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It’s Masa Time!–Making Tortillas with “Fast” Corn

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Pearly kernels of Tohono O’odham 60-day corn (MABurgess photo)

Gardening is hardly an “instant-gratification” activity (altho’ the gardening process from the git-go is instantly gratifying to soul and body).  But if you want to try the fastest seed-to-harvest corn cycle on the Planet, next summer try growing Tohono O’odham 60-day Hu:ñ!  It’s the closest thing to instant-gratification-gardening.  Trust the Desert People–the Tohono O’odham of southern Arizona and northwest Sonora– to have selected and perfected a flour corn fit for the rainfall vagaries of a Sonoran Desert summer!  Seeds of this precious crop have been conserved and multiplied over the years by the caring folks at NativeSeedsSEARCH and are available for Southwest gardeners to plant.

Tia Marta here, inspiring you to try your hand at making corn tortillas with this ancient, local, and well-adapted corn!  Volunteers at Tucson’s Mission Garden just harvested their monsoon crop of Tohono O’odham 60-day dried cobs, and they invited MaizTucson’s Carlos Figueroa to make masa with it and to provide tastes of tortillas made with this special heirloom corn.

Three kinds of heirloom corn kernels ready for nixtamalization. Tohono O’odham 60-day corn is at lower right (blue corn at top, traditional nixtamal corn lower left)

He explained how he boiled the kernels until they were softening, then he added slake lime (food grade calcium hydroxide) and let it stand overnight.  [There are detailed instructions online how to make nixtamal.]  He ground the  nixtamal in a stone mill to make the masa, adding enough of the reserved cooking liquid to have the right dough consistency.

Form your masa into a ball about the size of a golf ball before putting into your tortilla press or rolling with rolling pin.

He formed the masa into balls for placing between two sheets of wax paper in a tortilla press.  No problem if you do not have a press.  A rolling pin works fine with your dough sandwiched in wax paper.

60-day corn tortillas and blue corn on the grill at Mission Garden

a 60-day corn tortilla on the grill with blue corn tortilla

forming a basin in the soft masa as it heats on the griddle, to make quesadilla-style cheese-and-salsa melt or “Southwest pizza”

 

After pressing, he showed how to peel one sheet of wax paper and put the dough side into his hand for easy placing onto a very hot grill.  Instead of a grill, I use an ungreased iron skillet on the stovetop.  Grill your round of masa until it begins to puff on top, then flip it to allow it to puff up on the other side.  You may want to flip it twice before it is grilled through.  The great news is that MaizTucson has ready-to-use masa from Tohono O’odham 60-day Corn available for sale at some farmers markets, so you can take the gardening-later short-cut!

Serve your tortillas hot –as with the preceding delicious recipe for tomatillo stew (scroll back to the Oct.20 post in this same blog!)  You could also create a fancy appetizer by pinching masa dough into a little basin.  After it is grilled, fill it with grated cheese, chopped tomatoes or salsa and melt it in a quick oven for a “Southwest pizza”.

MaizTucson has prepared masa from the heirloom Tohono O’odham 60-day corn grown at Tucson’ Mission Garden.  Check the MaizTucson instagram for where to buy it.  (MABurgess photo)

Talk about sustainability!  Think about the month of water saved by growing a short-season corn compared to normal 90-day  corn varieties.  All the more reason for happy tortilla-grilling and eating with this desert-adapted, highly nutritious Tohono O’odham 60-day corn masa!

Your homemade corn tortillas will go really well with Tia Marta’s heirloom bean soup mixes!

Tom’s Mix Southwest Bean Mix–14 delicious heirlooms with recipes

Native American-grown Tepary Bean Mix with recipes, available at http://www.flordemayoarts.com and other southwest specialty stores

For Southwest heirloom foods and gift ideas for the holiday season check out my website www.FlordeMayoArts.com and order early.  Or you can find my jojoba herbal soaps, notecard and canvas art tote creations, sacred sage bundles, white Sonora wheat berries, and colorful heirloom bean  and tepary mixes at special stores–Tohono Chul Museum Shop, NativeSeedsSEARCH store, Presidio Museum in the center of Tucson, Old Town Artisans, Wiwpul Du’ag East at San Xavier Mission Plaza, Saguaro National Park West bookstore, and Caduceus Cellars in Jerome, AZ.

Notecard and canvas tote artwork by Martha Ames Burgess, http://www.flordemayoarts.com

Luxurious herbal jojoba soaps created by Martha Ames Burgess, made with local desert plants and healing jojoba

“Yellow Moon” leads to…..Sweet Pea Harvest-Time!

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Desert ecologist Dr. Tony Burgess enjoying the glow of Oam Mashad — “Yellow Moon” in Tohono O’odham is the lunar cycle or “month” when so many desert plants are blooming yellow.

illustration palo verde post June7,2019

Massive bloom of foothills palo verde (Parkinsonia microphylla), in spring 2019, extended beyond the normal Oam Mashad, making it the longest lasting and dense-est flowering in botanical memory! (MABurgess photo)

THIS WEEK in early June is a narrow window of opportunity–one of those Manna-from-Heaven moments we are blessed with in our colorful and productive Sonoran Desert.  Tia Marta here, encouraging you to get out into the desert right away to enjoy this pulse of plenty!  What an experience it is, eating fresh sweet peas right off a tree! No fuss. No kitchen cooking.  It’s an easy outdoor treat that grandparents, little kids, even overactive entrepreneurs can all enjoy, along with our feathered and four-legged neighbors.

To ID our most directly-edible and flavorful bean-tree–the foothills, one of many palo verde species–note close-up that the top petal of its butterfly-shaped pea flower is WHITE, and its pinnate leaflets are teensy. (MABurgess photo)

Palo verde flowers, once pollinated by buzzing helpers, shed their petals and morph in May into clusters of bright green seed pods.  Foothills paloverde pods are not flat–check these photos.  Rather, they look like beads on a short string.

Not to be confused with foothills palo verde, the flat pods of blue palo verde (Parkinsonia florida) have no constriction between seeds, and a bitter taste to my palate–not nearly as flavorful as foothills. [Avoid Mexican palo verde (Parkinsonia aculeata) with its orange petal and potentially toxic seed.]

Imagine each seed of a foothills palo verde (Kuk Chu’hu-dahk) pod inside a long green sheath, a constriction between each like beads on a necklace. (MABurgess photo)

My Tohono O’odham harvesting teacher and mentor, Juanita Ahil, taught me that Kuk Chu’hu-dahk kai is its best when eaten in the green stage, as the pea-size seeds are just swelling.  She told me, “Don’t wait til they are real fat, or the seeds will get a little tough and lose some sweetness.”   These sweet green peas are chucky-jam-full of legume protein, complex carbs and sugars, and phytonutrients in active mode.

In a short few days when temperatures soar, the soft green seeds shrink into hard little brown “stones,” which can be used in a totally different way, as a protein-rich flour (but that’s another story!)

With the gift of our cool wet spring of 2019, there is a good chance our sweet pea harvest season may extend into June beyond the “normal” first week.  But don’t hesitate!  Go browse with a basket or canvas bag to bring some home to share or prep into salad or snacks.  Long sleeves, gloves and sunglasses are suggested, as branches of foothills palo verde are sharp-tipped.  [A voice of experience:  In your enthusiasm to look up and reach for handfuls, don’t forget to look down for rocks or rattlers in your shared space.]

Note the structural similarity of a peeled foothills-palo-verde pod to edamame at your favorite sushi bar. They do look like botanical sisters. For a great “desert edamame” recipe go to my June13,2019, savorthesouthwest post (link below).

Beyond the simple pleasure of eating directly from the tree, you can also make “desert edamame” with palo verde pods.  They make a wonderfully unexpected hors d’oeuvre or potluck finger-food. Click on my June 13, 2015 post Lovely and Luscious Legume Trees for fabulous recipe ideas and helpful photos. More sources are at Bean Tree Farm’s website,  and desertharvesters.org.

To peruse and purchase my traditional Southwest foods and watercolor artwork, visit my website www.flordemayoarts.com or several special shops in Tucson:   NativeSeedsSEARCH, the Tucson Presidio, Old Town Artisans, and Tohono Chul Park Museum Shop.  Next fall-winter season, sign up to learn more about traditional Baja Arizona foods in our City of Gastronomy downtown tours at Tucson Presidio Museum.  I also teach timely hands-on wild foods harvesting workshops through Tucson’s Mission Garden.

Foothills palo verde pods plump and ready to pick for a sweet desert treat

Now…grab a pal and go ye into desert foothills to browse palo verde pea-pods –mindfully, joyfully, gratefully!

Holiday Deliciousness for Diabetics and Friends

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Mmmmm–Wish you could taste this hot and hearty heirloom bean soup!  It hits the spot on this chilly desert evening.  Makes me want to share the message of its goodness.

Piping hot and delicious Tom’s Mix heirloom bean soup warms the soul and enriches the body….

November is National Diabetes Awareness Month and diabetes is indeed now EVERYONE’s issue.  WE ALL need to tune in to be aware of this increasing health problem, now of epidemic proportions especially here in the Southwest. The wonderful thing is that we CAN DO SOMETHING TO HELP by the very foods we serve each other–both for meals and snacks.

Southwestern Native tepary beans are among the lowest glycemic index foods, with published low figures of 30 to 44. In addition to great burritos, they also make a fantastic healthy hummus! (see recipe plus links to local sources for teparies below)

Tia Marta here with healthy recipes that diabetics can enjoy for pot lucks and drop-ins over the holidays or any time.  Interestingly, the great majority of our traditional Southwest foods have LOW GLYCEMIC INDICES.  (The lower the glycemic index the better.  Pure sugar has an index of 100.  Foods lower than a GI of 55 are considered low-glycemic.)   So many of the fabulous recipes recorded in this Savor-the-Southwest archive using traditional wild desert foods (e.g. mesquite and cholla buds) and SW Native crops of Baja Arizona are low glycemic foods great for HELPING TO BALANCE BLOOD SUGAR!   Beans have Glycemic Indices from 30-49, high in complex carbs, soluble, and insoluble fiber, which slow the release of sugar into the bloodstream.  Our rich tasting and versatile Tepary Beans are among the best!

Easy Tepary Hummus RECIPE

2 cups cooked Traditional Native American Tepary Bean Mix (cooked until tender)

reserved liquid from cooking beans

1-2 cloves garlic, minced (or more to taste!)

3-4 Tbsp lemon juice

2-3 Tbsp olive oil

1-2 Tbsp tahini (optional, not needed for tepary’s great flavor)

1 tsp sea salt

In a blender or food processor, add beans and garlic.  Blend gradually with enough reserved liquid to make a frosting-like consistency.  Add lemon, olive oil, salt (and optional tahini) to taste.

Store in freezer, or in fridge in serving size containers to be ready for impromptu company.  Serve with corn chips or whole grain crackers for a healthy low-glycemic snack.

Flor de Mayo’s Traditional Native American Tepary Mix makes the ideal consumable holiday guest gift– available at NativeSeedsSEARCH store on North Campbell, Tucson; at Tohono Chul Park Museum Shop; Tucson Presidio Museum and at ArtHouse.Centro in Old Town Artisans, downtown Tucson; and the UNICEF Store at Monterrey Village, Tucson.  Assorted tepary beans can be ordered from Ramona Farms in Sacaton, AZ, or San Xavier Farm Coop.

Tom’s Mix–the most delectable mix of 14 colorful heirloom beans from the Southwest! Tom’s Mix makes a rich, warming soup, delicious dip, or mixed bean salad. Yummy easy cooking instructions and recipes are on the label.

The taste-jewels in Flor de Mayo’s Tom’s Mix Southwest heirloom beans can be viewed in detail at Tia Marta’s earlier post Glorious Diversity–check it out and start salivating.  You can find them at the above linked sources in Tucson, or online at NativeSeeds/SEARCH and Flor de Mayo.  Tepary Mix or Tom’s Mix will cook easily (after a few hours’ soaking, change water) either in a solar oven or crock-pot slow-cooker.

The most efficient way to cook Tom’s Mix (after presoak and change water) is in a crock-pot. Put them on before you leave for the day and their inviting aroma meets you when you come in the door!

When energy efficiency matters, cook your beans in a solar oven. Sunlight is a gift! You can find a smoking deal on solar ovens at www.flordemayoarts.com.

 

 

 

Here’s a recipe for the best bean dip you ever tasted–great to keep on hand in the fridge or freezer for when company pops in.  As a bonus it is super healthy, gluten-free, high in protein, gives sustained energy, and helps to balance blood sugar!  What more can one ask of a great fun-food?

Tom’s Mix Southwest Treasure Bean Dip Recipe

2 cups (the 1-lb package) Tom’s Mix washed and drained

2 quarts drinking water

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

1 Tbsp cumin seed ground

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp fresh lime or lemon juice

1-3 tsp Red Devil hot sauce,

1-2 chiltepin peppers, ground (optional for picante taste) (see Savor blog posts on chiltepines!)

1 tsp Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning (optional but good)

Wash, drain beans.  (Presoaking beans 1-2 hours, drain liquid, speeds up the cooking but is optional). In a large pot put beans and drinking water.  Bring to boil then simmer 2-3 hours or until tender.  Alternatively, put soaked beans in drinking water to cook in slow-cooker 5-6 hours, or in solar oven, tending sun angle at 1/2 hour intervals, 3-4 hours.  When beans taste done, drain into bowl reserving the bean liquid.  With mixer or hand-mashing, puree the hot beans with other ingredients, adding about 2 cups reserved hot bean liquid until mixture is dip consistency.  Put in microwavable dish for easy re-heating.  Serve with corn chips for a complete protein complement, and enjoy the gifts of many Southwest farmers through ages of desert harvests.  What a legacy!

Southwest “bean gifts” from Flor de Mayo include not only these precious heirloom food flavors, but also feasts for the eyes, Native food watercolor notecards, canvas art totes, and original paintings by yours truly Tia Marta. Check links below…..

I invite you to visit the specialty and other shops, parks, and museums in Tucson which carry our Flor de Mayo heirloom food mixes and other creations, totes, art notes, and jojoba soaps.  At Sunday’s Rillito Farmers Market look for Tom’s Mix at Cindy Burson’s Country Harvest booth.  You can also explore the Flor de Mayo website for perfect holiday gifts.  We will soon be adding an online gallery of fine one of a kind watercolor paintings by Martha Burgess and the WildDesert nature photography of Roderick Mondt.

Happy holidays–eating well on joyous low-glycemic heirloom tastes from Tia Marta!

 

 

Celebrating Succulent Food-Plants–Sonoran Centuries and Cholla

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Glowing marginal teeth of Agave shrevei from central Sonora. Known there as lechuguilla ceniza (ashy color), and as totosali by the Warijio people, it was traditionally pit-baked for communal eating. (MABurgess photo)

Tia Marta here to take you on a visual tour of our strikingly beautiful Sonoran Desert century plants and cholla which have, for centuries, fed Sonoran Desert people–and continue to do so in interesting new ways!  This is a “photographic appetizer” for the grand gastronomic and libation experiences planned for April into May–an invitation for you to participate in Tucson’s amazing Agave Heritage Festival and Cholla Harvest Workshops.  [For a full schedule of the many culinary, ethnobotanical, artistic and musical agave events, go to http://www.agaveheritagefestival.com.  For info on cholla harvests go to http://www.tucsonsbirthplace.org or call 520-907-9471.]

The Hohokam Century Plant, Agave murpheyi, is planted at Mission Garden to simulate a Hohokam archaeological site where ancient desert people farmed it.  This will be one of the agaves to taste at the Mission Garden’s pit-roasting event as part of the Agave Heritage Festival. (MABurgess photo)

Mescal ceniza—Agave colorata–a sculptural Sonoran century plant, was traditionally pit-baked by Native People of NW Mexico.  It gives a superbly attractive focal point in an edible landscape!  (MABurgess)

Natives of the low Sonoran Desert region surrounding the Sea of Cortes, especially Yuman, Tohono O’odham (calling it a’ut) and Seri people (calling it ahmmo), traditionally used various varieties or subspecies of Agave deserti to cook as an important staple in their diet.

Agave deserti (this subspecies from the Anza-Borrego State Park in SE California) was pit-roasted by Native People, adding a rare and delicious sweet to their often sparse menu. (MABurgess)

Roasted agave heart of Agave murpheyi ready to divide and eat! (MABurgess photo)

Agaves bloom only once– a magnificent flower show after a long lifetime–hence the name “Century Plant” as the 15-25 years before maturing seems like a century.   Harvesters, mescaleros, watch year after year until they observe when the center of the leaf rosette begins to show the flower-stalk emerging, the signal the plant is changing its stored starches to sugars for blooming.  (There is a giant agave in central Mexico, Agave salmiana, from which harvesters remove the young flower stalk to create a center “well.” Sweet sap, agua miel, wells up daily, for weeks.  Cooked down and concentrated, that’s the so-called “nectar” being sold as a sweetener to gringos.  Good sweetness–nice product–wrong name.  Nectar is what pollinators drink from flowers; agave sweetener is made from internal sap.)

Agave “nectar”–really sap–makes a healthy sweetener for my prickly pear and chia lemonade. (MABurgess)

When the agave is about to bloom, to make roasted agave (for maguey or mescal), the whole mature plant is harvested, thick leaves chopped off (used for fiber), and the center or head, the cabeza that looks like a pineapple, is roasted in a rock-lined pit.  Cooking often takes 2-3 days and nights.  Once roasted, the fibrous pulp is a nutritious, sweet, chewy treat with complex healthy carbohydrates.

Roasted agave (maguey) leaf base ready to eat, showing fiber and pulp. Wish you could taste its smokey flavor! (MABurgess photo)

Bootleg Sonoran bacanora mescal, made in backyard stills from Agave angustifolia, rests in the succulent linear leaves of its unassuming century plant source.  Importers are now bringing this indigenous Sonoran mescal, bottled legally, into the US–now available at unique saloons such as EXO Coffee and specialty liquor stores.  (MABurgess)

If you haven’t tasted mescal, the distilled spirit made from roasted and fermented agave, you have a treat coming.  In a particular district of Jalisco, Mexico, it is made from  Agave tequilana –the blue agave–known only from there by the more familiar name tequila!  Select Sonoran Desert Agave species produce mescals that some connoisseurs consider even better than tequila.  At the Agave Heritage Festival you can taste several such spirits, to make that determination for yourself!

The beautifully cross-banded, fountain-shaped Agave zebra, from the hottest mountains of NW Sonora, was known for making mescal by local Sonorans prior to the 1950s.  Its stripes and fountain-form adds dramatic accent to an edible landscape.  Young agave plants can be purchased at Tucson’s primo succulent plant source, Plants for the Southwest for growing your own. (MABurgess photo)

Variegated Agave americana makes a vivid desert ornamental. It may have been one of several agaves cultivated by ancient people of the Southwest. (MABurgess photo)

At this year’s Agave Heritage Festival, at celebratory, culinary, artsy and educational events–from Mission Garden to Maynard’s Market, Desert Museum to Carriage House Tucson,  Tohono Chul to Tumamoc Hill,  UA to Pima College, with horticulturalists, scholars, artists, musicians–we will delve into the lore and many gifts of the Agave family.  Learn hands-on–even tastebuds-on— from esteemed experts, ethnobotanist Jesus Garcia, Southwest foods authors Carolyn Niethammer and Gary Paul Nabhan, culinary artists Chef Janos Wilder, Barry Infuso, and Don Guerra, scholars Karen Adams and Maribel Alvarez, to name just a few!  Sign up soon at http://www.agaveheritagefestival.com, giving yourself a gift while supporting such special organizations as NativeSeeds/SEARCH, Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and Tohono Chul Park.

Alongside the Agave events, as the succulent season progresses, there are other desert foods to harvest and taste in new recipes, inspired by both traditional knowledge and ideas for sustainable desert living into the future.  Cholla buds and nopalitos from several cactus species will be featured in upcoming workshops.  To call up lots of neat info from past http://www.SavortheSouthwest.blog posts, insert the word “cholla” into the search-box above for a feast of ideas, then……

 

Vivid flower of staghorn cholla (Cylindropuntia versicolor) with spiny bud ready to harvest.  Learn how to carefully pick, de-spine, cook and prepare this super-food in wondrous recipes at Mission Garden and Flor de Mayo workshops.  (MABurgess photo)

As cholla cacti begin to bloom, it’s time to harvest the buds!  Join me Friday, April 20, 2018, at the Mission Garden Cholla Harvest Workshop — Sign ups at http://www.tucsonsbirthplace.org.  Or, on Saturday, April 21, come to Flor de Mayo’s Cholla Harvest on Tucson’s west side–contact www.flordemayoarts.com and 520-907-9471.  Cooking School classes are happening at Janos’ Carriage House, http://www.carriagehousetucson.com, and Gastronomy Tours downtown are being scheduled at the Presidio Museum, http://www.tucsonpresidio.com.

I hope you have enjoyed my Photo Gallery and that you may enjoy many a succulent Sonoran Desert dish and libation this season–more ways to honor Tucson as an International City of Gastronomy!

May we all toast the spirit of Agave Goddess Mayahuel!

Sweet and Savory Valentines–with lovely local grains

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Happy Valentine's expressed with the happiest of ingredients--heirloom barley, white Sonora wheat, organic hard red wheat and mesquite!

Happy Valentine’s expressed with the happiest of ingredients–heirloom purple barley, white Sonora wheat, organic hard red wheat and mesquite!

I admit it–I have a “thing” about barley. I’ll take it in any form–in stews, Scottish soups, marinated grain salads, mesquite/barley biscuits, barley banana bread…..and yes, my personal favorite, beeeer! (Your’s too? OK that will be another good post….)

Tia Marta here to share some fun recipes fit for a happy Valentine’s Day or beyond–made with heirloom grains including barley–one recipe with whole-kernel grain, one with milled whole grain flour.  These amazing grains are some of the reasons Tucson is now an International City of Gastronomy!

Arizona-grown heirloom Purple Prairie Barley grain in its healthy hulls

Arizona-grown heirloom Purple Prairie Barley grain with its healthy bran intact

It seems very few people in recent times know much about barley except perhaps as an ingredient in grape-nuts cereal or Campbell’s Scotch Broth. When you look into the nutrition of barley you find that it has the lowest glycemic index of all the grains, that is, it is the best of all for keeping blood-sugar in balance, especially when used in whole kernel form, either cooked whole, or milled from whole kernels.

There is an ancient barley now being grown in Arizona that has a delicious flavor, colorful nature, antioxidant properties, and versatility which have captivated me. It hails originally from Tibet (some say by way of the Nile) and is known as Purple Prairie Barley.

 

Keep the faith while cooking whole kernel purple prairie barley--Let the grains re-absorb all the liquid, 4:1 that is water:grain

Keep the faith while cooking whole kernel purple prairie barley–Let the grains re-absorb all the liquid,  water:grain ratio is 4:1.

Basic cooking for whole Purple Prairie Barley is super-simple.  It just takes a little time.  Once you have them cooked you can freeze them for future culinary creativity.  Stove-top method:  bring to boil 4 cups drinking water and 1 cup whole grain barley, and simmer until ALL the purple liquid is absorbed.  In a crockpot, the same process may take 3-5 hours–no watching necessary.  The glorious purple liquid which rises in the cooking water is chucky-jam-full of anthocyanins, those wondrous antioxidants, so don’t let a drop get away!

When fully cooked, purple prairie barley is plump, almost round, and still retains its lovely color.

When fully cooked, purple prairie barley is plump, almost round, and still retains its lovely color.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hot, whole purple barley-berries taste great as a chewy cereal for a chilly morning, delicious with cream or yogurt and a dollop of agave nectar.  It also makes a delectable pilaf (see photo idea below) or marinated whole-kernel salad.  [You can substitute barley in recipes for White Sonora Wheat-berries–to find them enter “wheat” in this blog’s search box.]

 

Ingredients for baking Valentine cookies--L to R rolled oats, dry cranberries, White Sonora wheat-berries and flour, Purple Prairie grain and lavender flour, local hard red wheat kernels and flour

Ingredients for baking Valentine cookies–L to R rolled oats, dry cranberries, White Sonora wheat-berries and its golden flour, Purple Prairie grain and its lavender flour, local hard-red wheat kernels paired with its beige flour

Rolling out dough for heirloom barley hearts--Valentine treats to celebrate Tucson's LIVING culinary history

Rolling out dough for heirloom barley hearts–Valentine treats to celebrate Tucson’s LIVING culinary history

 

 

 

 

 

This cookie recipe is really easy–two bowls, sifter, rolling pin or bottle, teaspoon measure, and only one half-cup measuring cup are needed.

Very Sonoran Valentine Cookies

Ingredients:
1 c purple prairie barley flour
1/2 c organic white Sonora wheat flour
1/2 c organic hard red wheat flour
1/2 c local mesquite flour
1/2 tsp sea salt or real salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c (one stick) organic butter
1/2 c organic cane sugar
2 lg or 3 medium eggs
1 tsp vanilla
optional topping on cookie dough: dry cranberries or cherries
Directions: Preheat oven to 375degreesF. Sift all dry ingredients into one bowl. In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar; stir in vanilla; beat in eggs.  Add dry ingredients into wet mixture, mixing thoroughly. Pat dough out on a board heavily dusted with more barley flour. Roll dough to a ca. 3/8 inch thickness–(consistent thickness is more important than an exact measure.) Cookie-cutter your favorite shapes out of the rolled dough and place on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake 8-10 minutes or until barely browning. Crunchily enjoy the pinkness of your purple barley cookies!

Rolling out cookie dough for Purple Prairie Barley cookies

Cutting cookie dough for Purple Prairie Barley cookies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Purple barley Valentine cookies with cranberry decoration

Purple barley Valentine cookies with cranberry decoration– a pinky-purple hue, yummy flavor & crunch!

You can make delightful variations on these Purple Barley Cookies by substituting the above ingredients in an oatmeal cookie recipe or in a Scottish shortbread recipe.

 

Preparing heirloom purple prairie barley pilaf

Preparing heirloom purple prairie barley pilaf

For a savory dish, try your cooked whole-grain purple barley in a delicious pilaf prepared in a way similar to a quinoa or rice pilaf.  Stir-fry an assortment of 2-3 cups of your favorite veggies in olive oil (try any chopped heirloom squash, scallions, carrots, colorful sweet peppers, mushrooms, kohlrabi, etc from local farmers’ markets).  Finish the stir-fry adding 1 cup of cooked purple prairie barley.  Season to taste with Asian sauce, spike or Cavender’s.  Pine nuts or cashews might add another flavor dimension.

 

 

Magdalena heirloom barley grown at Mission Garden, Tucson

Magdalena heirloom barley grown at Mission Garden, Tucson

Packaged rare Magdalena Barley seed grown at Mission Garden--our own local treasure.

Packaged rare Magdalena Barley seed grown at Mission Garden–our own local treasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Want to find these heirlooms for cooking or to grow them?  Here are some local sources of whole-kernel grains–also, where you can get them freshly milled if you don’t have your own grinder.  Find several of these grains growing at the Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace’s Mission Garden living history gardens, open every Saturday for tours.  Hayden Flour Mills’ heirloom Purple Prairie Barley  is now available at our Flor de Mayo booth at Sunday’s St.Philips Farmers’ Market in various size packets ready to cook or mill.  The Wong family at BKWFarms Inc., now in their fifth generation of local farming in Marana, are the organic growers of Padre Kino’s heirloom White Sonora Wheat which NativeSeeds/SEARCH helped to resurrect from near-loss.  BKWFarms also produces organic hard red wheat-berries, which make a rich, higher gluten flour perfect for breads and cakes, and which I quite successfully used in the Valentine cookie recipe above.  Other heirloom wheat-berries grown by Ramona Farms and San Xavier Coop Association are available at the NativeSeeds/SEARCH store, 3061 N.Campbell Ave, Tucson.  Local mesquite flour for the Valentine cookie recipe is available at the NSS store and at our Flor de Mayo booth, St Philips Farmers’ Market.  Come visit us this Sunday for a little taste!  And, have us mill these organic grains fresh for you on-site!  Check out http://www.flordemayoarts.com for re-sourcing these grains online.  For a great grain brew, ask at Dragoon and our other local micro-breweries for their latest creation.  Here’s to your health–using our local, organic, heirloom grains!

I invite you also to join me, Tia Marta, next Saturday, February 20, at Tucson Presidio Museum’s community lecture at the Dusty Monk Salon and Saloon, Old Town Artisans downtown Tucson.  I’ll be speaking about the Presidio Period’s Edible Plants, and there just might be a few tastes of these heirloom grain treasures for accompaniment….