Chocolate drinking vessels found in Pueblo Bonito.
It may seem a stretch to discuss chocolate in a blog on Southwest food. But chocolate has been in the area since the 9th century. It’s Carolyn writing today and as a chocolate addict, I find the history of chocolate in our area fascinating. In the late 1800s, rancher Richard Wetherill was poking around in Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon in the Four Corners area and excavated 111 cylinder jars. Archaeological technology has advanced greatly since then and researchers have dated the strata in which they were discovered to 1000 CE. Even more interesting, substances inside the jars and in pieces of broken jars indicate that the jars contained chocolate. Since the jars were all found in one room, scientists speculate that the chocolate was being used ritually. Archaeologist Dorothy Washburn also found residue that appears to be from chocolate in bowls from the site of Alkali Ridge, Utah, that date to 780 CE, even earlier.
Consider that the closest place chocolate was grown was 1,200 miles south in Mexico. This was before draft animals were used, so a trader or a series of traders carried chocolate all that way on their back, along with macaw feathers and copper bells. With all that travelling, chocolate must have required quite a bit of turquoise and other goods in exchange.
The Spanish Bring Chocolate to the Southwest
When the Spanish missionaries and soldiers came north to what we call the Southwest, they brought chocolate, one of their very few luxuries. Chocolate, being a New World crop, was much less expensive than tea, which had to come by a months-long trip across the Pacific Ocean from Asia. Their drink wasn’t the creamy concoction we now savor. Then chocolate was mixed with water and sometimes honey to sweeten it.
Father Phillip Segesser, one of the earliest priests at San Xavier Mission in Tucson, complained in a letter to his Swiss relatives that every non-Native visitor expected to be served chocolate. Father Segesser lived a very humble life, and he found this presumptuous. It is also interesting that provision orders from the day for both soldiers and priests listed both ordinary chocolate and fine chocolate, the later of which cost twice as much. We can guess what Segesser served his visitors.
During the 1781 Yuma uprising near modern day Yuma, Franciscan priest Fray Francisco Garces requested that he be allowed to finish drinking his chocolate before being beaten to death by the Quechans.
I was happy in two recent trips to learn more about my obsession. In the large green house at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, I saw a cacao tree up close and was amazed to learn that the flowers grow right from the trunk.
Cacao tree in flower in the Atlanta Botanical Garden. See a small green chocolate pod in the upper right.
In Guatemala, I visited an artisanal chocolate maker. I got to see all aspects of converting a cacao bean into a chocolate bar, from opening the pod, to cleaning the beans, then roasting them on a comal before grinding them to a paste and adding sugar.
Just opened cacao pod. The seeds are inside the white covering.
Guatemalan artisan chocolate maker roasts cacao beans over coals.
The roasted beans are ground, combined with sugar, and formed into a patty. They are surprisingly oily. Perhaps patties like this were what the early traders brought to Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon.
Chocolate pairs so well with our mesquite meal–a perfect blend of tropics and desert. These waffles will make a holiday breakfast treat.
Chocolate Mesquite Waffles
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
½ cup mesquite meal plus 1 tablespoon
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 egg yolks
1 ¼ cup milk of choice
½ cup oil
2 egg whites beaten stiff
In a large bowl, sift together dry ingredients. In a small bowl, combine egg yolk, milk and oil. Stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients. Fold in egg white, leaving some fluffs. Do not over mix. Pour batter into hot waffle maker and follow manufacturer’s directions.
Makes about 8 waffles.
Recipe adapted from Eat Mesquite (2011) by Desert Harvesters
You can learn more about the history of food in Southern Arizona in my latest book A Desert Feast, the story of the last 4,000 years of food in the Sonoran Desert. Want more recipes using foods of the Southwest? You’d find ideas for collecting and using 23 easily recognized and gathered desert foods in Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Foods. . Recipes from top Southwest chefs are collected in The New Southwest Cookbook. Just click on the titles for more information. You can learn more about me on my website.
We aren’t alone. Living through this extended drought and awesome heat in the Sonoran Desert is a major feat for any creature out there–plant or animal–no matter how desert-adapted it may be! We are all feeling it. Difficult to imagine how creatures, like the long-lived desert tortoise, manage through the kind of intense drought we are experiencing.
Even in my back yard, my tended prickly pear, covered in buds and tender nopales last April, is ending this summer with tunas dropping before mature or devoured by cactus wrens, and pads chomped by packrats or ground squirrels.
Tia Marta here to share some thoughts about us humans harvesting from the wild. As I learned from my Tohono O’odham mentor, in earlier times Indigenous people had to suffer through lean times using the desert foods they’d stored from times of plenty. They knew sporatic seasonal productivity is the name of the game in the desert. Wise cultural tradition dictates that you harvest abundance when it happens, share your plenty, and store as much as possible against the expected lean times.
Very few native prickly pears have produced fruit this year in the Sonoran Desert, so as human desert harvesters I feel we must refrain this year, and consider the needs of our wild neighbors, the deer, javalina, cottontails, rodents, birds, etc who need what forage remains– far more than we do.
Instead, I suggest we go for an invasive! How about eating from the white lead tree, known as guaje in Mexico, huaxin by the Aztec in its region of origin? Its presence as an invader into the Sonoran Desert generates interesting controversy. The seeds contain an amino acid mimocine toxic for us mammals who have no rumen for digestion. However Guaje‘s young pods, when green, can be cooked in soups or in tacos, as cooking removes the toxicity. This small fast-growing tree has other positive attributes: It is used as great cattle fodder, provides stovewood fuel, erosion remediation, herbal medicine, and it adds soil nitrogen. Its profuse and often continued flowering makes it a good pollinator support. Caution: it IS an invasive species and, if let loose in our desert, could compromise our precious natives..
Guajes (Leucaena leucocephala) have been known and appreciated in Sonora, Mexico, for decades if not centuries. It is planted on the University of Arizona campus (see UA Arboretum) and is being researched as a potential future food plant for climate change by horticulturists at Mission Garden. I’m glad guaje volunteered in our yard from soil in a potted plant. It created a little grove of blessed shade for us, and bees have been abuzz over its puffs of cream-white flowers every spring.
I recently gathered a gallon bag of dry pods which yielded only 1/8 cup of small seed. They resemble flax seed. I soaked them to see if any were viable. About 1/3 of them swelled. When cooked for 15 minutes to remove mimosine, and drained, they proved nut-like and tasty. I’m adding them to my home-made bean dip. As a legume they will provide good protein in addition to texture and new flavor.
To go with the dip, I’m using a scant amount (a tablespoon per 8oz) of my conserved prickly pear juice, harvested and frozen August last year, with flavored fizzy, gingerale and a splash of mescal. With this dressed up punch, we’re sending a toast to all desert creatures out there! We hope they are benefitting from any prickly pear tunas that may be ripening in our hot, dry desert!
A colorful assortment of Tia Marta’s watercolor art-notecards depicting Southwest Native American heirloom foods can be found at the Mission Garden shop, or online at NativeSeeds/SEARCH.
It’s Carolyn today and I’m out in my garden to pick some delicious and healthy vegetables to bring you a season-spanning recipe. If your Ficus Indica prickly pear (the Mexican tall kind) sent out its leaves a little late this spring, you probably have a few smaller pads that are still tender enough to cook. Combine those with the purslane in your summer garden for a delicious vegetable side dish or taco filling. If you don’t have your own cactus. you can always pick up some nopal pads at any Mexican grocery store. If you buy the kind already cleaned, you’ll need to use them right away as once they are scraped, they go bad quickly. We have previously discussed how to clean prickly pear pads here.
We’ve also discussed purslane previously in this blog here, but I’ll copy the nutritional information because it is so important:
It’s sad but true that right now people are out in their yards pulling these plants out and tossing them in the garbage (or compost for the more enlightened). They should be tossing them in the wok or frying pan (see recipe below.) Purslane provides six times more vitamin E than spinach and seven times more beta carotene than carrots. It’s also rich in vitamin C, magnesium, riboflavin, potassium and phosphorus. One cup of cooked purslane has 25 milligrams (20 percent of the recommended daily intake) of vitamin C.
Especially important to those of us eating a modern diet, purslane is very high in an essential omega-3 fatty acid called alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Omega-3s are a class of polyunsaturated essential fatty acids. Your body cannot manufacture essential fatty acids, so you must get them from food. Certain fibers also help in controlling blood sugar.
If your aren’t familiar with purslane or verdolagas, here’s a closeup photo:
Here are all your ingredients for the tacos: (top) prickly pear leaves and purslane, (bottom) onion slices, garlic and poblano chile.
This is what the ingredients will look like cooked.
Sonoran Summer Tacos
2 2×4-inch prickly pear pads or equivalent
½ white or yellow onion
2 cloves garlic, minced (1 teaspoon)
2 tablespoons neutral vegetable oil
1 cup verdolaga (purslane), packed
1 roasted, peeled, cleaned Anaheim or poblano chile, cut into pieces
(or 2 tablespoons chopped canned green chiles)
4 corn tortillas or small flour tortillas
2-4 tablespoons crumbled cotija cheese or cheese of choice
Using rubber gloves, clean the stickers from the prickly pear pads. Rinse and cut into pieces 2 inches by 1/8 inch (roughly the size of a wood matchstick.) Set aside.
Cut the onion into thin strands by cutting from the root to the stem (not crosswise). Add the oil to a heavy frying pan and begin sautéing the onion over low medium heat. You want it to cook slowly until soft and light brown. After about 10 minutes, add the garlic. While that is happening, you can prep the rest of the ingredients.
Cut the fresh chile into pieces about 1 inch by 1/8 inch. Chop the verdolagas (purslane) roughly. After 10-15 minutes when the onions are ready, stir in the greens and chile and continue to cook.
Coat a heavy frying pan with a light spray of oil and soften the tortillas. Divide the vegetables among the tortillas. Sprinkle with cheese and fold over.
Every recipe writer whether for a blog or cookbook, needs a taste tester. Is it good? Would you eat it again? Here is my taste tester who has eaten his way through five cookbooks and dozens of these blog posts over forty years.
Chief taste tester Ford Burkhart works his way through the Sonoran Summer Tacos for lunch. He gave them the thumbs up.
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You can learn more about the history of food in Southern Arizona in my latest book A Desert Feast, the story of the last 4,000 years of food in the Sonoran Desert. Want more recipes using foods of the Southwest? You’d find ideas for collecting and using 23 easily recognized and gathered desert foods in Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Foods. . Recipes from top Southwest chefs are collected in The New Southwest Cookbook. Just click on the titles for more information. You can learn more about me on my website.
Honey Wine with Saguaro Fruit, Summer Solstice 2025
Honey, the golden elixir of the bees, is famous for its impressive shelf stability, or resistance to spoiling. By its nature, it can remain edible for an extraordinarily long time. In grade school, I remember delighting in the fact that archaeologists found honey in King Tutankhamun’s 3,000 year old tomb. Cave paintings in Africa dated to thousands of years ago depict honey hunters who braved a defensive colony of bees (Hollmann 2015) to access the calorically valuable, medicinal, and tantalizing substance which could be consumed or stored long term.
I love to think about the early honey harvesters of Africa and imagine the first time someone combined honey with water, and fermentation soon began–an exciting transformation took place! This is thanks to the action of microbes (as is commonly the case, at least with fermented foods). While humans crave the complex sweetness of honey, it turns out that honey is a favorite food of some microbes such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a species of yeast. The yeast consume the honey and convert it to alcohols and carbon dioxide.
Honey wine, T’ej…sweet and warm like the solstice evening light.
It is thought that honey wine known as t’ej (say: “tedge”, with a soft d) originated in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and upwards of 5 million people consume t’ej on a daily basis (Belay n.d.). However honey wine variations are found in many parts of the world including Mexico and Poland (Katz 2012). You may know t’ej by its other name of mead, an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey with water. It is truly simple and fun to make t’ej at home by adding raw unpasteurized honey (which contains natural yeasts that kickstart fermentation) with pure water, but you can also add an endless variety of edible botanicals like herbs and fruit to create a unique or medicinal mead. While mead can be aged for months, you can drink it “young” after only a couple weeks of high-energy fermentation. What kinds of honey wine will you make to share with family and friends?
I was inspired to make t’ej for the first time by my friend Andrias Asnakew, a Tucsonan of Ethiopian descent who established Brillé Mead Company here in 2023. I was honored to share homemade t’ej with him and his welcoming friends who hosted us on Easter, clinking glasses as they described the traditional recipe. They taught me that East African t’ej is traditionally made with honey, water, and the leaves of gesho (Latin name Rhamnus prinoides, a plant native to southern and eastern Africa) which adds a distinct bitter flavor and wild yeast to start the brew (Belay, n.d.). I am grateful for the family’s hospitality and generosity, and to Andrias whose knowledge guided me through the process.
Friends gathering with traditional t’ej (Ethiopean honey wine).
Around the time I was pondering which ingredient to include in my first mead, I was marveling at the crowns of white trumpeting blossoms on the haṡan (Tohono O’odham name for the native saguaro cacti). I wondered what saguaro fruit honey wine would taste like? It seemed that using fresh red bahidaj saguaro fruit would be a perfect way to celebrate the solstice on June 20th, and to harken for rain on Dia de San Juan on June 24th. (For more on saguaro traditions, enjoy reading about the Tohono O’odham’s beloved bahidaj saguaro fruit from teacher Muffin, known as Sister Marta here at Savor the Southwest blog: Summer Solstice, and Sister Carolyn’s It’s Saguaro Season.). This mead would be fully Sonoran desert, made from local honey and saguaro fruit…
Bahidaj (Tohono O’odham for saguaro fruit), June 2025
I am glad to report that my first batch of honey wine/mead/t’ej was a happy success (recipe to follow) with very little cost and effort. The tasters gave feedback that the flavor is more dynamic than they expected, with real body and interest. There’s a bit of liveliness, but it’s not bubbly. Many folks commented on its balance: a little citrusy, and not too sweet; a light fruitiness, and warmth from the honey. There is a pleasant yeastiness like fresh bread, though it doesn’t taste strongly of alcohol. We all noted the way it gently, pleasantly nudges you toward relaxation (I estimate the percent alcohol of my brew 4.5-5% ABV). If you prefer a stronger t’ej, you can increase the amount of honey, or a lighter less alcoholic brew can be made using less honey.
The recipe is so flexible and invites endless experimentation. The ratio of honey to water is anywhere from 1:4 (one part honey added to four parts water) to 1:16 (for a very light mead, or if you’re adding a lot of sweet fruit also). The variety of creative optional additions is endless: fresh or dried fruit (berries, native fruits encouraged), herbs (lemon balm, rose, mint) or spices (ginger, cardamom, cloves, or cinnamon). Take notes of your selection, process, and quantities. Andrias started experimenting with different flavors: strawberry, carkeda (hibiscus), habañero. It is a natural beverage; you know exactly what went into it when you make it yourself.
Recipe for Honey Wine (T’ej or Mead)
This recipe was adapted from Sandor Elix Katz’s excellent book, The Art of Fermentation, with inspiration and guidance from Ethiopian t’ej maker Andrias Asnakew (Tucson, Arizona).
This recipe yields about 2+ gallons mead (can be scaled), potentially 4-5% alcohol, approximately (a hydrometer can measure this precisely if you wish)
1 quart local raw honey (32 ounces)– my personal favorite is Tucson Honey Company from Tucson local farmer’s markets. 2 gallons+ pure, filtered water (~260 ounces) (if tap water is the only option, see below**) ~1 cup raisins, optional but recommended to feed the yeast–added a little at a time. Optional ½ teaspoon mead yeast (such as strain EC-1118. Check your local brew shop or find online). Optional fresh or dried fruit (local and native fruits encouraged), herbsor spices. Experiment with quantity: a few cups of fresh fruit, or maybe around one cup if of dried herbs. For spices, try a handful or so and see how it goes.
Ripe saguaro fruit
1. Clean a ~2.5 gallon fermentation vessel (ideally glass or stainless steel, but food grade plastic works). Wide mouth is best.
2. Pour the honey into the vessel, and add about half the water. Stir stir stir till it dissolves, then add the rest of the water, leaving just a few inches at the top for bubbles and stirring. Cover with a cloth or loose lid, and place on a baking sheet to catch any drips. Add optional yeast, and optional fruit or herbs/spices.
Dissolve honey in pure water to start the fermentation process.
3. This is Day 0. Leave in a cool spot in the house where you’ll walk by frequently. I keep a long stirring spoon next to the vessel and stir it often, daily (at least two or three times+ daily). This introduces air for the yeast. Sandor Katz recommends we stir a few revolutions, then reverse the stir quickly to introduce air (biodynamic style!). Delight in the bubbles and give your greetings to the millions of hungry microbes hard at work!
Full quantity of water mixed with honey. Ready to ferment!
4. After a few days of frequent stirring, you should start to see more and more bubbles when you stir. The yeast is waking up. This is Day 3. Add a palmful of raisins (a special ingredient by Andrias- he says it provides food to the yeast!) (This is the point when I harvested and added ripe fresh saguaro fruit, but it can be added at the beginning, too.)
Red saguaro fruit has been added to the bubbling brew.
5. Continue stirring multiple times per day. On Day 5 or 6, add another palmful of raisins, and again at Day 8-9.
6. At about Day 10-12, the bubbles will begin to reduce in number and fervor. The yeast quickly consume and ferment most of the natural glucose in the honey, producing the alcohol and delicious brew. (The natural fructose takes longer to ferment and only does so if you age your mead for weeks and months.)
Frothy bubbles of active yeast activity!
7. Taste the mead. If it is too sweet for your liking, you can continue to stir and ferment a bit longer to “dry it out”. If you prefer more sweetness, Andras suggests you can “back sweeten” (add a bit of honey) to taste if desired, ideally a day prior to drinking it.
8. Strain out any fruit, and serve at room temperature or chilled. Try both! The typical serving vessel for t’ej is a narrow-necked bottle called a berele.
The best way to enjoy your homemade honey wine is with friends, of course. I bet that you’ll pique curiosities about your brewing methods and newfound skill, and bring smiles to everyone’s face. Andrias thoughtfully shared that “you can tell from the smile that the food or drink is good”.
Honey Wine with Saguaro Fruit, Summer Solstice 2025
In Appreciation:
Thank you to my teachers, including the bahidaj (saguaros), for their ongoing generosity and cultivation of our minds and hearts.
Thanks to my new friends Andrias and incredible hosts Tilahun and his wife Kidist who are sharing their culture from Ethiopia with all of us in Tucson, Arizona.
Thanks to my mother Judith for kindly copy editing.
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**To remove chlorine from the water simply draw the necessary amount of water and leave it out overnight. The chlorine will naturally evaporate from the open vessel.
Bibliography
Belay, T. B. (n.d.). Call for access and benefit sharing of Rhamnus prinoides (Gesho). Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, Genetic Resource Access and Benefit Sharing Directorate.
Katz, S. E., The Art of Fermentation: An In-depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012.
Hi friends, Amy here. Years ago, chickens free ranged my entire backyard and roosted in the trees. However, my current neighborhood has red tailed hawks and striped skunks so I knew any domesticated birds here would need a fortress. Instead of making an enormous chicken enclosure, I opted to try smaller birds that wouldn’t feel so cramped in an aviary. Coturnix quail, Eurasian domesticated birds, are often raised for eggs and meat in tiny cages like rabbit hutches. So in my 100 square foot and six foot tall enclosure, a dozen of them scurry under plants, bathe in the dust and fly as well as they can. Also, since the rooster’s crow is not very loud, they don’t bother sleeping human neighbors. City dwelling roosters!
I started in late winter/early spring with two week old chicks raised locally. When the days grew long enough (almost 14 hours) at 11 weeks old, they stated laying.
Just like with free range chickens, every day is an egg hunt.
The shells are brittle but the membrane below is very tough. Quail egg scissors help make a clean break and keep frustrating fragments out of the dish.
About 4 quail eggs equal a large chicken egg.
They taste the same but definitely have more yolk to white than a chicken egg. Sometimes I enjoy the raw yolks with homemade kimchi and rice.
Hard boiling only takes 4 minutes!
That tough membrane under the shell makes them easy to peel.
These deviled eggs are topped with rosemary leaves and chuparosa (Justicia californica) flowers. I don’t bother to make mayonnaise, I just mix the yolks with olive oil, Dijon mustard, and salty preserved lemon.
Raising these birds was a long time coming for me. Here’s hoping some of your dreams come true!
Grilled Chicken with Nopalito and Pineapple Salsa (from The Prickly Pear Cookbook)
(Note: I will be teaching a class on cooking with nopales at the Presidio of Tucson on April 3. You can sign up on their website.)
The new prickly pear pads (nopales) that we cook and use for nopalitos are usually ready in from March to early May. It’s Carolyn here today tempting you with two recipes for a delicious salsas made with nopalitos. (Definition of nopalito: a nopal, or cactus pad, cut into little pieces).
Why bother to learn how to use prickly pear pads? For hundreds of years, both the fruit and pads were considered folk medicine in Mexico and early research showed that the fibers in nopales were helpful in curbing blood sugar. Today, researchers in the US and Europe are using sophisticated laboratory techniques and specially bred mouse models (that would be transgenic mice, not transgender mice) to investigate prickly pear fruits, pads, flowers, and seeds as a cure for a wide array variety of ills.
Investigators are looking into prickly pear compounds as antioxidant, antiviral, anti tumor, anti diabetic, and antiparasite. It may be useful in combating a range of cancers including leukemia, lung, gastric, colon, and ovarian. Studies have considered its use in the treatment of ulcers and alcoholism and a possible role in boosting memory and energy metabolism. Many research labs are investigating prickly pear for cancer prevention.
The many varieties of prickly pear put out their new growth when the spring warms up. All prickly pear pads are edible (meaning they not only won’t kill you but in this case are very nutritious), but they are only appropriate for food when they are new. After about six weeks, they develop a fibrous infrastructure. The easiest kind of pads to prepare are those from the large Mexican variety of prickly pear that do not grow wild north of Mexico. You can grow them in your yard if your winter doesn’t bring much freezing. Or you can get them at a Mexican grocery story. They are called Ficus indica or sometimes Burbank because Luther Burbank did some breeding work on them. The wild cactus pads are also delicious, but harder to prepare because of the abundance of spines.
You can do a rough estimate of when a pad is ready to pick if it is about the size of your hand. The nopales available in Mexican grocery stores are grown by farmers who know how to manipulate the plant to keep fresh pads coming year ’round.
Pick nopales in the spring when the size of your hand.
To prepare the nopales, you’ll use tongs, of course, and then don rubber kitchen gloves to protect your hands as you get rid of the stickers. You don’t need industrial strength gloves, just good quality ones from the grocery store will do. Using a common steak knife, scrape vigorously against the growth (from outer edge to stem) to remove the stickers.
Scrape the thorns vigorously in the direction of the stem.
The edge has lots of stickers so just trim it off.
At this point, you can cut it into small pieces to cook or leave it whole and cut it up later. You can cook them in a frying pan filmed with oil, or use the Rick Bayless method (of TV show fame) and toss them with a little oil, sprinkle with sale, put on a cookie sheet and roast in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes. In any case, you should check them and turn them over as they cook.
Cut into small pieces to cook.
The nopales will turn from bright green to a more olive color as they cook. The gummy sap that some people find objectionable will dry up and become less noticeable.
The cooked nopalitos turn from bright green to olive.
You can also cook nopales on the barbecue alongside some chicken to make a delicious taco.
Here’s the recipe for the sauce in the picture at the top of the blog:
Nopalito and Pineapple Salsa
1 raw, cleaned prickly pear pad
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup canned crushed pineapple packed in it’s own juice
¼ cup finely chopped red bell pepper
¼ cup thinly sliced green onions, including some tops
1 tablespoon canned green chiles
1 finely minced serrano chile (optional)
½ teaspoon finely minced garlic
2 tablespoons lime juice
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon finely minced cilantro (optional)
Cut prickly pear pad in 1 ½ inch squares. Film a heavy frying pan with the oil and add the prickly pear pads. Cook over low heat, turning occasionally, until pieces have given up much of their juice and are slightly brown. Remove from pan, cool, and chop into pieces as wide as a matchstick and about ¼-inch long.
Transfer to medium bowl. Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine and set aside for flavors to mingle.
Nopalito and Bean Salsa
Here’s an even easier recipe and you might have everything except the nopales in your pantry.
1 1/2 cups commercial red salsa
1/2 cup canned black beans, rinsed
1/2 cup cooked nopalitos
1 tablespoon lime juice
1-2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Serve with chips.
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You can learn more about the history of food in Southern Arizona in my latest book A Desert Feast, the story of the last 4,000 years of food in the Sonoran Desert. Want more recipes using foods of the Southwest? You’d find ideas for collecting and using 23 easily recognized and gathered desert foods in Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Foods. . Recipes from top Southwest chefs are collected in The New Southwest Cookbook. Just click on the titles for more information. You can learn more about me on my website.
Hello friends, Amy here, with a BIG cushaw winter squash. For starters, it’s beautiful. Farmer Frank of Crooked Sky Farms has been sending Tucson CSA huge and tiny pumpkins and winter squashes for 20 years. People often ask us what to do with them. Well, twelve months a year I always have frozen winter squash in the freezer, ready for soup, pie, pumpkin bread and now ravioli.
Start by dropping on the patio until it cracks open. Big ones break more easily but sometimes little ones need to be slammed. This is much safer and easier than taking a cleaver to it.
Then I pry it open with my hands and scoop out the seeds, saving them for planting or eating.
Place the pieces on a cookie sheet and bake uncovered at 350 F until a fork pierces the flesh easily and some of the moisture in the fruit evaporates. The flesh can be scooped out of the hard skin varieties with a big spoon or the skin can sometimes be trimmed off with a knife.
The flesh whizzed in a food processor or blender is pleasantly smooth. If I want texture, I add nuts to sweet creations or sautéed onion to savory concoctions. Stringy mashed squash turns many people away from the “mushy” vegetable entirely.
This cushaw squash was SO sweet and flavorful! If it wasn’t, I’d add a bit of sugar and salt to taste. This squash puree was thicker than normal, so I did not need to drain it. (It is critical to drain squash destined for pie or empanadas. Squash is very perishable, so I place the colander full of puree and bowl catching the liquid in the refrigerator. Don’t toss the liquid! It’s so good in a squash or vegetable soup.)
My uncle recently gave me a pasta roller attachment for the stand mixer and a ravioli press. I already own a hand crank roller that requires 3 hands to operate, and hasn’t been used in years. But inspired by the new toys, I wanted to put sweet, plentiful winter squash puree in ravioli.
Plus, I love food cooked in tiny edible parcels, like empanadas, stuffed grape leaves, cabbage rolls, spring rolls, pot stickers, samosas and floutas (taquitos)… What are your favorites?
I tried different ravioli dough recipes with varying amounts of egg, water and olive oil, and everything I tried worked. It’s forgiving! But I liked the logic in this one, using a cup of all purpose flour, half a teaspoon salt, and egg and two yolks. I worked it on the countertop by hand and after an hour rest, I started to roll.
Apparently some home cooks use a machine to knead the dough, and some roll it out by hand. It’s forgiving! Basically, start the thickest roller setting and roll the dough through a few times before adjusting the setting a notch thinner.
This is easy but not fast!
The form presses the thin dough into wells to hold a tablespoon of filling. I dabbed water along the seams to encourage better sealing, just in case. With the top sheet of dough covering the filling, it was easy to seal and perforate by using a rolling pin over the top.
This gimmicky looking tool is efficient! Dusted with flour and resting in a single layer, they are tidy, symmetrical and well sealed.
Cooking for three minutes in gently boiling water, it’s amazing they stay sealed.
With the filling of unadorned sweet cushaw squash, dressing the finished product in various combinations of butter, olive oil, garlic, thyme, black pepper and hard cheese was delicious. My aunt fried some with tons of garlic until browned… oh my.
But my favorite way was just butter, salt and pepper, letting the sweet cushaw shine.
(The Savor the Southwest guest poster today is Barbara Rose. She has lived and worked at Bean Tree Farm since 1985. She is an enthusiastic expert in all things Sonoran Desert and has taught hundreds of students how to live in and appreciate this fragile and glorious ecosystem. We thank her for her knowledge and years of inspiration.)
My grandma Evie was born in Brooklyn in 1900 to Ukrainian immigrants, and she moved to southwest Florida in the 1920s. Her back yard was a forest of avocado and citrus trees, and her kitchen was fragrant with crocks of garlicky green tomatoes, cucumber pickles and pots of simmering chicken soup “with the feet” (her way of saying the whole chicken). She smeared onion-infused chicken fat on slices of dense black pumpernickel, and served up bowls of cold, sweet-sour beet borscht, with a hot boiled potato and big dollop of sour cream. I am so grateful that she shared with me a treasure of food and family stories.
Beets have been pickled and soured by lactic acid fermentation for ages. I love beets, but I’m not so good at growing them. Prickly pear cactus thrive, and the ripe fruits are delicious, nutritious, and a gorgeous color.
The animals know when prickly pears are ripe. If they have been nibbling, it is time to pick.
I’ve developed a way to make borscht with fermented prickly pears- red desert fruits that sour nicely, have a sweet earthy flavor, and carry far away family food traditions into the desert food forest I love and care for!
I hope you enjoy the recipe, expand on it, and make it your own.
Mash the fruit. It is easier if you freeze first as this helps break down the cell walls.
Be sure to strain the liquid through a fine mesh strainer to catch every last glochid (those are the tiny thorns).
Simmering the juice and broth helps meld the flavors.
SONORAN DESERT BORSCHT
Makes 2 quarts
1 quart fermented, sweet-sour prickly pear fruit juice (see method below)
1 quart broth, strained and chilled (chicken, vegetable, bone, mesquite, or combo, flavored with herbs, alliums, chiles, or whatever you have.)
1 hot boiled potato per serving
Sour cream, crema, yogurt
Combine prickly pear mixture and broth. Simmer with salt, pepper, chile, and your choice of herbs to taste to blend flavors. Chill if serving cold.
To each bowl of borscht add a boiled potato. Garnish with sour cream, and serve with sides of hard-boiled eggs, green onion, and sliced cucumbers.. Borscht turns a gorgeous magenta-pink when the cream is stirred in. Enjoy!
How to ferment prickly pear juice:
Add 1/2 cup of kombucha or whey (liquid strained from yogurt or cheese-making) to 1 quart of prickly pear juice a day or so ahead of making your borscht. Cover with a cloth and taste on occasion. It will develop a sweet-sour flavor as it ferments. When it has that “tang” but still retains some sweetness, it’s ready to use. Sometimes I combine citrus juice with the prickly pear and ferment both. This juice will store in your fridge for some time, becoming more sour from fermentation. It can also be frozen.
Final step: Serve for lunch. Goes well with other desert delicacies. Find recipes in the Desert Harvesters’ cookbook Eat Mesquite, a Cookbook for Sonoran Desert Foods.
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You can find more recipes for prickly pear and other wild desert foods in Eat Mesquite and More: a Cookbook for Sonoran Desert Foods and Living, available at Food Conspiracy Co-op, EXO, Crisol, Mission Garden, Desert Museum, and online at desertharvesters.org. More recipes can be found inCooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants.
Josefina Lizárraga served her tepache at a recent event at Mission Garden in Tucson. Josefina is a font of wisdom on the traditional foods of the Sonoran Desert.
The summer heat has settled in here in Southern Arizona and cooling drinks are the order of the day. Of course, there is always water, but it’s nice to be amused by something more flavorful.
It’s Carolyn today, bringing you a recipe for tepache, a simple pineapple drink that is a classic regional favorite. It is made with pineapple peels, the part you usually throw away, and a Mexican sugar staple, a hard cone of brown sugar called piloncillo. Properly made, tepache has a slight alcoholic zing. It won’t get you drunk, but it’s best reserved for adults.
We recently learned how to make tepache from Josefina Lizárraga, who comes often to Mission Garden in Tucson to share her tips for dealing with local fruit. She is affectionately called La Madrina del Jardín. The process is pretty simple.
A nice ripe pineapple, a cone of piloncillo, and a jar are all you need to make tepache.
Tepache Recipe
Choose a ripe pineapple with a nice fruity fragrance. Wash the outside. As you cut off the peel, leave a little more of the fruit than you would if you were tossing it out. Cut the peel and the core into smaller pieces and add to the jar.
Bring about two cups of water to a boil in a small saucepan and add the piloncillo. Turn off the heat and let the sugar dissolve. If you can’t find piloncillo, use 8 ounces of dark brown or turbinado sugar.
Put the pineapple peels into your gallon glass jar and add whatever fruit you won’t be eating as well. Adding some of the fruit will give your tepache more flavor. You can also add a few cinnamon sticks.
Cut the pineapple peel and core into chunks.
Add the dissolved sugar and water and top up the water to about 3/5ths. Cover the jar with a cloth. DO NOT SCREW DOWN A LID. Put the jar on your counter. Josefina says just 4 to 4 1/2 days. Longer will result in vinegar. Refrigerate your tepache and enjoy with ice.
This is Josefina’s tepache she was serving at Mission Garden.
You can learn more about the history of food in Southern Arizona in my latest book A Desert Feast, the story of the last 4,000 years of food in the Sonoran Desert. Want more recipes using foods of the Southwest? You’d find ideas for collecting and using 23 easily recognized and gathered desert foods in Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Foods. . Recipes from top Southwest chefs are collected in The New Southwest Cookbook. Just click on the titles for more information. You can learn more about me on my website.
Hello friends, Amy here enjoying another great year for the wolfberry bush (Lycium fremontii …I think) in my yard. Tucson’s native species of the Chinese goji berry, they are similarly packed with antioxidants and health benefits. In the tomato family, it’s called tomatillo in Spanish, not to be confused in size, shape, color or taste to the garden variety of husked ground cherries that go by that name. Wolfberries taste somewhat like tomatoes and work well in sweet and savory dishes, when I manage to harvest more than I eat raw from the bush. Thriving on only rainwater, one huge plant produces plenty of fruit for me and the resident phainopeplas.
Inspired by this recipe for millet balls, I used fresh wolfberries in place of dried Turkish barberries.
It was delicious! It reminded me of falafel, crispy on the outside and grainy on the inside. A simple cilantro, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil chutney complimented them perfectly.
So the next time, I decided to use amaranth seeds. I bought this from the store, but you can harvest your own from wild or cultivated plants in the late summer if you’re ambitious.
I toasted them in oil until they became a shade darker and a few of them popped open.
I added water, three times the volume of amaranth seed, and cooked in the solar oven until it was creamy. Then I mixed in fresh wolfberries and enough flour to make a soft dough.
The dough was muuuuch stickier, so I added significantly more flour than for the millet balls and still they looked shaggy. (I used all purpose wheat flour but next time will try amaranth flour).
The toasted flavor came though and I’m glad the only seasoning I used was salt and wolfberries. The dough certainly didn’t need any egg or flax egg to hold together! They baked up just as well as the millet version, but with the texture of a cookie. Next I’ll try them sweetened!
I served them with a lemon pickle but that tomatillo salsa would be good. I took the rest to a picnic among the wildflowers. Happy spring!
You can learn more about the history of food in Southern Arizona in my latest book A Desert Feast, the story of the last 4,000 years of food in the Sonoran Desert. Want more recipes using foods of the Southwest? You’d find ideas for collecting and using 23 easily recognized and gathered desert foods in Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Foods. . Recipes from top Southwest chefs are collected in The New Southwest Cookbook. Just click on the titles for more information. You can learn more about me on my website.
Savor the Southwest: 