in fancy factories with steel vats and antiseptic conditions.  These pictures show how it is done in the small rancherias.

This is the same method used by Apaches over hundreds of years to prepare agave for food.

Harvested and trimmed agave hearts ready for the earth oven.

First a large quantity of wood is burned in the rock-lined earth oven. The agave hearts are then added, the whole pit is closed up and the agave is baked from one and one-half to three days.

Baked agave head.

Baked agave head being disassembled.

Once the agave heads are nicely baked and carmelized, they are cooled, unloaded and the leaves are separated.

The mill,or molino, that crushes the baked agave leaves. Usually powered by a mule or burro.

The leaves are loaded into the mill, usually of volcanic rock,  and a draft animal goes round and round crushing the baked leaves to a pulp. Next the crushed pulp is loaded into a vat for fermentation. It stays there 6 to 12 days depending on the temperature.

Fermentation vats for the agave pulp and juices.

Close-up of the fermenting agave.

The next step is to distill the fermented liquid.  In our home process this is done in a simple oven-like still.

The oven turns the fermented juice into vapor.

The copper tube collects the vapor where it cools and condenses into liquid.

The mezcal or bacanora drips into the jug.

One of the commercial bacanoras.

Bacanora has now been legally sold since 1992. Old-timers still have nostalgia for the unmarked bottles obtained with a little stealth from a Mexican rancher friend.

Interested in more recipes for wild desert foods?  Check out my book Cooking the Wild Southwest for delicious mesquite recipes as well as recipes for 22 other easily recognized and gathered southwest plants.  For a short video on some of the interesting plants you can gather, click here.

Wild Mustard Greens — so soon?

Wild mustard greens

In January, even the Sonoran Desert goes into winter mode – peaceful in tones of soft brown and gray.  The earliest green comes in wild mustard that seems Technicolor against the muted background. This year mustard seems to have appeared particularly early here on the low desert – probably because of the warm December and finally, rain.  Or maybe it is a sign of global climate change — just a few degrees uptick in the temperature brings it on.

Spicy mustard collapses to nothing when steamed, so eating it raw in salads is the way to go.

One of the raffle prizes at the Tucson Botanical Gardens Butterfly Affair last October was dinner for six at my house. The winner also received two of my cookbooks and the right to choose anything at all for dinner. Martin Eggers was the winner and he, his partner, and four guests are coming next Saturday. When asked what he was ordering for dinner, he said, “Everything looks delicious,” and left it to me to choose. So as I sat at my desk working out the menu, it seemed that wild mustard greens would be a good addition to the salad course. The flavor is too sharp to stand alone, so I’ll combine it with spinach and kale from my garden. This morning I did a trial run and it was terrific. (Husband Ford ate the experiment for lunch).

Garden kale

I had never eaten kale before it became the nutritional buzzword the last year or so.  I’ve learned that to eat it raw, it should be massaged. Tear it into little pieces, put it in a bowl with oil and salt and squeeze and rub until it becomes soft.  It also reduces by half.

Raw kale torn into pieces.

Kale after an olive oil massage.

To the spinach, kale and mustard, I added some thinly sliced sautéed nopalitos and some pepitas. A bit of local goat cheese from Fiore de Capra in tiny Pomerene, Arizona, (check out their Facebook page) will add the elegance a prize dinner requires. For a dressing, walnut oil mixed with  fruity vinegar and a dollop of Dijon mustard makes a delicious addition.

Lunch!

 

For inspiration and other recipes using wild mustard and other wild greens, take a look at my cookbook Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants.  For directions on transforming cactus pads into delicious nopalitos, see complete directions in The Prickly Pear Cookbook.

Mesquite Ginger Folk

No one would ever confuse me with Martha Stewart, nor can I produce those crafty little items you see on Pinterest, but I think these Mesquite Ginger Folk are pretty cute and they taste wonderful.  I used good quality margarine rather than butter or Crisco because I like the eventual texture and the flavor is good. This recipe makes a spicy cookie. If you want more of the mesquite flavor to come through, cut down on the spices. The dough must be well chilled before you roll it out, so this is a two-step recipe: mixing first, then later rolling and baking.

Mesquite Ginger Folk (makes about 3 1/2 dozen rolled cookies)

In a medium bowl, combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour,  1/2 cup mesquite meal, 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 2 teaspoons ground ginger, 1 teaspoon allspice, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper.  Stir and fluff with a fork and then set aside.

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to beat 1 1/2 sticks margarine  with 1/2 cup packed brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in 2/3 cup molasses and one large egg. Then gradually add the flour mixture to make a stiff dough. You may need to give up the mixer for a wooden spoon.  Divide the dough into two thick disks and wrap each in plastic wrap.  Refrigerate until chilled, about three hours.

When you are ready to bake, take one disk from the refrigerator .   You’ll want the dough just warm enough to roll without cracking.  While you are waiting, preheat the oven to 350 F. and put out brown paper or wire racks to receive the baked cookies. You’ll also need lots of flour to keep the dough from sticking when rolled.  So get a small bowl of flour, take part of the disk, and roll it in the flour before you roll out with the rolling pin.

Roll a ball of dough in the flour.

Roll out the dough about 1/8-inch thick on flour-dusted surface. Cut out the cookies and transfer them to the cookie sheet, placing them 1 inch apart. Gently knead the scraps together and roll out again.  When you fill one cookie sheet, bake it for about 10 – 12 minutes while you prepare another sheet.

This cutter gives a nice uni-sex cookie.

If you wish, you can use raisins and dried cranberries to make eyes, a mouth and buttons.  Chop the dried fruit into tiny pieces.

Sometimes it is difficult to position those tiny pieces on the cookies. But remember those tweezers you keep in the kitchen to deal with cactus stickers?  Perfect for placing the eyes and buttons.

To further decorate the cookies, perhaps make some shoes or pants, mix up some white frosting using powered sugar, a little butter and a few drops of milk.  If you have a decorator bag, use it to pipe out some decorations or just draw the decorations with a flat-end toothpick.  Either way, you’ll love your Mesquite Ginger Folk and you’ll love sharing them.

For more great mesquite recipes, check out my cookbook Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants.  You’ll learn how to make Mesquite Apple Coffeecake, a fabulous rolled cake with mesquite and coconut, and a dozen other delicous recipes.

Nopalpalooza: Phoenix Celebrates Cactus

Nopalpalooza shopping bag

Last week Phoenix veggie lovers and the veggie-curious came out for the Nopalpalooza to celebrate the launch of a new shopping bag featuring cactus pads.  The bag is the second in a series of veggie-themed bags from HipVeggies, the brainchild of Valley of the Sun dietitian Monika Woolsey.  The Phoenix New Times did a piece on her venture that you can read here.

The bag was designed by Phoenix graphic artist Joe Ray and some of the profits from the sales go to the Desert Mission Food Bank.  Monika is so into nopales that she even commissioned a Phoenix baker to make several dozen nopal cookies (just sugar cookies, but very cute.)

I was there, showing people how easy it is to clean nopales and cook them.  Also attending was a delegation from Ramona Farms with some delicious tepary bean dishes.

Steve Dunker and Steve Markt with their mesquite granola at the Nopalpalooza.

There to get feedback for their new venture of making commercial products from mesquite meal were Steve Dunker and Steve Markt.  Markt recently graduated from commercial baking school and had brought some mesquite granola and mesquite-based powerbars to pass out. He hoped to get feedback as he designs his product line.  He is purchasing his mesquite from Mike Moody, who is growing a mesquite plantation over by the Colorado River.

And speaking of mesquite, Tucsonans get ready for the Desert Harvesters (www.desertharvesters.org) annual mesquite grinding.  They will have their hammermill at the Santa Cruz Farmer’s Market at El Mercado on West Congress on November 15 beginning at 3 p.m.  On November 18 they will move to the  Dunbar-Spring community garden beginning at 9 a.m. They’ve already been to Phoenix and Oracle with their hammermill and have conducted a couple of events in Tucson.  So if you still haven’t had your pods ground into silky delicious meal, this is your last chance this year.  In conjuction with the grinding, there will be a bake sale of fabulous mesquite-based goodies with the profits going to support Desert Harvesters. I’m still trying to decide what to take — ginger mesquite cookies? mesquite banana cake?  Or sweet, crumbly scones?  Come out and see!

And if you have your mesquite meal and are wondering about some ideas for what to do with it, check out my cookbook Cooking the Wild Southwest, Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants.  For inspiration and directions on what wild plants are available in what season, watch a short video here.  

Olives – Black or Green

Olives, ripe and ready to pick.

Fall may mean colorful leaves and apple harvests in the temperate regions of the globe, but in Southern Arizona and warm desert regions around the world, it is olive harvest time. Several years ago a famous author died, and many notables who had been guests in his home on the coast of Southern Italy recalled their visits. One woman remembered walking through the olive groves and plucking and eating juicy olives. I laughed aloud when I read that.  She may have plucked something, but it wasn’t olives. Olives off the tree are very bitter and they must be processed to be edible.

Various cultures have their own methods of removing the bitterness from olives. There’s the dry salt method, the brine method, the water method and the lye method.  For 30 years I have followed instructions taught by the late Dr. Robert H. Forbes, who became dean of the College of Agriculture at the University of Arizona in 1899. He had made an intensive study of the home processing of curing olives. His process uses lye and the method has always worked for me.  Last week when I went to the hardware store to buy the lye and told the clerk what I was going to do with it, he kept cautioning me that it was poison and came close to refusing to sell it to me. By following the instructions carefully, I never poisoned myself or the recipients of my olives.

(Aside: Dr. Forbes was still alive when I was a young journalism student in 1964. I interviewed him at his home on the edge of campus on Olive Street, surrounded by gnarled old olive trees.)

You can home process green olives, black olives or those somewhere in between.

Olives, green, black and in-between, in a lye bath to leach the bitterness. They will remain in the bath for 5 to 7 days.

It’s too much typing to explain Dr. Forbes’ method, but the good folks at UC Davis have done a complete description of each method of olive processing and you can find it here.    The difference in Dr. Forbes’ lye method is that it doesn’t call for a changing of the lye bath.  You just leave the olives in the original lye solution until either taste or a litmus paper shows that the bitterness has been removed.  For me, this has been between five and seven days.  But lye is cheap and you’ll have more than necessary, so if changing helps, why not?

After the bitterness is gone, the olives are rinsed (and rinsed!) to remove the lye and hardened with successively strong salt brine solutions. Lastly, they are freshened in water.  I like to flavor mine with a mixture of olive oil, wine vinegar, garlic cloves and fresh herbs from my garden.

Home processing olives is neither difficult nor overly time consuming, but you do need to commit about five minutes a day to the endeavor.  For that little bit of effort, you can end up with a year’s supply of olives for only the cost of lye and salt and some nice gifts for your friends and family.

(Still looking for creative uses for your  prickly pear juice and mesquite meal? Take a look at my cookbooks The Prickly Pear Cookbook and Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants.  There is a fabulous recipe for Mango-Olive Salsa in The New Southwest Cookbook.) 

Prickly Pear: Juicing Made Easy

Prickly pears are ripening!

As the summer deepens, prickly pears are ripening in the desert.  In the higher elevations, they may still be a few weeks away from that perfect juicy purple ripeness.  I’ve been playing with prickly pears for more than 40 years, and have finally settled on the easiest, quickest way to make the juice.  I’m a little embarrassed when I think of all the time I’ve wasted in earlier years with more complicated techniques.

The first thing to do is assemble your tools.  Do this first and you’ll save time and aggravation in the long run.  You need tongs, tweezers and rubber gloves.  Just grocery store gloves will do, but buy good ones, not the cheapest.  This will keep most of the stickers out of your fingers.  The tweezers are for the occasional sticker that will still find its way into your hands.

Essential tools: Tweezers, tongs and rubber gloves

First rinse the fruit in a colander to wash off any dust. Then cut the prickly pears into big chunks — three to four pieces each.

Cut the fruit into big chunks.

You do not need to take off the stickers or peel them.  The peel is contains healthy nutrients.  It is especially rich in betalains, which are powerful antioxidants. In fact, prickly pears are the only know source of all of the 24 naturally occurring belatains.  If you’d like to learn more you, can read about it here.  Prickly pears are also high in vitamins A and C.

Cut up about a dozen pears, a few more if they are small, and put them in a blender jar.  For the first batch, you’ll need to add about a fourth cup of water to get the process going. (For later batches, just use a little juice from the first batch).

Load up the blender

Run the blender until you have a nice slurry.  Then strain through a fine sieve.

Sieve will strain out seeds, stickers, everything but delicious juice.

Around a dozen prickly pears should give about a cup of juice.  To make syrup, transfer it to a saucepan, add 1 1/2 cups of sugar (or less), a little lemon juice and about a teaspoon of cornstarch.  Cook until thickened, store in jar and refrigerate.

Use your prickly pear juice in drinks or use it to make syrup.

You can use your syrup to top pancakes, waffles, French toast or ice cream.  If you are interested in branching out to other recipes you can learn about Prickly Pear Onion Jam, Prickly Pear Barbecue Meatballs or Prickly Pear Ice Cream in The Prickly Pear Cookbook.  One my favorite recipes is Prickly Pear, Citrus and Chipotle Sauce for Chicken in The New Southwest Cookbook.  Two simple but delicious recipes are Prickly Pear Salad Dressing and Summer Jam in my latest book Cooking the Wild Southwest. 

Epazote, a Mexican herb

Epazote, a culinary herb from Mexico

A few weeks ago I wrote about Jacqueline Soule’s new book Father Kino’s Herbs.  I was delighted to learn more about epazote (Chenopodium ambrosioides)  because I had recently planted some in my yard.  Unlike some of the other herbs Soule writes about, epazote originated in the New World.  It was traded in the marketplace at Tenochitlan in Central Mexico as early as the 1530′s.  Mexicans who made their way north to what is now Arizona brought epazote seeds with them and it was found in the gardens at San Xavier del Bac, a Kino mission outside of Tucson.

The most widely known use for epazote is to cook it with a pot of beans.  It not only gives black beans a special little zing of flavor, but it also helps break down hard-to-digest vegetable proteins and renders beans less gas-producing.  Epazote can sometimes be found dried, but according to Soule,  the dried herb carries the flavor but not the digestive benefits.  If that’s what you seek, you’ll need a fresh plant in your yard or in a pot on your patio or balcony. Epazote is also used in green chile sauces and in dishes traditionally cooked in Yucatan and Veracruz.  While it is an essential flavor component in some of these dishes, on its own it is bitter and medicinal tasting.

In the United States, epazote is sometimes called American wormseed, Jesuit tea or Jerusalem oak — the latter probably because the shape of the leaf is a little like an oak.

Another Way to Use Mesquite

Make a delicious brunch coffee drink with mesquite broth, milk and whipped cream.

If you’ve gathered your mesquite pods and put them aside to dry until  grinding in the fall, you might be anxious to try a little something with mesquite now.  This luscious drink that I call a Gila Monster is easy to make.  First boil some mesquite pods in plenty of water until soft.  After everything has cooled down, plunge your hands in and wring and tear the pods until all the sweet goodness goes into the water.  This is a great activity for kids.  Strain off the broth which I admit is going to look a bit like dirty dishwater. Discard the seeds and fiber.

Now you can use this sweet broth for drinks or pudding.  For adults, make a mixture of coffee, milk, and mesquite broth. Top with whipped cream.  A shot of Kahlua or hazelnut liqueur is a delicious addition.  For kids, you will probably want to omit the coffee or cut it back to a tablespoon or two.

It isn’t hard to invent ways to use mesquite broth. For inspiration and other recipes using mesquite broth, take a look at my cookbook Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants.