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!
It’s Carolyn this week and we Savor Sisters have decided that’s it’s time to share some of the brilliance of our cooking friends with our readers. Tia Marta and I began experimenting with wild foods and Southwest flavorings five decades ago ( I wrote about that last month), Amy is a little younger. But as we have been cooking, and testing, and writing about it, many friends have taken parallel journeys to come up with marvelous and tasty dishes using Southwest ingredients, both wild and domestic. This year we are inviting some of them of do guest posts. We are going to start with David Scott Allen who writes a blog called Cocoa & Lavender that every week offers inventive and delicious recipes. You can check it out and subscribe here.
David’s post this week seemed perfect for the readers of Savor the Southwest–homemade chipotles in adobo sauce. I never considered it, but his reasons, avoiding garlic, make perfect sense. Chipotle chiles are jalapenos that have ripened to red and then been smoked. And it sounds delicious. I’ll let David take it from here:
A Smokin’ Hot Condiment by David Scott Allen
As always, it’s the condiments that (could) kill me.
When I dine at friends’ homes, and they know of my garlic allergy, they are so kind and careful never to cook with garlic. But it is hidden everywhere – not just in prepared foods where one might expect it, but in all sorts of condiments: mustards, mayos, ketchups, steak sauces, soup bases, hot sauces, and rubs.
Who would think that a teaspoon of Worcestershire Sauce would make me sick? Or that a run-of-the-mill mustard would have garlic. I have nearly poisoned myself by. Maybe my next thriller will be “Death by Condiments.”
Chipotle chiles in adobo (smoked jalapeño peppers in a tomato-based sauce) is one of our favorite condiments for adding to soups, stews, vegetables, marinades, and sauces. They are widely available in small cans but only once was I able to find a can that didn’t list garlic. And that was more than 25 years ago.
Thus, like many condiments everyone else has the luxury of taking for granted – taking from the grocery shelf – I need to make my own. Truth be told, this turns out to be a lot of fun, and the kitchen smells great.
Honestly, I think learning to make my own condiments has made me better cook. It certainly makes me appreciate how flavoring happens in food, and what the home cook had to do before there were millions of tiny bottles of this-and-that available for purchase.
If you are unfamiliar with this condiment, here is a link to a New Mexico corn chowder that will warm any winter night. I hope it is warm where you are… if not, make some chipotles in adobo and feel the heat!
Chipotle Chiles in Adobo
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 large white onion, peeled and chopped (a generous cup)
2 shallots, peeled and chopped
1 ounce dehydrated chipotle peppers (I got them from Penzeys)
3 cups boiling water
1 cup canned tomato sauce
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
reserved soaking liquid, as necessary
Heat the olive oil on a skillet over medium-low heat and cook onions and shallots until clear and slightly golden.
While the onions and shallots are cooking, remove the stems from the chiles and place them in a bowl. Cover them with boiling water and weigh them down with a small plate; soak for 20 minutes. They will not soften as much as other chiles; don’t be concerned if they feel leathery.
Remove the soaked chipotles and place them in a blender (see note below); reserve soaking liquid. Add the tomato sauce, tomato paste, and brown sugar. Blend until you have a uniform paste.
Scrape the blended chipotles and tomato sauce into saucepan and add in 1/2 cup of the soaking liquid.
Add the cooked onions and shallots, along with the salt and vinegar to the pan. (If you are keeping some chiles whole, add them at this point.) Mix well. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 90 minutes until very thick. Check often after the first hour. If the sauce has dried too much, add reserved soaking liquid as needed, using water if you run out of soaking liquid. As it cooks, the mixture will turn a very dark, mahogany brown. (Note from Carolyn: watch this like a hawk. Putter around the kitchen to keep an eye on it. You don’t want it to burn.)
I like to purée the mixture one more time before putting it in jars. Leave it chunky, if you prefer.
Note: If you would like some whole chipotle chilies, purée half of them with the tomato sauce, and reserve the remainder to cook whole.
How can you use your homemade chipotle sauce? Add a bit to spaghetti, soup, or sauces. Find links to these recipes in the Cocoa & Lavender blog here.
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Carolyn Niethammer writes about the foods and people of the Southwest. Her most recent book, A Desert Feast, Celebrating Tucson’s Culinary History, tells the story of the last 4,000 years of food history in Tucson and the Santa Cruz River Valley.
Originally published by Macmillan in 1974Current version published by University of Nebraska Press 1999.
It’s Carolyn here today with a walk down memory lane. This year celebrates 50 years since the first publication of my first book American Indian Food and Lore, now republished as American Indian Cooking: Recipes from the Southwest. In 1970, I was a young out-of-work journalist and through an unlikely set of circumstances ended up with a contract for a book on Indian cooking with Macmillan, a major New York publisher. Preliminary research showed that traditional Native American food revolved around edible wild plants and corn, beans, and squash.
My college science was zoology so I had a lot to learn about edible plants. I began by reading every ethnobotany written about Southwestern plants. I found mentors to take me on plant walks, including the late renowned botanist Richard Felger. When I knew enough to ask intelligent questions, I headed out to talk to the experts, Native American women. My first teachers were two lovely Tohono O’odham women on the San Xavier section of the reservation who spent an afternoon teaching me to cook mesquite the way their mothers had. I put the leftovers in the backseat of my car and had a head-on collision on a narrow dirt road on the way home. Woke up in the hospital with mesquite mush in my hair.
Here I am in 1971 trying to learn to distinguish one little green plant from another.
Perhaps that was some sort of christening, so for $150 I bought a Chevy wagon and the summer of 1971, I headed to remote areas on the Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, Havasupai, and Pueblo reservations. Many very generous middle-aged Native women taught me about plants they had gathered with their grandmothers. I worked in an office that winter to gather some money and headed out again the summer of 1972.
Finding a communal grinding stone at Hawikuh (founded c. 1400) near the Zuni Reservation. Imagine the women sitting around the stone doing food preparation.
Then it was time to test the recipes when I had them and develop recipes when necessary. A friend lent me an electric typewriter (such a luxury), and I wrote up what I had learned. A small grant allowed me to pay Jenean Thomson to do the gorgeous and accurate line drawings of the plants.
Jenean Thomson’s ocotillo illustration.
The book was “in press” for two years and was released by MacMillan in 1974. Euell Gibbons had published several well-known books on edible wild plants, but they were all Eastern species. American Indian Food and Lore joined a very few popular books on edible Western plants. Sunset Magazine even came and did an article on my wild food gathering class. Writer and ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan joined me, and one year we did a class we privately called Gary and Carri’s Thorny Foods Review.
After two decades, with changes in ownership, Macmillan decided the book didn’t fit their line, but the University of Nebraska Press liked it. In 1999, they republished the book under their Bison Books line as American Indian Cooking: Recipes from the Southwest with a lovely new cover.
I have followed this title with four more books on Southwestern food, but my first foray into cookbooks with the all the memories I have doing the research remains a high point of my life.
Here is one of the original recipes taught to me by a Navajo cook.
Navajo Griddle Cakes
(Makes 14 4-inch cakes)
Although this calls for lamb’s-quarter seeds, you can substitute amaranth, quinoa, chia, or sunflower seeds.
¾ cup ground lamb’s-quarter seeds
¾ cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons sugar or honey
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons oil or bacon drippings.
Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. In another bowl beat together egg, milk, and fat and add to dry ingredients. Heat the griddle and add a small amount of oil. Test the griddle by letting a few drops of cold water fall on it. If the water bounces and sputters, the griddle is ready to use. Bake the pancakes.
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Note from SavorSisterTiaMarta: If you want to find other fascinating, flavorful, and from-the-earth Indigenous recipes that were gifted to Carolyn 50 years ago and which she published in American Indian Food and Lore, you can chase down used book copies via Thriftbooks, Amazonbooks and other sites. This first book is a treasure trove of totally useful, current ideas!
Hello friends, Amy here celebrating the harvest. At Tucson CSA this fall we had several batches of gorgeous, fleshy, green chiles! Farmer Frank of Crooked Sky Farm has been supplying us for years and years. The smell of charring them at home reminds me of doing it with my grandfather.
First things first, I made my great grandmother’s chiles rellenos with my family. Stuffed with cumin spiced beef, fried with a light egg batter and toped with a mild tomato sauce, these must be eaten immediately after they’re done. Yes, at the beginning only one person is eating a relleno at a time.
We also made chiles en nogada, filled with a complex pork and raisin filing, topped with walnut and almond sauce.
Next I wanted to try something new… I started with sweet potatoes from my CSA.
I loved how the mixture didn’t fall out of the chiles like the other fillings did!
Also, I loved the color combination of orange and green so I overstuffed them to let it show.
To finish, I gently heated ghee and more Pipian Picante powder.
Then drizzled it over the still warm chiles. Since these chiles were so mild, I really welcomed extra spice. (Pipian Picante is medium spicy). If my chiles were hotter, I would have chosen the milder Pipian Rojo powder.
The filling and topping were so good I can imagine eating it without the chile if they were not on hand. Or chopping the chile and mixing it in to the sweet potatoes. Enjoy the chile until the frost!
We’ll be selling mole powders at Holiday Nights, so come visit with us at Tohono Chul in Tucson, Friday and Saturdays Dec 8, 9, 15, 16 from 530-830pm.
Amy here, on a hot, hot morning, sitting the shade. Have you seen Desert Harvester’s new edition of the cookbook??? It is 400 pages! with lots of color photographs and original art. It really is worth getting the book for the art alone.
But today I want to highlight the ethics in book. It starts with a poem by Ofelia Zepeda, followed by a land acknowledgement, and a Desert Harvesters ManiFEASTO in English and Spanish. There is a recipe for Abundance and a detailed primer on Reciprocity, elaborating on “Get to Know vs Grab and Go” and “Rewild vs Defiled” and a whole other section on living and eating in place. So yes, even if you don’t live in the desert where these plants grow, and even if you never plan to cook, this is still a tremendous resource and inspiration.
As the title declares, Desert Harvesters has morphed from mesquite milling focused to offering intimate portraits and recipes of over 20 desert ingredients. Have you harvested: mesquite, ironwood, saguaro, acorn, devil’s claw, wolfberry, hackberry, mushrooms, chiltepin, barrel cactus, prickly pear pads and fruit, cholla, chia, agave, palo verde, yucca, ocotillo, globe mallow, purslane, packrats, grasshoppers or cicadas? With detailed harvesting instructions, seasonal timing and expert tips, a novice harvesters can actually get out there and try! Many desert plants offer multiple delicacies, such as ironwood tree as green seeds, mature seeds, flowers and seed sprouts.
There are a LOT of recipes, some easy and some taking days or longer to make. I didn’t count how many recipes are in the book, but it says only 80 of them are bilingual, English and Spanish and 65 are new to this edition. There are a few medicine recipes, too. This book really does have something new for even the most seasoned harvester. The recipes are contributed and tested by community members far and wide, encompassing ancient wisdom and modern innovation from many cultures. It also includes many recipes from us Savor Sisters, Carolyn, Tia Marta and I.
If you still aren’t convinced to buy this book or find it in the library, go to Desert Harvesters Facebook page. There you will see recipes for Seed Balls for planting and Saguaro Fruit Truffles for eating. Don’t mix them up!
In Tucson the mesquite trees have fresh new leaves and bags of grapefruits are looking for homes. Happy Spring! Amy here using grapefruits a way I learned from my friend and mentor Barbara Rose of Beantree Farm. You can find the original recipe as well as so much other inspiration in a new edition of the Desert Harvesters Cookbook available to preorder now.
Salsa is commonly made with tomatoes or tomatillos, but when fresh tomatoes are months away, grapefruit are plentiful, juicy, sour and pulpy with a hint of sweet. Yum! Start by cutting the stem end and blossom ends of the fruit.
Then cut down the sides to remove the peel, including the pith. Candy the rinds if you like!
With a paring knife, cut along both sides of each segment to release the pulp in wedges. This goes more quickly than it sounds.
I don’t worry about getting every little piece of pulp since I squeeze the juice out of the membranes left behind.
Remove the seeds and drink some of the excess juice. A mix of different colored grapefruit or even oranges is fun. Use what you have!
I’itois bunching onion tops have a unique onion flavor but any color onion will work: bulbous white, red or yellow, green spring onion tops, shallots… whatever you have.
Besides a smashed clove of garlic, a splash of cooking oil (any kind), a pinch of salt, and rubbed Mexican oregano, the not so secret ingredient is crushed chiltepin! Use as few or many as you like. Allow the salsa flavors of blend and the chiltepin and oregano to rehydrate.
Wanting something to go with the salsa, I made tostadas. Sautéed onion and cooked pink beans are a great base.
Mashed beans stick to tostadas better.
Fry corn tortillas in oil until crispy. In order to not set off the smoke detector, frying outside is the best, especially in beautiful spring weather.
Lettuce or most any green or sprout can all liven up tostadas. Wild mustard greens, like arugula, add a peppery bite.
Five dozen Seville orange cupcakes ready for transport to the Mission Garden Citrus Fest.
This is citrus season in the desert Southwest. All varieties of citrus can be found on trees in backyards, orchards, public gardens, college campuses and even street sides. It is a wonderful abundance. It’s Carolyn today and previously on Savor the Southwest, we’ve given you recipes for grapefruits, oranges and lemons (try this fabulous lemon pie or limoncello) . But one abundant fruit that is underused is the Seville orange. Sometimes it is called the sour orange. These oranges have bumpy skin, lots and lots of seeds, and a very tart flavor. Seville oranges make terrific marmalade, the kind with a bitter under flavor that is traditional in British orange marmalade.
The history of all citrus is a little murky, but botanists agree that it originated in parts of Asia where gardeners were growing citrus 4,000 years ago. According to plant expert Dena Cowan of Mission Garden in Tucson, as the various varieties of citrus arose, they interbred to produce even more varieties. Eventually, through human migration and trade, citrus made its way to the Middle East and Southern Europe where the various varieties found a home in the Mediterranean climate. One thing is clear though, the sour orange, the ones we call Seville, predated the varieties of sweet oranges we enjoy. Citrus was brought to the New World by the Spanish explorers and Catholic missionaries. Again, the climate was perfect.
During this season I make many jars of marmalade (recipe here) and store it for use during the year. But I’ve got enough now and was looking for other recipes, specifically something I could sell at the Citrus Fest at Mission Garden. I found a recipe on-line and was able to adapt it to use with the Seville oranges which grow in great abundance at Mission Garden. The five dozen Whole Orange Cupcakes I made sold out and people found them so delicious they wanted the recipe. So here it is along with some tips:
Cut the Seville orange into wedges and trim out the center with seeds and fiber. Discard what you have trimmed and grind the cleaned wedges.
Every Mexican nana anywhere in the US or Mexico has a special, probably complicated, and delicious posole recipe. But you shouldn’t feel intimidated. You can make a delicious posole, basically a pork and hominy stew, for a family dinner or a dinner with friends without much fuss. You can have the basic stew or fancy it up with condiment add ins.
Simply constructed posole all dressed up for dinner.
The thing that differentiates posole from ordinary beef stew is the hominy. My friend Michele Schulz wrote about hominy in a recent blog:
“Nixtamalization is the hominy making process and has been fundamental to Mesoamerican cuisine since ancient times. Among the Lacandon Maya who inhabited the tropical lowland regions of eastern Chiapas, the caustic lime powder was obtained by toasting freshwater shells over a fire for several hours. In the highland areas of Chiapas and throughout much of the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize Valley and Petén Basin, limestone was used to make slaked lime for steeping the shelled kernels. The Maya used nixtamal to produce beers and when bacteria were introduced to nixtamal, a type of sourdough was created.
“Alkalinity helps dissolve hemicellulose, the major adhesive component of the cell walls, loosening hulls from the kernels and softening them. Soaking kills the seed’s germ, keeping it from sprouting while in storage. In addition to providing a source of dietary calcium, the lye or lime reacts with the corn so the nutrient niacin can be assimilated by the digestive tract.”
Here is a picture of the way corn kernels puff up to become hominy.
Unlike the ancient Mayans, you won’t have to grind seashells to make your posole. This simple recipe today uses canned hominy which is widely available in grocery stores in the West. Or if you are ready for some culinary fun, you can do what Savor Sister Amy did and make your own hominy from corn. Or maybe you just want to read about it!
To make our easy version of posole, start with some pork roast (not the loin , too lean) cut in chunks and some chopped onion. If you have a slow cooker, this makes things easy because you don’t have to keep an eye on it. Or you can use a heavy pot on your stove. You’ll cook it until the pork is tender, about 2 hours.
Start with pork cubes and onion.
Once the pork is tender, add the hominy and the chile sauce. The bouillion adds a little umami and savoriness and lifts the flavor. Don’t forget the salt. The dish will taste flat without it. How much chile sauce you add depends on the spiciness of the sauce and your taste. It should have a little kick but not burn your tongue.
Here are the canned products that simplify the process. If you can find the Santa Cruz chile paste, it is great. If not, a canned chile paste works.
While the posole is cooking, assemble the condiments which can include green onions, radishes, cilantro, avocado and lime wedges.
A nice selections of condiments.
Easy Posole
2-2 1/2 pounds pork stew meat
1 onion
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1 cup water
1 teaspoon Better than Bouillon or a bouillon cube
1 25-ounce can posole
1/4-1/2 cup chile sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Condiments:
Sliced radishes
Finely shredded cabbage
Avocado chunks
Cilantro sprigs
Green onions
Lime wedges
Combine the pork chunks, the onion, garlic, and water in a slow cooker or heavy pan (like a Dutch oven), and simmer until the pork is very tender, about two hours. Flavor with salt and pepper. Add the hominy and the red chile sauce and heat. It should be a little soupy. Ladle into bowls and pass the condiments.
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Carolyn Niethammer has been writing about Southwest food for decades and had published five cookbooks. You can find recipes from renown Southwest chefs in the New Southwest Cookbook, recipes for edible wild plants in Cooking the Wild Southwest, and the history of food in the Santa Cruz basin and the arrival of agriculture in what is now the United States in her latest book A Desert Feast.
With a bounty of citrus in the low desert now beginning to fall off our trees, and neighbors leaving bags of limes or lemons to your doorstep, it’s the perfect time to consider some fun cook-with-citrus ideas for holiday treats!
OK, anyone can put sugar, butter and flour together, but if you give yourself carte blanche to invent new local variations on old-time favorites you can come up with some winners, especially for special winter occasions. Tia Marta here to share what I did with traditional lemon bars for a totally Southwest flair:
Try this delicious locally-inspired RECIPE for HOLIDAY CITRUS BARS:
You will need a 9×13″ baking dish and mixing bowls
Ingredients for crust:
1 and 1/2 cups flour mix (I used 1 cup organic fine whole wheat and 1/2 cup white Sonora wheat flour*)
1/2 cup mesquite meal (in place of crushed graham crackers used in other recipes)
3/4 cup butter, softened room temperature
1/2 cup powdered sugar
Ingredients for top layer:
2 cups regular sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice (lime juice or tangerine juice also are delish)
1-2 Tbsp lemon-zest (I used minced Meyer lemon rind; lime- or tangerine-zest would be great)
4 lg. eggs
optional wild desert fruits (I used saguaro fruit; prickly pear or hackberries would work great)
!/4 cup flour (added separately for this top-layer mixture)
*white Sonora wheat flour is available from Barrio Bread milled with heirloom grain grown by BKW Farms in Marana
Directions follow with pictures:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
To begin crust, sift flour mixture, mesquite meal, and and powdered sugar together.
(Since the crust is not leavened, you can make it gluten-free by using tapioca flour as your binder and amaranth flour with the mesquite flour.)
Mix crust ingredients–flours, confectioners’ sugar, and softened butter– to make a “dough”.
Press “dough” into the bottom of the 9×13″ baking pan, relatively evenly (maybe 3/4-1/2″ thick. Be sure to crimp down the edges with a clean knife so the thickness of dough is not tapered thin.
Bake crust at 350F until light brown, about 20-25 minutes. Keep oven on….
Grate 1-2 tablespoons lemon, lime or tangerine zest.
We have Meyer lemons which have such a mild sweet rind that I experimented by mincing, instead of zesting them. I had juiced the fruits previously, and had frozen the rinds for zesting and for making limoncello (that’s another fantastic blog by SavorSisterCarolyn!) . For the top-layer mixture I used 3 tablespoons of minced Meyer lemon rind.
While crust is baking, beat together the top-layer ingredients: sugar, citrus juice, minced or zested rind, 4 eggs, and 1/4 cup flour as thickener. (If you are using a pyrex bake pan, make sure this mixture is warm enough so as not to shock the hot pyrex when poured on crust.)
When crust is light brown and done, bring out of the oven. Pour top-layer mixture onto the crust.
To provide festive decoration and texture, I garnished the top with saguaro fruit collected last June, frozen and now thawed.
Return the now double-layered pan back into oven. Continue baking for another 20-25 or until top layer “sets” firmly.
When done, place on raised rack to cool evenly. Dust the top with powdered sugar.
When cool, separate crust from edge with sharp knife to make removal easier. Slice into small squares. These bars are so deliciously RICH –small is better!
Good and gooey –with that wonderful mesquite flavor, the crunch of saguaro seed,
…and the internalized hope that–with this–we can let the desert plants know how important they are to us!
Enjoy a cold-weather tea-time, a citrus harvest with purpose, or a Thanksgiving dessert made with your own variation on this Citrus Bar treat!
[Mesquite flour or saguaro fruit are special tastes of what makes Tucson an International City of Gastronomy! But these desert foods are not available just anywhere. Plan ahead–the way traditional Tohono O’odham harvesters have always known to do– future culinary opportunities will open to you if ye desert goodies while ye may, that is, when they are in season. Here’s a word of encouragemen from Tia Marta: Put it on your 2023 calendar now. Set aside time in mid-late June, tho’ it is super hot, to collect saguaro fruit, peel and freeze it in sealed container. Also mid-late June before the rains, gather brittle dry mesquite pods for community milling, and freeze the meal in sealed containers. In mid-late August, gather whole prickly pear tunas to freeze in paper and plastic, for juicing later. YOU WILL BE SO GLAD LATER THAT YOU SET ASIDE THESE DESERT FRUITS. Use the SEARCH box on this blog for instructions about harvesting a cornacopia of desert delicacies and staples.]
A lovely hot drink made from pomegranate rind and hibiscus flowers.
Hello! It’s Carolyn today and after nine years of Savor the Southwest, we have an updated look. All the old posts for wild food and Southwest specialties are still in the archives, although they all have the new look.
Today I’m going to talk about tea–well actually “infusions,” since tea must refer to the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. Fall is pomegranate season in Tucson and many people in the warm Southwest have the trees in their yards. Pomegranates are one of the Old World Mediterranean crops brought to the area by Father Eusebio Kino in the early 1700’s.
Many people let their precious pomegranates go to waste because they don’t know how to get out the seeds and then how to eat them. An easy way to do this is to quarter the fruit and then submerge the pieces in a bowl of cold water. Pick the seeds out with your fingers. The seeds will sink to the bottom of the bowl and the fiber will float.
Pomegranate being cleaned in a bowl of water.
The cleaned seeds can be sprinkled on fruit salads or squeezed for juice. But what of the peels? I was amazed to learn recently that the dried pomegranate rinds can make a great tea–whoops, infusion. The imparter of this old-fashioned knowledge was Josefina Lizárraga, who comes often to Mission Garden to share her tips for dealing with local fruit. She is affectionately called La Madrina del Jardín. According to Josefina, the drink is also good to soothe colds or flu.
Josefina with pomegranate at the Mission Garden. (photo by Emily Rockey)
Another delicious drink can be made from hibiscus flowers from the variety Hibiscus sabdariffa, easily grown in the summer and dried for year round use. Mexicans use it to make a drink called jamaica (Ha-my-ca). In Cairo the juice is heavily sugared for a popular drink called karkadai.
While either the pomegranate or hibiscus teas are good alone, try combining them for a fruity, herby treat. If you have mint in your garden, you could even add a few sprigs of that.
Hibiscus sabdariffa, also called Jamaica.
Té de Granada(Pomegranate Tea)
Recipe by Josephina Lizarraga (as told to Emily Rockey)
Bring 2-3 cups of water to a boil. Put 1.5-2 teaspoons of ground pomegranate rind in a pan or teapot.
When water boils, pour over ground pomegranate skin. Allow to steep 10-15 minutes. The pomegranate will settle to the bottom. Alternately, if you don’t grind the skins, you can leave them in 1-2 inch pieces and boil them for 15-20 minutes.
Enjoy simply as it is, or add sugar or honey.
Drink anytime, or for soothing colds or flu, add honey and lemon.
Jamaica (Hibiscus) Tea
1 quart water
1/2 cup dried hibiscus flowers
1/4-1/2 cup sugar
Ginger slices, cinnamon stick, lime juice (optional)
Bring the water to a boil and pour over the hibiscus flowers and other flavorings you choose. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Steep about 20 minutes or until desired strength. You can also mix half and half with club soda for something a little fancier.
Savor the Southwest: 