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!
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!
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!
Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa), known as tohaws in O’odham, is spreading its glory over the Sonoran Desert this month!
April– at last! The Sonoran Des is in cheer-mode after a long, chilly-wet and wonderful winter-spring! Our plant neighbors are blessed with deep moisture, so brace yourself as they explode into their glorious garb of yellows. Tia Marta here, inviting you to celebrate a rite of spring with a bow not only to the bunnies and birds but also to buds and beans….
Any rite will be fine. You choose your rite way. Here at Casa Choyita, I have some interesting projects in the works to celebrate spring–both involving cookery but of two different “ilks”: a creative recipe for heirloom beans and cholla cactus flower buds, plus, colorful dyes cooked from beans and brittlebush. Every step of the way we’re honoring the plants with thanks for their varied gifts.
S-cuk mu:ñ c ciolim —Frijoles negros con botones de choya–Black beans with cholla buds– by any Borderlands name this combo is delectable. Try my recipe below for a Cubano style. and enjoy! (Dark water from soaking your blackbeans can be saved and used creatively–See explanation below…)
Watch your backyardciolim(pronounced chee’oh–rlim) closely these next couple of weeks to know when to harvest!
The Sonoran Desert’s staghorn cholla (Cylindropuntia versicolor) and other cholla species’ flower buds will be swelling daily. Those little succulent prongs you see on the buds are actual cactus leaves! (This is the only time we’re able to see real leaves on cholla and prickly pear.)
Wait til the buds are as fat as they can get before blooming to harvest while still in the bud stage….
….These buds are not quite ready, still swelling…..
…. My O’odham teacher instructed me to check when the first cholla flower opens on a plant. Then you’ll have a comparison to know the maximum size the buds will get on that cactus–Now the buds are ready to harvest!
RECIPE: Tia Marta’s Black Beans with Cholla Buds, Cubano style:
Simmer your fresh despined (or prepped, dried, reconstituted) cholla buds ahead, until they are soft.
Pre-soak beans: Cover black beans in water (3x the amount of beans) and soak for 6-8 hours minimum. Strain and SAVE your darkened water for future dye projects. You can soak beans a second time and strain to derive even more dark dye-water.
In a crock pot or sauce pan add lots of fresh water to your drained beans, then simmer until softened, 1-2 hours or more, checking water level.
Add to the cook pot: 1 cup of sauteed chunks of sweet red bell peppers, 1/2 cup sauteed chopped onion, 1 Tbsp fresh minced garlic, 1 tsp wild oregano, 1 tsp cumin powder or seed, 4 bay leaves, sea salt to taste, 1 Tbsp agave nectar, 1 Tbsp wine vinegar, 1/2 cup cooked and drained cholla buds, chiltepin peppers to taste (sparingly). [These are my preferred herbs and spices. Do try your own variations!]
Simmer all ingredients for another hour until it thickens and flavors meld. Serve over steamed brown rice for a fabulous veggie meal, or serve cold for a savory summer dish.
For a Tohono O’odham Community College art class we had experimented dyeing yarn and cotton with blackbean juice (left, gray/taupe), cochineal insect (center, pink/lavender), and brittlebush (right, yellow). Later (seen in my chicken basket above for the season) I further experimented with a new medium, eggs! My plant dyes, used cold, actually worked–a warm gray from blackbeans, bright yellow from brittlebush flowers, and deeeeep purple from cochineal! Here’s my close-up process: I placed boiled white eggs (from Mission Garden’s heirloom chickens) into cochineal dye (left) and brittlebush flower dye (right) to bathe for an hour and–voila!–we had Easter eggs. The dye didn’t even penetrate the shells. Who knows–My next step may be to make fancy deviled eggs with pickled cholla buds….
S-ke:g Oam Maṣad!--a happy Yellow Moon to desert harvesters and Southwest cooks from Tia Marta! May we all celebrate visually and gastronomically!
Since we have a short window of opportunity for collecting cholla buds this month, you are invited to get a head start by checking more blog posts full of great ideas. Here are some good links:
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.
This new cookbook–inspired by treats and festive meals in the book Little Women–was my inspiration for the “Southwest Seed Cakes”!
It’s hot off the press and already has us salivating! — a fun book to bring back memories, and to share with kids or grandkids in the kitchen. The two authors of The Little Women Cookbook are not only devourers of books themselves, but also creative foodies. (Tia Marta here, speaking with some familiarity, as the first author, Jenne Bergstrom–prima librarian and ace cook–is the talented daughter of one of my best friends.)
So of course my first inclination, after savoring the culinary moment in LIttle Women that each page brings forth vividly, is to see how you and I might adapt those endearing old recipes to our contemporary Southwest fare. On page 64, when I contemplated Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy’s caraway “seed cakes”, it was an image of saguaro seeds that popped into my mind….
At Solstice saguaro harvest time, I used the dried flower calyx to open fruits and dry them for later. NOW I get to enjoy them again in a Seed Cake…
Hooray–here’s a new way to use the bahidaj cuñ that my Tohono O’odham friend and mentor Juanita-baḍ long ago taught me to harvest. I’ve had them sealed and frozen since June. For the following recipe I could have used barrel cactus seeds (collected last spring) or the nutritious amaranth seed (collected last fall), but for this first experiment I wanted to try just one kind of seed. You’ll see that many of our local Southwest heirlooms lend themselves to this “Seed Cake” treat:
For the flour in the Seed Cakes recipe, I created a mix of amaranth seed flour, mesquite pod flour, and heirloom white Sonora wheat flour which I milled from whole kernel wheat in my Wondermill.
Southwest “Seed-Cakes” Recipe:
(You’ll need a small bowl, a sifting bowl, and a large mixing bowl, muffin tins w/cups if desired, and a beater.)
Ingredients:
2-3 Tbsp dried saguaro seed, with pulp is better (alternatively barrel cactus seed or amaranth seed)
8 oz. (2 sticks) butter (plus more for greasing muffin tins if you don’t have paper liners)
1/2 cup agave “nectar” (agave syrup)
1/2 cup sugar (use sugar to “dredge” remaining agave syrup out of measuring cup to get it all)
4 eggs
2 Tbsp mescal or brandy (optional) or prickly pear juice (to soften seeds)
2 1/4 cups flour (I used 1 3/4 cups heirloom white Sonora wheat flour, 1/2 cup mesquite pod flour, and 1/4 cup amaranth flour)
1/2 tsp sea salt
Directions: Preheat oven to 350F. Put seeds in small bowl with mescal or juice to “hydrate”. In large bowl, cream butter, agave nectar and sugar until fluffy. In separate bowl, sift together flours and salt. To the creamed butter, add eggs, and beat at high speed til smooth (2-3 minutes). Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet mixture, mixing on medium speed until well combined. Stir in seeds and remaining liquid.
Pour batter into greased muffin tins, to 3/4 full per cup.
Bake 18-20 minutes……or
…..until muffins turn golden brown and test done with a thin skewer.
Serve with iced tea on the patio, or for birthday celebrations, or have ready when friends pop in–so versatile.
These tastes of the desert are nutritious too! Mesquite flour and amaranth flour are packed with protein, complex carbs and fiber for sustained energy. White Sonora wheat is a low-gluten flour with its own sweet character. Seeds have vegetable proteins and beneficial oils.
So enjoy every Seed Cake bite!
My copy of The Little Women Cookbook is already opening to new pages that will sprout delectable ideas for cool weather and holidays to come….Stay tuned. It’s such fun to adapt our time-honored local ingredients to favorite old-time recipes in totally new combinations!
This “Southwest Seed Cake” recipe made 14 large muffins and 24 minis!
Where to locate ingredients: Find mesquite flour on the NativeSeedsSEARCH online catalog. Plan to safely harvest your own mesquite pods next year and have them milled at one of several milling events. Amaranth flour (Bob’s Red Mill is easy to use) can be found at Sprouts and Natural Grocers. Amaranth seed is available via NativeSeedsSEARCH. White Sonora wheat grain is celebrated every May at Mission Garden‘s San Ysidro Fiesta. Find this heirloom flour from the first grower BKWFarmsInc (organic), or from Barrio Bread or NativeSeedsSEARCH. Harvesting your own desert seeds for “Seed Cakes” is the most satisfying activity of all. Amaranth will be ready to gather in September and October. And put on your calendar to harvest your own bahidaj kaij (saguaro fruit seed) next June!
May these “Seed Cakes”, from The Little Women Cookbook and Tia Marta, inspire you to celebrate our desert’s bounty with your own creativity!
The Savor Sisters, Amy, Carolyn, and Tia Marta, are good friends, but busy lives mean we rarely get together. Recently we gathered for a memorial service.
For nine years now, we Savor Sisters have regularly brought you interesting and unusual recipes for both wild and heritage foods of the Southwest. If there is a delicious Southwest food, we’ve probably written about it. We concentrate on the food, not ourselves. But recently we found ourselves at the same event, celebrating the life of ecologist Tony Burgess. Thought you might be interested in the faces behind the recipes.
Gather prickly pear pads when they are young and tender.
In the spring, I like to remind people that it’s time to gather and cook fresh nopales or prickly pear pads. Although all prickly pear pads are edible, you want to look for the Ficus indica, the kind imported from Mexico with fewer spines. (The native Engelmann Opuntia produce better fruit.) Gather the pads in your or a neighbor’s yard (ask!) using tongs or buy them from a Mexican grocery store.
Although this variety of prickly pear lacks the big spines of the native variety, they still have very small spines that need to be removed before cooking. In this column we’ve discussed many times how to clean them. Here are the instructions with photos. Wild food enthusiast, Chad Borseth, has put together a helpful video on cleaning freshly harvested nopal pads. You can watch it here. Chad doesn’t have gloves on and is courting disaster. I suggest you wear rubber gloves, just the kind you get at the grocery for washing dishes are adequate. Also, keep a tweezers handy. If you get a sticker in your finger, just take it out. Don’t make a big deal out of it.
Once you have cleaned the prickly pear pads, you can cut them into small pieces (nopalitos) or strips, coat them with a little oil, and either fry or grill or bake in the oven. When they turn olive green, they are done.
Nopales are delicious and also really healthy. Medical studies have confirmed the folk wisdom that they are great at reducing blood sugar and cholesterol. In fact one study showed that just two small pads eaten daily can control non-insulin dependent diabetes and prevent it from worsening.
Today, I want to give you some easy ideas what to do with the nopales once you’ve cooked them. Whenever you are introducing a new unusual food to people who might be a little skeptical (or maybe it is you who is skeptical!), it is good to include them in something familiar. So here are some of my favorites. Be creative and include nopales in your family favorites.
Tomato Nopalito Salsa: In a bowl combine 1/2 cup tomato salsa (homemade or commercial), 1/2 cup cooked black beans, 1/2 cup cooked nopalitos, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro, 1 tablespoon lime juice. Serve with chips and watch it disappear.
Grilled Chicken with Nopalito and Pineapple Salsa
Pineapple Salsa: Combine cooked nopalitos with crushed pineapple, red pepper, onion, garlic and other flavorings. Terrific as a topping for grilled chicken. See complete recipe in previous post here.
Fundido de Nopalito: In a small black iron frying pan, brown 1/4 cup chorizo until cooked. Add 1/4 cup cooked nopalitos, and top with 1/4 cup shredded Mexican or Monterrey jack cheese. Heat in 400 degree oven until cheese melts. Serve with soft tortillas or chips. This recipe makes a small amount so be prepared to make more right away.
Nopalito tacos: Cooked nopales have the texture and bite of meat so they make great vegetarian tacos. Use nice soft flour tortillas (the small ones). For tacos, cut your nopales in strips. Top with salsa and cheese. Add chicken or fish if you like.
Use your own recipe for Apple and Carrot Salad and add nopalitos in small dice.
Apple, Carrot and Nopalito Salad: This is a Southwest twist on an American classic. Use your own recipe or follow the directions here.
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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 cookbooks Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Wild Plantsand The Prickly PearCookbook. The links take you on-line, but consider ordering from your local bookstore. They will love you for it.
This twiggy legume–Coursetia glandulosa— with its spray of white and yellow pea flowers in spring may offer a rare surprise…. (MABurgess photo)
Tia Marta here to share a “culinary-plus” discovery. On a spring hike into King Canyon up from the Desert Museum, Tucson Mountain Park, I was thrilled to see a delicate flower show right along the arroyo margins. It was a veritable shower of creamy yellow pea flowers on a normally non-descript twiggy bush Coursetia glandulosa.
Tiny glands on the flower sepals of Rosary Babybonnet flowers gives it its scientific species name glandulosa. (JRMondt photo)
The cute-sy “baby bonnet” flowers drew me in for a closer look and another surprise awaited me on its hidden stems. What in the world was that gross-looking orange/amber waxy stuff like a growth on the twigs? I had to find out.
Colorful crusty exudate of the Lac Scale insect that specializes on Coursetia glandulosa (MABurgess photo)
My inquiries met with lots of “I donno’s” until I asked the go-to person at the Desert Museum, educator and plantsman Jesus Garcia, who exclaimed, “You found Goma de Sonora!”
Close-up view of “goma de Sonora” (Patty West photo)
An interesting story emerged. He said how traditional people of Sonora used to harvest it as actual food–a healthful nutrient! This gum-substance is exuded by a piercing-sucking insect (Tachardiella fulgens in the Order Hemiptera) as a protective shield from predators and the elements as it draws nutrients from its host plant. I learned from ethnobotanists Drs.Robert Bye and Adelmire Linares of Universidad Autonoma de Mexico that Native people including the Raramuri (Tarahumara) of the Sierra Madre used it not only as food but also as a remedy for poisoning. It is even reported as a dye material. Traditionally, the Tohono O’odham also used this translucent, orange-brown gum as an adhesive mixed with adobe to tightly seal their jars of bahidaj sitol (saguaro fruit syrup). Talk about multi-use!
I chipped off a tiny pea-size piece and tried tasting it—an unusual flavor and a crunch, with a hint of the sugary sap that the insect sucks through its piercing mouthparts. Amazing to learn that it is now being used in innovative gastronomy as flavoring for salsas and aguachiles. (See Wikipedia for a good aguachile recipe.) [By the way, this gomade Sonora is not to be confused with another Goma or Gomaae, a Japanese roasted sesame sauce.]
Look closely to find goma de Sonora. (MABurgess photo)
I’ve only found it twice in all my desert walking and am wondering if goma de Sonora has become rarer in recent times. Is climate change limiting the specialized insect-instigator? If you find it, best to only taste it– or better still–just appreciate its past uses, as it is so rare. Goma de Sonora was reportedly once harvested throughout the whole range of Coursetia from the dry tropics of northwest Mexico into the Sonoran Desert of SW United States. Let’s enjoy this curiosity of Nature and its ethnobotanical history without damaging it. Bring your magnifier on your next hike to check out this crusty little wonder if you are blessed with an actual sighting.
Goma de Sonora encrusted on branches of Coursetia glandulosa (MABurgess photo)
Production of goma de Sonora is a good example of commensalism–in this case the insect not harming the plant. It is an external process. Many desert plant species produce their own gums internally, a significant component of their survival strategies for preventing water loss—as in “gum-Arabic” and “gum-acacia”. Nutrients found in desert plant gums are a super-important part of traditional Desert People’s healthy diet, so stay tuned for another blog….
Tia Marta wishing you happy explorations for Coursetia‘s treasure–goma de Sonora!
Native people in the Southwest have been growing popcorn and collecting mesquite pods for more than 4,000 years. Not sure if they ate them together, but we can!
I have a simple, delicious recipe for you today, but first an announcement. It’s Carolyn this week thinking back to 2011 when I began my first food blog shortly after my book “Cooking the Wild Southwest” was published. I wrote the blog myself for a few years under the title “Carolyn’s Southwest Kitchen,” then thought it would be more fun for me and the readers if other authors joined in. Writers have come and gone but today Tia Marta and Amy Schwemm and I are the regulars. Together we and our former colleagues have published 338 columns on wild greens, other edible wild plants, traditional chile recipes, delicious mole dishes and all manner of delicious Southwestern foods. Those columns will remain in the blogosphere and you can still search them. Recently, we’ve sent you a post every ten days, but knowing that everyone is so busy, we’re dropping back to one post a month. You will hear from each of us four times during the year in regular rotation.
Sprinkling mesquite meal on popped corn is so simple and so delicious I can’t believe I never thought of it before. It came about because I was giving a cooking demonstration to a small group and I knew they would get hungry as they watched me cook their dinner. The demo was in conjunction with my new book “A Desert Feast.” It is my answer to why Tucson was named a UNESCO City of Gastronomy. The answer is complex but one reason is that we are still eating some of the same foods people here have eaten for thousands of years. Throughout the dinner, I wanted to include a range of foods that had been eaten in the over the last 4,000 years in Southern Arizona and popcorn seemed like a good idea for a snack to keep my audience’s hunger at bay for the 45 minutes I’d need to put their complete meal together. If I could season it with mesquite meal, that would help me tick off one of the earliest foods. It was a hit! You’ll love it too.
Sprinkle mesquite meal on plain or buttered popcorn for a naturally sweet treat.
Mesquite Popcorn
6 cups popped corn
2-4 tablespoons melted butter (optional)
6 tablespoons fine mesquite meal
Put the popped corn in a bowl large enough to allow mixing. Drizzle on the melted butter if using. Sprinkle on the mesquite meal, tossing until well combined.
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Want more recipes for mesquite and delicious wild foods of the desert? Find them in my book “Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants.” And if you want to know why Tucson was named a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, I tell the whole 4,000-year story in my newest book “A Desert Feast: Celebrating Tucson’s Culinary History.” Buy them from your local bookstore or order on-line.
Quelites or Bledo in Spanish–Cuhuggia I:wagĭ in O’odham–These nutritious “weeds” of Amaranthus palmeri are springing up all around us after good warm-season rains, ready for harvesting. (MABurgess photo)
At last, summer monsoons have gifted the Sonoran Desert with a veritable explosion of delicious wild greens and a growing gardenful of traditional tepary beans! You don’t have to look far to see patches of what many people call “WEEDS” sprouting up. But you and I know better–and others will too after they taste those yummy greens.
Tia Marta here inviting you to appreciate show-time for many species of greens like Amaranth—”rain spinach”–our wild Amaranthus palmeri, and many varieties long cultivated by traditional farmers of Northwest Mexico and the American Southwest. You can find seeds and info of locally adapted greens and tepary varieties at NativeSeedsSEARCH for planting your own. Come and see living, flowering examples of several Native varieties of greens and teparies right now at Tucson’s Mission Garden.
Hopi Red Dye Amaranth is a quadruple-whammie for garden and kitchen: Its glorious flower makes an ornamental show, its leaves are tasty greens, its seeds are nutritous grain, and then it is used as a safe and pleasing red food dye–used in ceremonial piiki bread. (MABurgess photo)
If you can’t visit Mission Garden in person, you are invited to join us virtually at Mission Garden where will be presenting the “Tepa-lites” (short for teparies and quelites) workshop live next Saturday morning, August 7, 2021, 9-11a.m. (Tucson time) via Zoom or on Facebook Live. This community workshop—free, with no pre-registration necessary—is supported by grant funds through the University of Arizona Desert Lab at Tumamoc Hill.
Now is also show-time for verdulagas, that ground-hugging, tasty, succulent summer “weed” also known as “purslane” (Portulaca oleracea) which can be eaten fresh in salads or steamed as a nutritious veggie. Learn some great purslane recipe ideas at the zoom workshop. (Note its small elongate succulent leaves.)
A confusing verdulaga look-alike known as “horse purslane”, is a low-growing succulent that can fool you. Some people might find this one palatable, but for others it has a taste of soap or an unpleasantly bitter after-taste. (Note its rounder leaves.)
Don’t let yourself be swayed by derogatory names like “pigweed” and “careless weed.” (Those terms are shop-talk by the weed-killer salesperson or the yard guy that wants to eradicate your edible landscaping). Far better to call good weeds by positive names, like “rain spinach” or cuhuggia i:wagĭ (“sleeping spinach” when they wilt), as they are called by the Tohono O’odham, the Desert People who have eaten them in good health for hundreds of years.
At the online workshop we will celebrate the nutritional combination of these monsoon greens and traditional teparies. It’s a way to open eyes and tastebuds to the nutritious foods available right out the front door—Nature’s provender—and to encourage easy planting of the fastest beans known.
When they are young, tepary plants look like miniature versions of common beans, with a three-some of pointed leaves that fold up to save water when the sun is strong at midday. It is the most arid-adapted bean alive, domesticated from wild teparies by early farmers right here in the desert possibly 6,000 years ago.
OK, admittedly tepary beans aren’t “fast food” per se (they do take a long time to soak and cook), but you can grow them to maturity in about 60 days—and that’s fast for a bean. THIS WEEK is the last opportunity to get them into the ground for a harvest this fall. My admired O’odham gardener-friends, Laura Kerman-bad, her brother, and Juanita Ahil-bad, always recommended that teparies (and other traditional summer crops) could be planted successfully through the first week in August. So make it happen….get busy and dive into planting that little garden plot which is now soaked with Nature’s own irrigation!
Chilpotle red teparies–pasta faggioli Sonoran style with greens–will be introduced at the workshop….
Additional info: For helpful greens identification and surprising recipes for greens and tepary beans, check Tia Marta’s earlier post “Blessed Monsoon Weeds”
Savor the Southwest: 