Carolyn Niethammer

Homemade Chipotle Chiles in Adobo: Guest Editor Tells Why

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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. 

50 Years Exploring Wild Foods of the Southwest

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Originally published by Macmillan in 1974
Current 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!

Celebrating Three Tucson Women and Their Innovative Work with Southwest Foods

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An Interview with Gary Paul Nabhan

by a SavortheSouthwest.blog Fan

Caption:  Faces behind the blog–the SavorSisters left to right:  Mano y Metate Molera Amy Valdes Schwemm, Author/Culinary Artist/Hostess Extraordinaire Carolyn Niethammer, and Flor de Mayo Prickly Harvester/Frijol Aficionada Martha Ames Burgess

[Esteemed SavortheSouthwest Blog Readers:  Our friend, colleague, desert foods philosopher, orchardist, inspirational instigator of culinary action, and author Gary Paul Nabhan asked to be interviewed.  We were super-honored to learn he is such a fan of our blog!  Here are his shared off-the-cuff remarks.]

Author Gary Paul Nabhan, with local beef and lamb grower Dennis Moroney, owner/founder of Sky Island Brand Meats (enjoying a concert by musician- grasslands botanist-author Jim Koweek in Sonoita, AZ)

INTERVIEW FOLLOWS

Question from a SavortheSouthwest.blog Fan:  So Gary, why are you eager to celebrate these Southwest foodies’ lifework, that of Carolyn Niethammer, Martha Ames Burgess, and Amy Valdés Schwemm?

Gary:  Aside from the fact that they have had enormous influence, not just on me but our whole community, each of them has been a remarkable pioneer or innovator with Southwest foods.  I value their friendships –but also their brightness.

Question: When and how did you get to know each of them?

Gary: When I moved to Tucson in 1975 or so, both Kit Schweitzer and Lloyd Finley heard of my interest in food ethnobotany and said I had to meet Carri.  She was probably working on her book American Indian Food and Lore by then, which was one of the first regional books on Indigenous cuisine in the Southwest.  We did some field harvesting workshops together on seasonal wild foods in the Tucson area, calling it “Gary and Carri’s Thorny Food Review.”  Next we worked together on Pima County Public Library’s amazingly innovative live-talk series, the Sonoran Heritage Program.

With Muffin, in the 1970s we were both engaged with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and with Tumamoc Hill’s Mescal,Marching,&Menudo Society. As fellow grad-students, we’d practice our research findings on each other with presentations and potlucks.  Later, we were conserving seeds and traditional planting know-how with NativeSeedsSEARCH [the organization Gary co-founded] and shared by Indigenous farmer friends. To this day, no single educator of nature and culture has eclipsed Muffin’s capacity to bring Tucsonans out for hands-on experiential programs.  I recall an event that she organized, a Desert Museum program with Tucson explorer Tad Nichols showing his 1943-44 film of flying over the newly-exploding Paricutin volcano. Over 600 people were attracted to Tad’s presentation thanks to Muffin’s enthusiasm. We both had friendships with Tohono O’odham Elder women on the Nation, so traveled out there together a lot, learning from them.  She actually was a model for one of the characters in my first book.

[Nabhan’s book The Desert Smells like Rain, a Naturalist in O’odham Country, first published in 1982, has been reprinted recently by University of Arizona Press!]

I got to know Amy later through her work with Mano y Metate and Desert Harvesters.  Her Mano y Metate moles—which she re-created from scratch when NativeSeedsSEARCH’s Mexican mole source vanished–have always been extraordinary in both honoring tradition–and in kicking fragrances up a notch. Amy agreed to cater one of the first dinners we had in Patagonia when I founded the national network on rare food conservation called Renewing America’s Food Traditions. Our guests from all over–Deborah Madison from Santa Fe, leaders in Chefs Collaborative, and Slow Food USA–loved her creativity as much as I did.

[Amy’s Mole mixes make being a gourmet cook almost instantly possible!]

Question:  What do you think these three Savor-Sisters have in common, in terms of values and strategies for promoting Southwestern foods?

Gary:  That’s easy to respond to:  They all have deeply listened to Indigenous and traditional home cooks, rather than –excuse my Espanglish—simply sitting on their nalgas in front of their desks to make up mierda without any tangible ties to historic traditions. Carolyn’s first book was really a food ethnography acknowledging dozens of Southwest Native women and their traditional foodways. Muffin has done the same with Tohono O’odham women–listening and participating in food harvesting and preparation with elders. And Amy has continued the traditions of her own grandmothers. Not every writer or chef takes that time:  each of these three Tucsonans stands in the tradition of Paula Wolfert, Diana Kennedy and Lois Ellen Frank.

Question:  Any other thoughts you dare share about these Three Mesquiteers?

Gary:  Actually yes–one more thing:  One of the aspirations that Jonathan Mabry, head of Tucson’s City of Gastronomy program, and I had when we were submitting the proposal to make Tucson the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy in the U.S. was this:  to continue the elaboration and celebration of the unique gastronomy of this place and its many cultures. Shortly after getting that designation, I knocked on Carri’s door and said, “Tag, you’re it! No one else can offer the detailed overview of Tucson’s complex culinary legacy in print better than you.  What still needs to happen is to create or articulate a collective identity for a Sonoran Desert cuisine that is identifiable, unique—as it is in New Orleans, Charleston, Boston, or Santa Fe.  So, it’s up to you to express what a distinctive regional cuisine means for us, and illustrate it with great sample dishes, sample menus.”

That’s really a huge task—larger than what one book can ever do—but she started that process.  She had Tucson’s home cooks, chefs, growers–young, veteran, Indigenous—even brewers and distillers all understand what they, as a community, have to build on– that no one in Phoenix, El Paso or Albuquerque can touch.  The result was her latest book A Desert Feast: Celebrating Tucson’s Culinary Traditions.      

Each of Carolyn’s books is a treasure trove of local food delights, ideas and info.

Question:  Okay, so what are you up to these days as Extinguished Professor Nabhan?  We’ve heard a rumor that you sometimes write books in the middle of the night.

Gary:  Yeah, sleeplessness is my only real asset.  Of course, I’m still rambling around festivals promoting Agave Spirits, my latest book coauthored with David Suro. But I’m also at work on a book with James Beard-award-winning chef and food writer Beth Dooley on the links between and benefits of desert cuisines from around the world in this time of rapid climate change. We’re showing a commonality between what people grow and how they prepare foods from the deserts of India and Persia, through the Middle East and North African “Maghreb”, to the Canaries, Caribbean, northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. These will be recipes so aromatic and full of healthful antioxidants that no one will ever say again that living well and eating sustainably in a hot dry world is difficult–if not impossible. And most hopeful, these deserts’ foods can even buffer us from heat stress, dehydration and damaging solar radiation…  So stay tuned!

[The Savor-Sisters thank you, Gary, for your candid thoughts and perspectives about us and our mission in sharing what we do via this blog.  Indeed all of us, dear blog readers included, are anticipating Gary’s next book.  (We can hardly keep up with his blistering writing rate.)  Bravo to him for continuing to share his significant desert stories, and to inspire us resiliently into hotter, drier times! With appreciation, Carri, Amy, and Muff]

Cheering with Agave Spirits!

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Tia Marta here, tipping a glass to Mayahuel, Goddess of the Agave, for her many gifts–and, in addition, I’m toasting the current voice of Agave: Southwest native foods author/philosopher Gary Paul Nabhan. Heads-up for a not-to-be-missed event SOON!! — Make plans for Saturday, October 21 to meet Nabhan at a totally celebratory book-signing in downtown Tucson for his latest book, AGAVE SPIRITS!

More than just literary, this event will be laced with enlivening tastes of small-batch mezcales! So take note: NOON til 3pm THIS SATURDAY at PETROGLYPHS EMPORIUM at 160 S.AVENIDA DEL CONVENTO just north of El Mercado along the trolley route west loop.

I just got a copy and can hardly wait to dive into Gary’s special way of weaving us into a sensual and spiritual world of amazing culture, botany, cuisine, all with such humor and human sensitivity. Yay another gift from the Guru! There will be plenty of copies of the book for sale at the event, but just in case, you can also find it available at Antigone Books on 4th Ave. Tucson..

Many native species of agave–known as A’ut to Tohono O’odham ancestors who cultivated them long before European colonists arrived in the Sonoran Desert–were and can still be used for food, fiber, drink, and landscaping. To grow your own, check out the agaves for sale at Mission Garden (such as this Agave murpheyi).

For celebrating–yea honoring–mezcal and other agave spirits in their many forms, here is my very local idea for a Century Plant toasting:

The Torch-bearer Mezcal-Saguaro Sunrise–Tia Marta’s recipe

1–In the bottom of a lovely glass, pour 1 TBSP precious thick saguaro syrup (if you have been so lucky to have bought some from a traditional saguaro harvester, or to have made your own syrup last June).

2–Reserve a jigger of small-batch-mezcal (bought or smuggled from a grower, fermenter, or trader.)

3–Dilute 1 jigger mango juice (available TJ’s, Natural Grocers) with 1/2 jigger drinking water to thin its density.

4–To garnish rim, slice a lime harvested from your own tree or a neighbor’s…

5–(a secret from my formerly-bartender partner): Gently pour the diluted mango juice atop the saguaro syrup layer by placing a spoon upside down to slow the flow against the glass interior, thus preserving the horizonal layers of different densities.

6–Similarly as illustrated over clean inverted spoon, gently pour jigger of mezcal for the top “layer.”

7–Salud! a toast to Agave and its Spirit

A step above and beyond the traditional “tequila sunrise,” this glorious libation is named for the Torch-bearer, who, I was taught by O’odham mentors, lights up and brightens the eastern horizon every dawn with the glowing red, orange, yellow of his solar torch…. This drink helps us rejoice in our local saguaro fruit and spirit of Sonoran agave with its colors, flavors–even nutrition.

Celebrate agaves also with notecards of my painting “Sacred peak with Agaves,” available at Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge visitor center and at Mission Garden. For 11″x17″ matted prints, call Flor de Mayo, 520-907-9471.

More mezcal ideas await…. Check out SavorSister Carolyn Niethammer’s post about the yearly Agave Heritage Festival in Tucson– with agave roasting at Mission Garden– late April. For specialized mezcal tastings locally, visit ExoBarTucson for Thursday evening samplings–It’s an “educational experience.” And stay tuned for more Agave Spirit posts as the holidays approach. Cheers to Mayahuel, to Nabhan’s new book, and indeed to the patient and giving A-ut plant!

See you at Petroglyphs Emporium this Saturday!

Easy Tricks for Pomegranates and a Recipe

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The pomegranate tree in my backyard produced five fruits this year.. The blemish on the top of the closest fruit was made by a leaf-footed bug. A small part of the interior will be bad, but the majority of the fruit will be usable.

I wrote about pomegranates at this time last year, but I’ve learned some new tricks to prepare them so it’s worth another post, especially since so many people find themselve intimidated by these gorgeous red fruits with the hard outer shell. It’s Carolyn today, and I learned these tricks at a teaching and tasting experience at Mission Garden in Tucson given by Emily Rockey, the plant whisperer responsible for the health of all the plants at the garden. Mission Garden is a living agricultural museum of Sonoran Desert-adapted heritage fruit trees, traditional local heirloom crops and edible native plants in the same location as the original garden of the San Augustin Mission in 1770s. Before that this land was farmed for a thousand years by Native American agriculturalists. Among its many varieties of fruit trees, Mission Garden grows eleven different cultivars of pomegranates, all sourced through cuttings from spots around Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora Mexico. 

Pomegranate trees like the heat and sun and are drought tolerant,  and although they love the desert climate, they are not native to the Sonoran Desert. The trees were brought to the New World by the Spanish. They originated in Persia and much of early Persian art features pomegranates. When it comes to eating pomegranates, the challenge is getting through the thick skin to access the seeds with their lovely juice. 

Cut along the sections.

Here’s an easy way to get into the sweet arils (the little flesh-covered seeds). First, cut a slice off the blossom end of the pomegranate. Inside you will see some definite sections. Cut on these sections and pull apart. This pomegranate in the photo is the White Sonoran Heritage pomegranate that has developed in the Sonoran Desert. Botanists aren’t sure why it’s lighter than the red or pink varieties. But it is sweet and the seeds are softer. We just chew them up. Then you can just carefully pry the fruit open and there will be wedges that are easy to eat.

Sections ready for eating or separating.

Another way to get the seeds is to cut the pomegranate from blossom end to stem end and twist the halves apart. Hold the half in your hand seed side down and pound hard with the back of a spoon. The seeds should drop out.

Just whack that pomegranate half with the spoon so the seeds release

You’ll still have some of the inedible material surrounding the seeds. An easy way to get rid of it is to  submerge the seeds in a small bowl of water and the connecting material will float to the top where you can skim it off.

Submerge the arils in water and the seeds will sink and the inedible fiber will float to the top.

You can munch the seeds or add them to a salad or entree where their sweet flavor is welcome. To make juice, process in a food processor or blender in short pulses. You just want to break the seeds to release the juice, not pulverize them. Then strain. If you are using a blender, you might have to add a little water to get the process started. 

The recipe below is a great way to use your pomegranate juice. The late caterer Sue Scheff was renowned for providing regional dishes for the parties she served. She offered Autumn Chicken as an entree using something like this Pomegranate Sauce.   Saute your chicken parts until brown, spread in a oven-proof dish, then cover with this sauce and bake until chicken is done, about 25 minutes. Garnish with pomegranate seeds and fresh cilantro. Good for family but fancy enough for company.  Sue’s complete recipe is in my book The New Southwest Cookbook which includes recipes from dozens of top professional chefs throughout the Southwest. 

This sauce is very close to grenadine syrup, which is reduced pomegranate juice and sugar. If you ever had a Shirley Temple as a child or ordered one for your kids, grenadine syrup is what makes the drink pink. 

Pomegranate Sauce

2 cups pomegranate juice

2 cups sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon balsalmic vinegar

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer, stirring to make sure sugar is dissolved. Reduce by about a third to concentrate the flavors. Spread over the browned chicken parts. Or store in a jar and use to flavor drinks.

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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.

Eat Mesquite and More: a Cookbook for Sonoran Desert Living

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Happy Summer, friends!

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!

A Traditional Recipe for Nopales (Prickly Pear Pads)

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Delicious combination of nopales, onions, tomatoes, and chile paste.

Last weekend I gathered with a few friends to reminisce about a time decades ago when we were all just starting out in the world of learning about the food and animals and lifeways of the Southwest. At that time many of the members were working on graduate degrees and others of us had already launched our careers. We  formed an informal group called The Tepary Burrito Society to share our experiences in occasional “seminars” which involved a potluck and sitting cross-legged on somebody’s floor with a plate on our lap. The name Tepary Burrito Society came from the local tepary bean that had almost been lost. We were all most excited about learning how to cultivate teparies and cook with them. ( Tia Marta discussed teparies at length in this post).

Back in our “seminars,” someone would be chosen to present what subject they were working on. By the time of those meetings, I had already published my first cookbook, then called American Indian Food and Lore, now republished as American Indian Cooking: Recipes from the Southwest. I had done the research by traveling around the Southwest talking to Native American women and gathering recipes from them. At this weekend’s potluck, my friend Nancy Ferguson surprised us by bringing a recipe from that first cookbook, Beavertail Stew. No beavers are in this dish! The name comes from a nickname for prickly pears because the big flat leaves resemble a beaver’s tail. I haven’t heard that nickname recently, but this book was researched fifty years ago. 

I have always made this dish with fresh nopalitos that I have gathered and cleaned myself or from already cleaned and chopped nopalitos from a Mexican grocery store. Nancy said that she makes them with jarred nopalitos which she rinses before frying them. If you want to use fresh, I give instructions on how to do it in this previous blog post here. 

This spicy dish can be a side dish or a dip for tortilla chips.

Beavertail Stew

(Warning: this dish is spicy. Reduce the hotness by using much less chile paste. Start with a little)

1 cup nopalitos, fresh or jarred

1/4-1/2 cup chopped onion

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 cup chopped fresh tomato or canned 

1 to 2 tablespoons chile paste (I use Santa Cruz chile paste)

2 shakes cumin

1/4 cup shredded chicken or pork (optional)

Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Fry the nopalitos and onions until they are slightly crisp. Add the garlic, tomato sauce, chile paste, cumin, and salt. Stir and cook a few minutes until well combined. Add a little water or tomato juice so the mixture can simmer without burning. Stir in the meat if using. Serve with toasted tortillas.

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Interested in learning how to gather and prepare edible wild plants of the Southwest? Two cookbooks can guide you. American Indian Cooking: Recipes from the Southwest has traditional Native American recipes, some of them very old. These recipes are usually simple. Cooking the Wild Southwest includes more modern recipes for 23 edible wild plants that are easy to gather, easy to recognize and taste good, especially in these recipes. 

Seville Whole Orange Cupcakes

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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.

Seville Whole Orange Cupcakes

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Simple Posole for Winter Suppers

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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.  

Her website is www.cniethammer.com. 

Delicious Beverages to Make from Pomegranate and Hibiscus

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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.

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Want more recipes for prickly pear and other wild foods? You’ll find delicious ways to bring these healthy plants to your table in my cookbook Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Wild Plants and The New Southwest Cookbook. The links take you on-line, but consider ordering from your local bookstore. They will love you for it. Interested in the history of food in the Southwest? A Desert Feast: Celebrating Tucson’s Culinary Heritage takes you through the last five thousand years, from prehistory through the challenges faced by today’s farmers.