April Brings Nopales

April 17, 2015 / Savor Blog Partners / 4 Comments

Grilled Chicken with Nopalito and Pineapple Salsa (from The Prickly Pear Cookbook)

If it’s April, it’s time to gather nopales here on the Sonoran Desert. Carolyn here today tempting you to read further with this photo of a delicious salsa made with nopalitos. (Definition of nopalito: a nopal, or cactus pad, cut into little pieces). At the bottom of the post, I’m going to give you the recipe and a video of how to turn a cactus pad into a yummy taco.

The many varieties of prickly pear put out their new growth when the spring warms up. All prickly pear pads are edible (meaning they not only won’t kill you but in this case are very nutritious), but they are only appropriate for food when they are new. After about six weeks, they develop a fibrous infrastructure. The easiest kind to prepare are the pads from the large Mexican variety of prickly pear that do not grow wild this far north. They are called Ficus indica or sometimes Burbank because Luther Burbank did some breeding work on them. The wild cactus pads are also delicious, but harder to prepare because of the abundance of spines. You can do a rough estimate of when a pad is ready to pick if it is about the size of your hand. The nopales available in Mexican grocery stores are grown by farmers who know how to manipulate the plant to keep fresh pads coming year ’round.

Pick nopales in the spring when the size of your hand.

To prepare the nopales, you’ll use tongs, of course, and then don rubber kitchen gloves to protect your hands as you get rid of the stickers. You don’t need industrial strength gloves, just good quality ones from the grocery store will do. Using a common steak knife, scrape vigorously against the growth (from outer edge to stem) to remove the stickers.

Scrape the thorns vigorously in the direction of the stem.

The edge has lots of stickers so just trim it off.

At this point, you can cut it into small pieces to cook or leave it whole and cut it up later. You can cook them in a frying pan filmed with oil, or use the Rick Bayless method (he of TV show fame) and toss them with a little oil, sprinkle with sale, put on a cookie sheet and roast in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes. In any case, you should check them and turn them over as they cook.

Cut into small pieces to cook.

The nopales will turn from bright green to a more olive color as they cook. The gummy sap that some people find objectionable will dry up and become less noticeable.

The cooked nopalitos turn from bright green to olive.

You can also cook nopales on the barbecue alongside some chicken to make a delicious taco. This video ( find it at the bottom of the magazine article) shows you how to clean the nopal and grill it. Take a look here.

Here’s the recipe for the sauce in the picture at the top of the blog:

Grilled Chicken with Nopalito and Pineapple Salsa

(Makes 4 servings)

This is good to serve as a light entrée with rice and a vegetable. It is also great as a stuffing for fresh flour tortillas topped with shredded lettuce.

1 raw, cleaned prickly pear pad

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 cup canned crushed pineapple packed in it’s own juice

¼ cup finely chopped red bell pepper

¼ cup thinly sliced green onions, including some tops

1 tablespoons canned green chiles

1 finely minced serrano chile (optional)

½ teaspoon finely minced garlic

2 tablespoons lime juice

¼ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon finely minced cilantro (optional)

4 large boneless chicken breasts

Cut prickly pear pad in 1 ½ inch squares. Film a heavy frying pan with the oil and add the prickly pear pads. Cook over low heat, turning occasionally, until pieces have given up much of their juice and are slightly brown. Remove from pan, cool, and chop into pieces as wide as a matchstick and about ¼-inch long.

Transfer to medium bowl. Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine and set aside for flavors to mingle.

Grill chicken breasts until done. Slice each one crosswise into five or six pieces and arrange each on a plate. Put a portion of the salsa on top of or beside the chicken.

______________________

Want more recipes for the bountiful crop of nopales we’ll have this year? Check out The Prickly Pear Cookbook and Cooking the Wild Southwest. You can flip through The Prickly Pear Cookbook here. Both books are available locally at Native Seeds/SEARCH on Campbell or from on-line booksellers.

Here’s to the Budding Desert!

March 13, 2015August 9, 2017 / Savor Blog Partners / Leave a comment

red staghorn cholla flower and bud (MABurgess photo)

Can you almost hear them? I mean the sound of buds swelling and bursting with life out there is the rain-soaked desert? This spring the wildflowers are a joy, for sure, but the perennials this season will really be in their glory. Tia Marta here with some wonderful ideas about how we can share in the coming cornucopia of cholla.

Cholla cactus flower buds emerging, covered with spines--brimming with goodness for all desert creatures….

Cholla cactus flower buds emerging, covered with spines–brimming with goodness for all desert herbivores….(MABurgess)

It should be a bountiful bloom this year–the buds are off and running already. Every branch on our Sonoran Desert chollas is loaded with little buds, and they seem to double in size every day. It looks the same in the western part of Arizona, the Mojave….a zillion buds on the golden branches of Cylindropuntia echinocarpa.

While the chollas are preparing for their yearly reproductive ritual–a wildly colorful show for attracting pollinators–many desert creatures will be benefitting from this flamboyant event, including Native Desert People who have always shared in the bounty.

cholla feeds many desert creatures (MABurgess photo)

You can learn traditional and modern ways of harvesting, preparing and cooking cholla buds in one of several classes coming up soon in April. With the guidance of ethnobotanist of Tia Marta (yo,) we will get out in the bloomin’ stickery desert, get up close and personal with chollas, get to know their lore, their anatomy, their culture, learn to carefully de-spine them, cook, dry, pickle, and prep them into the most unusual and fun recipes. Their health benefits are off the charts–we’ll learn about those too.

prepping cooked cholla buds with I’itoi’s onions for White Sonoran Wheatberry salad (MABurgess photo)

The biggest kick will be impressing your family and friends with off-the-wall gourmet recipes that no one else makes (other than some wild and wonderfully creative foodies like Janos Wilder, Chef of the Downtown Kitchen, not to mention NativeSeeds/SEARCH staff cooks!)

rusty orange flower of the various-colored staghorn chollas

Rusty orange flower of the various-colored staghorn cholla, Cylindropuntia versicolor (MABurgess photo)

We have many cholla varieties in the Sonoran Desert—each with its own distinct characters and timing of flowering. The cane cholla (Cylindropuntia spinosior) is found in a few places in low desert but is more typical of higher desert and desert grassland. It’s the one with the persistent round yellow fruits, and gorgeous magenta flowers. The jumping cholla (C. fulgida) always has long clusters of green persisting green fruits hanging like bunches of grapes. It typically blooms with the monsoon rains of summer with a lovely deep rose flower. If you can find the buds of either of these chollas in their season, their buds are great tasting too. The buds of both are spiny, but the first-mentioned staghorn cholla (C.versicolor) bears easily-removable spines, so that’s the one my Tohono O’odham “grandmother” and mentor Juanita preferred to pick. I will be demonstrating her teaching at our upcoming workshops in April.

cane cholla in bud with last year's persistent yellow fruits

Cane cholla (C.spinosior) in bud with last year’s persistent yellow fruits

fruits of jumping cholla clinging to former years' fruits

Fruits of jumping cholla (C.fulgida) clinging to former years’ fruits

Tongs specially designed for harvesting cholla buds and prickly pear–available at Flor de Mayo tent Sunday St Phillips farmers’ market

The best instrument for safely harvesting buds is simply a pair of tongs. Long barbeque tongs can help you maneuver through hazardous cactus branches at a safe distance. We commissioned a young woodworker from Sedona to fabricate the right size tongs for us out of fire-killed ponderosa pine—available at the NativeSeeds/SEARCH store and in our selection of handmade wooden utensils at our Flor de Mayo booth at the Sunday St Phillips market.

Cholla buds from yellow and red flowers–de-spined and ready to cook (MABurgess)

After de-spining, the buds must be further prepared by roasting or boiling before eating them either plain as a tasty vegetable or fixing into other delectable dishes.

Here’s an easy sure-fire winner for pot lucks……

Delectable cholla bud and white Sonora wheat-berry salad

Marinated Wheat-berry Salad with Cholla Buds!

Ingredients: 2 cups cooked and cooled White Sonora Wheat-berries** 1/4 -1/2 cup of your favorite Italian vinagrette dressing

¼ cup chopped celery
¼-1/2 cup chopped colorful sweet peppers
¼ cup minced I’itoi’s Onion bulbs and tops, or minced red onion
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes cut in half (optional)
½ cup cooked and cooled cholla buds. Romaine lettuce leaves as bed

Instructions: Marinate cooked white Sonora wheat-berries in the dressing overnight in frig, stir once or twice.
Mix in all fresh chopped veggies and cholla buds.
Serve on a fresh romaine leaf. Makes 6 generous servings.

first cut into cholla bud cornbread–yum!

At our up-coming Cholla Bud Harvesting Workshops you will joyously taste cholla in a variety of gourmet recipes. You will a;sp learn how to preserve them, dry them for storage, learn their survival strategies and how those natural “tricks” can help us. Come “internalize” a deeper appreciation of these desert treasures!

For more photos and interesting details, please check out my Edible Baja Arizona article from April 2014 online at http://www.ediblebajaarizona.com. You can view a neat short clip about cholla harvesting created by videographer Vanda Pollard through a link on my website http://www.flordemayoarts.com. Best of all, you can attend one of our scheduled Cholla Bud Harvesting Workshops to learn the process first-hand! From there you can harvest your own–and bring these nutritious and off-the-wall taste treats into your home and party menus.

Workshop Dates (find a downloadable flyer on the website http://www.flordemayoarts.com):
Saturday April 4, 2015, 7:30-9:30am—register at 520-907-9471
Wednesday, April 8, 8-11am, Pima Co Parks & Rec 520-615-7855 x 6
Saturday, April 11, 8-11am, Westside, sponsored by NativeSeeds/SEARCH, call 520-622-0830×100 Saturday, April 18, 8:30-11:30am, Tohono Chul Park, 520-742-6455 x 228

Hoping to see you at one of these fun classes! Happy harvesting–to all budding harvesters and cholla aficionados!

**Certified organic heirloom White Sonora Wheat-berries from BKWFarms are available at the Flor de Mayo booth at FoodInRoot’s Sunday St Phillips Farmers Market, St Phillips Plaza, N Campbell Avenue, or online from http://www.flordemayoarts.com in ½ lb, full pound, kilo bags, and greater quantities for chefs. Also available from the NativeSeeds/SEARCH Store, 3061 N Campbell Ave, Tucson.

Dry cholla buds for reconstituting to cook are available at San Xavier Coop Association booth at Thursday Santa Cruz Market and at NativeSeeds/SEARCH.

Sweet Roasted Mesquite for a Happy Valentine’s

February 13, 2015 / Savor Blog Partners / 3 Comments

Valentine’s Roasted Mesquite and Heirloom White Sonora Wheat Oatmeal Cookies

[If only this were a scratch-and-sniff site….]

‘Tis the season for the sweetest, rarest, and heart-healthy mesquite treat of the whole year– Roasted Mesquite! During this relatively cool and occasionally soppy “wintery” weather, stored mesquite pods, which may have drawn in moisture from the humid air since harvesting last summer, can be roasted or toasted for ease of milling into a fine meal. The result is a transformation into something even sweeter than the already-yummy natural raw mesquite meal.

Tia Marta here to introduce you to Roasted Mesquite and to share some creative ideas for celebrating Valentine’s (and beyond).

When mesquite pods are roasted, their complex sugars burst with an almost chocolat-y bouquet. Roasted mesquite has hints of its “botanical cousin,” the carob, from the Near East (known as Saint John’s Bread in the Bible, as it fed St. John so well through his desert wilderness retreat). Those soluble complex carbohydrates that make mesquite such a heart-healthy food–giving sustained energy, helping with cholesterol, balancing blood sugar—come flavorfully to the fore when mesquite is roasted. Take note: all fitness fans, hypoglycemics, diabetic and gluten-free cooks! Roasted mesquite is a super booster-food especially for you. Its complex sweetness and its nutrition make it a gift for everyone you love.

Comparing roasted mesquite flour and natural raw mesquite flour (MABurgess photo)

You can use roasted mesquite meal in so many ways. In addition to baking with it, the distinctive aroma and richness puts it into the category of seasoning or spice. Shake roasted mesquite through a big-holed spice shaker to jazz up bland dishes or for sprinkling atop coffeecakes, muffins, sundaes, custards, frapaccinos, salads….Yum, it is waiting for your inventions. I make a little mix of garlic powder, sea salt, and roasted mesquite meal, then put the combo in a shaker and keep it handy by the stove or on the table to sprinkle on about everything. Try it on your steamed greens or in quinoa. When corn-on-the-cob season rolls around, there isn’t anything better than my roasted mesquite salt dusted on it. (Mesquite orchardist and agriculturalist Mark Moody will have fresh corn with roasted mesquite at Flagstaff farmers markets this summer—don’t miss it.)

Add a tablespoon of roasted mesquite meal to any hot cereal. It does wonders for oatmeal. Mesquite is the tastiest of all nutritional supplements. Whatever you add it to, you know you are boosting flavor and nutrition—making hearts happier!

Taste the glorious nutrition of a roasted mesquite and berry smoothie! (MABurgess photo)

Taste the glorious nutrition of a roasted mesquite and red berry smoothie! (MABurgess photo)

Try this delectable and easy Desert Delight–Roasted Mesquite & Red Berry Smoothie—so colorful it can make breakfast into a Valentine’s feast. So rich it can be a Valentine’s dessert served with a spoon. (You can double or triple this recipe for company):

Presoak: 1 Tablespoon chia seed in 1 Cup organic apple juice for a few minutes.

In a blender, mix:

1 cup organic plain or vanilla non-fat yogurt.

2 Tbsp. Roasted Velvet Mesquite Meal*

1 cup frozen raspberries or blueberries

2 Tbsp. prickly pear juice or nectar

your pre-soaked applejuice-chia mix

½ or whole ripe banana

1 Tbsp agave nectar (optional as desired for more sweetness)

A few ice cubes (optional as needed for chill or dilution)

Blend on medium ½ minute until smoothie is gloriously pink. Serve in parfait glass with a thin sprinkle of chia seed or pinch of roasted mesquite meal on top as a garni.

Valentine’s gluten-free roasted mesquite/almond coffeecake (MABurgess photo)

Ingredients for gluten-free roasted mesquite and almond coffeecake looks like an ad for Bob’s Red Mill

And here’s a wonderful gluten-free recipe to share with wheat-sensitive friends:

Muff’s Gluten-Free Roasted Mesquite/Almond CoffeeCake:

(This is a heavier cake that sometimes turns out more like an energy bar when sliced.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil or butter an 8×8” pyrex baking dish and dust with rice flour.

Sift together:

½ cup Roasted Velvet Mesquite Meal*

¾ cup organic brown rice flour and/or amaranth flour

½ cup almond meal

¼ cup tapioca flour

2 tsp guar gum or locust bean gum (for leavening)

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp sea salt

Mix In:

¼ cup agave nectar

¼ cup canola or other cooking oil

¾ cup soy milk, rice milk, or almond milk

Beat separately then add in:

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp almond extract

Pour into baking dish. Bake 25-35 minutes or more until cake tests done. Serve with thanks to the nutritious bean trees of the desert!

Roasted mesquite cookies in valentine iron pan

Roasted mesquite heirloom wheat & cherry oatmeal cookies

Now for a relatively “healthy” cookie try this celebration treat with roasted mesquite—

Muff’s Roasted Mesquite & White Sonora Wheat Valentine Oatmeal Cookies (with pinyones and dried red cherries to honor George Washington’s birthday too)—a great cookie for any time of year.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together: 1 cup (2 sticks) organic butter softened, ½ cup organic brown sugar firmly packed, and ½ cup organic white sugar

Beat in and mix until creamy: 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla

In a separate bowl, sift together: 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp sea salt, 1 cup organic White Sonora Wheat flour**, and ½ cup Roasted native velvet Mesquite Meal*

Mix dry ingredients with moist ingredients until smooth.

Add, and mix in: 2-3 cups quick oatmeal (uncooked), ¼-1/2 cup pine nuts (pinyones) shelled, and ¾ cup dry cherries or dry cranberries.

Onto a well-greased cookie sheet, drop 1-tsp glops of cookie dough well-spaced. (You could use a heart-shaped mold or heart cookie cutter.) Press a dry cherry on top of each glop for décor.

Bake 10-12 minutes until barely golden brown, and enjoy the festive desert flavor of roasted mesquite with your Valentine!

Roasted Mesquite and Heirloom White Sonora Wheat Oatmeal cookies droozled with prickly pear juice (MABurgess photo)

*For purchasing Roasted Mesquite Meal–seek and ye shall find. There are only a few places where you can source this seasonal culinary treasure, if you are not roasting and milling it yourself! Find it at the wonderful NativeSeeds/SEARCH store (3061 N. Campbell Ave, Tucson, www.nativeseeds.org). Our roasted mesquite is from native Arizona velvet mesquite, Prosopis velutina, grown and milled with the highest standards. For tastes, visit the Flor de Mayo booth on Sundays at St.Phillips Farmers Market (SE corner River Rd and Campbell Ave), or order at www.flordemayoarts.com via PayPal. It is also online at www.mesquiteflour.com and from the Prickly Pops booth at Thursday Santa Cruz Farmers Market.

**The special local ingredient for the cookie recipe above, heirloom White Sonora Wheat flour, is available at two Tucson locations. Several different grinds of Hayden Flour Mills’ heirloom flour is at the Native Seeds/SEARCH store. For super-fresh-milled “live” White Sonora flour, from local, certified organic whole grain grown by BKWFarms, you can contact Tia Marta by phone or email by the Friday before pick-up at Sunday’s St Phillips Farmers Market, along with the roasted mesquite meal.

For more ideas on how to cook with mesquite—roasted or natural–check out the recipe book Eat Mesquite! published by www.desertharvesters.org, and available at the NativeSeeds/SEARCH store. Visit www.bajaaz.org, the website of Baja Arizona Sustainable Agriculture, for more mesquite details.

Newcomers as well as confirmed “desert rats” can see the actual plants which produce the local ingredients of our Valentine Cookies—mesquite trees and heirloom White Sonora Wheat growing at our special Baja Arizona parks. See and appreciate them in their winter-spring glory at the Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace Mission Garden (base of A-Mountain, Saturdays), at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and in the ethnobotanical garden at Tohono Chul Park.

Enjoying roasted mesquite treats is indeed another way of rejoicing in the desert’s natural bounty, and of supporting appropriate, sustainable desert agriculture. Happy Valentine’s, and may your heart be happy cooking with roasted mesquite!—from Tia Marta and Rod at www.flordemayoarts.com.

More Ideas for Wild Dates in Borderlands Towns

January 30, 2015March 16, 2015 / Savor Blog Partners / 1 Comment

Washingtonia filifera near UA main gate (R.Mondt photo)

Our native fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, near UA main gate. Original seed from Arizona’s KOFA Mountains. (R.Mondt photo)

Yes, we can delight in the most fabulous wild dates right here in Baja Arizona. We don’t have to put out lots of energy into finding these tasty little morsels because they are now all over the urban landscape. Once, in olden times, they were confined to oases, but now they line every old neighborhood street in low-desert towns. Harvest at the right time and enjoy their bounty.

Our Native Fan Palm Washingtonia filifera, UA photo (Note the stout trunk)

Tia Marta here to continue our culinary explorations of native fan palm fruit. Our street sentinels are more than vertical shade. They bear other surprising gifts. Our so called California fan palms (“palma taco”) offer tiny sweet and plentiful fruits (the size of a plump pea), and were harvested and relished by Native People of the Sonoran and Mojave deserts long before Hispanics brought date palms (the pinnate-leafed palms) from the Old World.

Washingtonia robusta in a S.Tucson landscape

Washingtonia robusta planted in a S.Tucson landscape

When ripe in summer into fall, zillions of fruits hang from pendulous stalks of Washingtonia filifera, with 20 pounds or more of the little buggers in one cluster—talk about prolific! As mentioned in my blog-sister’s post two weeks ago, Carolyn and I were challenged by renowned ethnobotanist Dr Richard Felger to try our hands at creating some “contemporary” recipes for this ancient and well-adapted desert food—which is now disregarded as nothing more than a columnar street planting. We know from ethnographic accounts (see them summarized in Wendy Hodgson’s Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert, UA Press, 2001) that for the Native Cahuilla of Southern California, the fan palm meant survival—a staple in their diet, used both fresh or dried and ground, hard seeds and all, into a flour for cooking or griddling. Another ethnobiologist friend Dr. Amadeo Rea (1997) documented Pima children collecting fan palm fruits as snacks. Dr. Felger intends now to bring this native palm back into new, appropriate use as a sustainable desert food crop.

Fruits newly harvested from the California fan palm Washingtonia filifera (MABurgess photo)

Washingtonia fruit is mostly seed, but the small amount of pulp has a group impact (MABurgess photo)

Washingtonia fruit is mostly seed, but the small amount of pulp has an impact in numbers (MABurgess photo)

Harvesting the high hanging fruit clusters proves challenging. Native harvesters used a lasso. More recently some harvesters fit a sharp can lid to the end of a pole to cut off the entire fruit stalk. A Tohono O’odham saguaro harvesting kuipaD might suffice—or a long-poled tree-trimmer—both worth a try.

In addition to their success as hot-desert food producers, both fan palms native to southwest North America, Washingtonia filifera (the stout, shorter one) and W.robusta (the super-tall, spindlier one), provide excellent nutrition. It has been estimated that one fan palm’s fruit could sustain one human’s nutritional needs for more than 200 days! Get a load of these figures from James W. Cornett (Principles Jour.Internat.PalmSociety,1987): Protein 3.1%, Carbs 77.7%, Fiber 10.4%, Calcium 110 mg per 100g, VitaminA(Carotenes) 180mg per 100g. Comparing these wild date nutritional figures with the commercial date palm (Phoenix dactylifera), our wild fan palm is way ahead on all counts except carbs (carbs 94.1% in standard dates).

Washed and drained fruits of Washingtonia filifera ready for snacking! (MABurgess photo)

Washed and drained fruits of Washingtonia filifera in Tarahumara sifting basket, ready for snacking! (MABurgess photo)

Since the fruits of W.robusta (the tall one) are even tinier than W.filifera, I chose to do my foodie experiments with the latter one’s “bigger” datelets–both small. Fruits of both are mostly seed, a stony seed surrounded by a thin layer of sweet skin and dry, date-like pulp. Here are two fun ideas I’ve come up with for using fan palm fruits, which can be done easily in any kitchen or patio. These ideas also might present interesting potential for commercial-scale food production. (I hope our wonderful local companies like Cheri’s Desert Harvest are listening to the significance herein!) So, here’s my first idea–really in three delicious parts:

Simmering fan palm fruitsSolar Fan Palm Syrup, Datil Molasses, or Datil Candy

SOLAR FAN PALM SYRUP

Directions:

Wash thoroughly and drain 4 cups desert fan palm fruits. Place in a saucepan with 8 cups drinking water to cover fruit well. On stove-top, gently simmer the fruits for at least 30 minutes, (if using solar oven, make it 1 hour). Add more drinking water to keep fruits covered. Let cool and stand in refrig for 1-3 days. This process is bringing out the complex sugars into solution. Again, when you have a little time, bring back to simmer 15-20 minutes. Taste the liquid. It should be deliciously sweet with a rich, almost smokey bouquet—but still thin. With a sieve, decant the sweet liquid from the cooked fruits, saving the fruits aside.

After sieving out the simmered fruit, the liquid is being concentrated in a solar oven with oven cover slightly open to release moisture (MABurgess photo

[Here is where my experience reducing thin saguaro fruit juice kicked in. I knew that this thin, sweet liquid from the fan palm dates had to be cooked down slowly.]

Pour the juice into a solar-oven-worthy pan and put in preheated solar oven—without a lid on the pan. Let the glass cover of the oven be slightly open to allow steam/moisture to escape. Check after 15 minutes. If syrup is desired, check for correct syrup consistency. Keep heating until thickened to pourable syrup. Then, try this wonderful and healthful solar syrup over mesquite pancakes for the ultimate Southwestern breakfast!

Concentrated Solar Fan Palm Syrup--nothing added--just water and fan palm fruit! (MABurgess)

Concentrated Solar Fan Palm Syrup–nothing added–just water and fan palm fruit! Come taste it at the StPhil’s farmers market!(MABurgess)

“DATIL SYLVESTRE” MOLASSES

With more time and further moisture reduction, there are more delicious options….. Here’s one: For the best, richest “Datil Molasses” you ever tasted, let the liquid cook down for another 45 minutes or an hour (depending on sun intensity). Be careful not to overcook, which might leave a sweet glue on the bottom of your pan. (The same reduction of liquid can be done of course on the stove-top or over a fire, like reducing maple sap, but hey, this is a desert product. We’ve got our fuel overhead! Let’s use it.)

“DULCES DE DATIL SYLVESTRE”

Carrying the process of concentrating the syrup yet another step further…If an even more chewy candy is desired, you might use the concentrated sweet molasses in a candy mold or for gelling like a fan-palm gummy bear.

Here’s another totally delightsome, exotic yet simple idea for maximum pleasure from fan palm fruits…..

DESERT OASIS CORDIAL

Wild Fan Palm Cordial (MABurgess photo)“Desert Oasis Cordial”

It takes about 4-5 weeks to make this rich cordial liqueur, so plan ahead. With a fall harvest of wild dates you could start making your Desert Oasis Cordial by Thanksgiving and have it ready for Christmas-time celebrations. But don’t wait—when the fruits are ripe, go for it.

This is how I did it:

Wash, wash, wash and drain at least 2 cups of ripe native fan palm fruitlets (W.filifera), enough to pack firmly into a mason jar. Into the packed jar, pour vodka of your choice, filling all the space between the little fruits to the brim to cover them. (You could use tequila or EverClear for differing degrees of delight.) Screw on lid and place jar in a cool dark corner of your kitchen, where you can be reminded to agitate it. After a week, open it and add more vodka to cover fruits, as the fruit tissue will have absorbed some of the alcohol. Shake and turn over the closed jar every week. For the herbalists among us, you will recognize this process is basically tincturing the wild dates. After 4-5 weeks, decant (i.e. separate) the liquid from the fruit. The decanted liquid will be a rich dark chocolate brown color like Godiva liqueur only translucent. Taste it and serve sparingly in small cordial glasses. Store any remaining liqueur in a closed decanter for the next festive occasion.

W.filifera fruit AFTER tincturing and decanting makes a fabulous alcoholic treat (seeds to be discarded) (MABurgess)

Decanting the marinated fan palm fruits from the liqueur (MABurgess)

After both your Fan-Palm Syrup-making and your Desert Oasis Cordial-making, you will have delicious fruits left over in the straining or decanting process.

Don’t forget the simple joy of snacking on little fruits, doing the pulp-from-seed separation maneuver with your tongue and teeth. Move over, sunflower seeds! The boiled fruits after syrup-making are still tasty. Better still–the vodka-soaked wild dates give an extra kick, so don’t overindulge.

Both can be briefly quick-whirled or mashed in a blender, meat grinder, or CuisinArt to begin the process of separating the remaining pulp from the hard seeds.

After decanting the cordial, remaining fruit is whirled and put thru colander to separate pulp from seeds

[If someone has a good idea of how best to separate seeds from pulp easily, please share it!] Fruit leathers, energy bars, jams, “datil newtons”, spreads, supplements—there are SO many ways the remaining fruit pulp could be used, so that none of the nutrients and fiber need go to waste. Even the hard seeds could be parched and ground into a nutritious flour—as Native People did in earlier times, to their advantage.

“Desert Oasis Cordial” from wild fan palm fruits (MABurgess photo)

BTW, after snacking on Washingtonia fruitlets, be sure to check your smile in the mirror for black flecks of the yummy pulp between your incisors. I can see it now—the next fad question after “Got milk?” will be “Got datil?” That could make for a wild date experience. Enjoy!

For a taste of the native fan palm fruits, come by our Flor de Mayo booth at Sunday’s St Phillips farmers market, 9am-1pm. There we also have a demo of solar-oven cookery in action. The cleverly designed solar ovens are for sale from us with a discount and no shipping costs. We’d like to see every household in Baja Arizona equipped with a solar oven for emergencies as well as for sustainable living.

You can find the perfect makings for the pancakes to eat with your Solar FanPalm Syrup for that Southwestern breakfast–mesquite flour and heirloom White Sonora Wheat flour— at the Native Seeds/SEARCH store (3061 N Campbell, Tucson) and at Flor de Mayo’s booth at St Phillips farmers market. See you on Sunday! Have your taste-buds ready for a wild date.

Playing with Washingtonia palm fruit

January 9, 2015 / Savor Blog Partners / 10 Comments

Washingtonia filifera (California fan palm)

It’s Carolyn this week, taking you backstage to a food experiment. As we move into a hotter, drier climate here in the Southwest, we’ll have to consider agricultural products that can handle the changes. Although I’ve been playing with edible wild plants for decades and Tia Marta (Muffin Burgess) has put in similar years of work, it’s always exciting for us to find something new. We’re going to do a two-part investigation of what to do with a wild food new to both of us.

A big box of W. robusta palm fruit arrived at my house.

Last fall I received an email from noted ethnobotanist Dr.Richard Felger. He and a colleague, Dr. Don Hodel, an environmental horticulturist for the University of California Cooperative Extension, were working on some wild palm fruits, two species of Washingtonia, also called Mexican or California fan palm. He wondered if I could come up with some recipes. Back in the early 1970s when I was just beginning work with wild edibles, Dr. Felger took me on one of my first plant walks and over the years has answered many questions for me. I figured I owed him. I also asked Tia Marta if she wanted to join in the fun.

After a couple of days, FedX deposited a box with about 10 pounds of tiny hard black nodules on my doorstep – Washingtonia robusta fruit gathered from a park in Signal Hill, Calif. , near Long Beach. Not promising, they were little more than skin on seed with almost nonexistent flesh, nothing like their cousins the palm fruits we know as dates. Humans have a long history of using palm fruits – in fact some scholars think that the honey referenced in the Bible was actually date syrup.

Wendy Hodgson, THE expert on wild desert foods, says in her book Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert, that the Washingtonia fruits were very important to the Cahuilla and Cocopa. She writes, “They made flour from the ground dried fruits and mixed it with other flours and water to form a mush.” We don’t eat much mush anymore (unless you consider oatmeal for breakfast), so I’d have to devise something else to do with them.

I took 4 cups of fruit and covered them with 8 cups of water. Brought it all it to a boil, then simmered uncovered for 30 minutes. I ran the softened fruit through a blender in batches and strained the liquid, ending up with 5 cups of almost black liquid that tasted something like prune juice.

Even flowers don’t make this liquid look appetizing.

. I simmered it until reduced to ¾ cup pulpy liquid then spread the remaining pulp and seeds on a cookie sheet and put it in sun to dry. Later, I sifted out ¼ cup dried flakes and discarded the hard seeds.

Pulp and seeds drying in the sun.

At this point I wrote Dr. Felger my scientific assessment: Sweet — but definitely not yummy. I pressed on and made some tasty muffins. Since there is interest in natural sweeteners, I concentrated on that aspect. Using a standard muffin recipe, I substituted the palm syrup for the liquid milk and reduced the sugar. I added the dried flakes just because I had them and to add some texture.

Muffins with palm syrup and dried flakes.

Fan Palm Muffins

Makes 1 dozen

1 ¾ cup unbleached white flour

¾ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 tablespoons sugar

¼ cup dry powdered milk

¼ cup dried Washingtonia flakes

2 eggs

¾ cup pulpy Washingtonia syrup

3 tablespoons melted butter

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. In another bowl, mix eggs, Washingtonia syrup and melted butter. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Do not overmix; some lumps are OK. Bake in greased muffin tins at 400 degrees F for about 15 minutes or until they appear done.

Washingtonia filifera fruit (about 1/4 inch) on left and W. robusta on the right.

Meanwhile, Dr. Hodel acquired some Washingtonia filifera fruit from a street tree near Indio, Calif., and sent another 10 pounds. Oh boy. They were still tiny, but bigger than the robusta. I put them through a similar process of simmering, blending, straining and reducing. The taste difference was subtle – more date-like than prune-like. Better.

I decided to use the filifera syrup in a healthy treat, showcasing its natural sweetness, and came up with these truffles. I used almond butter, but other nut butters will do.

Nutty truffles sweetened with palm syrup and rolled in cocoa.

Nutty Truffles

Makes 1 dozen

½ cup almond butter

½ cup popped amaranth grain

¼ cup ground popped amaranth

6 tablespoons Washingtonia filifera palm syrup

1/3 cup cocoa or carob powder

Combine all ingredients except cocoa in a bowl and blend with a spoon. Form into 12 small balls. Roll each in cocoa. (You can buy popped amanranth at Native Seeds SEARCH)

♥ ♦ ♥ ♦

What’s the point of trying to find a way to use the fan palm fruits? With climate change bringing hotter, drier summers to the Southwest, ethnobotanists like Dr. Felger and Dr. Hodel are looking for plants that can take those conditions and still produce food.

I don’t expect a rush of people heading out to gather bushel baskets of fan palm fruits. They’ll appeal to the more ardent wild food enthusiasts who, like me, want to taste every berry on every bush. But they may have uses in more industrialized food production. They are sweet and easy to harvest and process. Some entrepreneur may see opportunity there. After all, nobody I know makes their own agave syrup.

(Check out Dr. Richard Felger ‘s article at “Arizona Native Food Plants for a Dry Future” in The Plant Press: The Arizona Native Plant Society vol. 37, no. 2: 1, 3-5.)

Mesquite Gingerfolk for Christmas

December 12, 2014December 16, 2018 / Savor Blog Partners / 8 Comments

Mesquite Gingerfolk are tasty treats for the holidays.

It’s Carolyn today sharing one of my favorite holiday recipes. The flavor of mesquite meal blends nicely with the warm spices we like in the winter. These Mesquite Ginger Folk are pretty cute and they taste wonderful. I used good quality margarine rather than butter or Crisco because I like the eventual texture and the flavor is good. This recipe makes a spicy cookie. If you want more of the mesquite flavor to come through, cut down on the spices. The dough must be well chilled before you roll it out, so this is a two-step recipe: mixing first, then later rolling and baking.

Mesquite Ginger Folk (makes about 3 1/2 dozen rolled cookies)

In a medium bowl, combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour, 1/2 cup mesquite meal, 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 2 teaspoons ground ginger, 1 teaspoon allspice, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper. Stir and fluff with a fork and then set aside.

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to beat 1 1/2 sticks margarine with 1/2 cup packed brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in 2/3 cup molasses and one large egg. Then gradually add the flour mixture to make a stiff dough. You may need to give up the mixer for a wooden spoon. Divide the dough into two thick disks and wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until chilled, about three hours.

When you are ready to bake, take one disk from the refrigerator . You’ll want the dough just warm enough to roll without cracking. While you are waiting, preheat the oven to 350 F. and put out brown paper or wire racks to receive the baked cookies. You’ll also need lots of flour to keep the dough from sticking when rolled. So get a small bowl of flour, take part of the disk, and roll it in the flour before you roll out with the rolling pin.

Roll a ball of dough in the flour.

Roll out the dough about 1/8-inch thick on flour-dusted surface. Cut out the cookies and transfer them to the cookie sheet, placing them 1 inch apart. Gently knead the scraps together and roll out again. When you fill one cookie sheet, bake it for about 10 – 12 minutes while you prepare another sheet.

This cutter gives a nice uni-sex cookie.

If you wish, you can use raisins and dried cranberries to make eyes, a mouth and buttons. Chop the dried fruit into tiny pieces.

Sometimes it is difficult to position those tiny pieces on the cookies. But remember those tweezers you keep in the kitchen to deal with cactus stickers? Perfect for placing the eyes and buttons.

To further decorate the cookies, perhaps make some shoes or pants, mix up some white frosting using powered sugar, a little butter and a few drops of milk. If you have a decorator bag, use it to pipe out some decorations or just draw the decorations with a flat-end toothpick. Either way, you’ll love your Mesquite Ginger Folk and you’ll love sharing them.

If you’d like to make some mesquite cookies but can’t face the cutting and decorating, you can use the same recipe to make drop cookies. Frost if you have time.

Mesquite Ginger Cookies in simple form.

If you have not harvested your own mesquite meal, here are a few places to purchase it: The Flor de Mayo Table at Sunday St. Phillips Farmers Market; the Native Seeds/SEARCH store at 3061 N. Campbell Ave. and http://www.nativeseeds.org for mail order; and the San Xavier Farm Store, http://www.sanxavierfarm.org. If you are in Phoenix, check the farmers markets there.

For more great mesquite recipes, check out my cookbook Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants. You’ll learn how to make Mesquite Apple Coffeecake, a fabulous rolled cake with mesquite and coconut, a a dozen other delicious recipes.

Savoring Our First Anniversary (and Mesquite Cake)

October 10, 2014October 10, 2014 / Savor Blog Partners / 4 Comments

(From left) Aunt Linda, Amy Valdez Schwem, Carolyn Niethammer, Tia Marta, and Jacqueline Soule.

The Savor sisters: (From left) Aunt Linda, Amy Valdes Schwemm, Carolyn Niethammer, Tia Marta, and Jacqueline Soule.

Carolyn Niethammer here today with this celebratory post. The Savor Sisters, the five writers who bring you Savor the Southwest, got together this week to celebrate the first anniversary of our wide ranging blog about the glories of Southwest food traditions – traditional, modern, wild and cultivated. The Savor the Southwest month always starts out with Aunt Linda who frequently writes about her bees, recipes with honey, and even making cheese from milk from cows on her ranch. Her posts are lyrical and sometimes spirtual. On the second Friday, you hear from Tia Marta (Muffin Burgess), our ethnobotanist who keeps an eye on what the desert is producing, traditional Native American agricultural products, and ingredients she sometimes uses in her Flor de Mayo products. I take the third Friday and write about edible desert plants, Southwest specialties and interview other interesting folks in the food world. On the fourth Friday we hear from Jacqueline Soule who has been taking us through her book Father Kino’s Herbs among other subjects. That’s her gluten-free barrel cactus seed cake Muffin is slicing in the photo. You’ll get the recipe later this month. So far we have only heard from Amy Valdes Schwemm, producer of fabulous spices, on the occasional fifth Friday, but she will be writing more frequently in the coming year.

We are grateful to all of you readers who join us each week as we explore and celebrate the culinary delights of this fabulous area here on the Sonoran desert where we are so privileged to live. Every celebration needs something sweet, so today I’m going to give you a recipe for an easy and delicious mesquite cake that uses whatever fruits are in season. I used peaches and grapes, but plums, pears, apples or even prickly pear would be great additions. This is good for brunch or a not-too-sweet dessert.

Golden Mesquite Fruit Cake

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup mesquite meal

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ginger or cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick soft butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 large egs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped fresh fruit

For topping

1 tablespoon mesquite meal

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon ginger or cinnamon

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F with rack in middle. Chop fruit. Lightly butter a springform pan. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and spice of choice. In medium bowl, beat butter and sugar with an electic mixer until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addiotn, then beat in vanilla. At low speed, add flour mixture until ljust combined. Spread batter evenly in pan.

Spread batter evenly in springform pan.

Scatter chopped fruit over top of batter.

In a small bowl, stir together the topping mixture and sprinkle evenly over the cake.

Sprinkle sugar mixture evenly over cake.

Put in preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes. As the cake bakes it will rise over the fruit. Cake is done when it is golden brown and top is firm but tender when lightly touched. Cool in the pan for around 10 minutes and then remove the sides of the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature. A little whipped cream never hurt anything.

Yummm, warm and fragrant from the oven.

________________________________

Want more delicious recipes using ingredients from the Southwest? I have lots of ideas for you. In Cooking the Wild Southwest, I introduce you to 23 easily identified and delicious wild plants of the arid Southwest. The Prickly Pear Cookbook is all about the fruits and leaves of the nopal plant. In The New Southwest Cookbook, you’ll meet some of the most innovative professional chefs in the Southwest and get to try the recipes they serve in their restaurants.

Gifts from September Gardens–intentional and otherwise

September 13, 2014September 13, 2014 / Savor Blog Partners / 1 Comment

Tia Marta here to share some culinary ideas happening now in Baja Arizona herb gardens, and to extend an invitation to visit el jardinito de hierbas at Tucson’s Mission Garden to experience the herbs in action!

Estafiate--all purpose Artemisia ludoviciana--in the herb plot, Mission Garden (MABurgess photo)

Estafiate–all purpose Artemisia ludoviciana–and Mexican arnica beyond (close-up of flower below), in the herb plot, Mission Garden (MABurgess photos)

Of all the herbs in our Southwest summer gardens—presently rejoicing in monsoon humidity and in the soppy tail of Hurricane Norbert—I think the most exuberant has gotta be Mrs Burns’ Famous Lemon Basil……..

Mrs Burns’ Famous Lemon Basil, at Mission Garden (MABurgess photo)

In its versatility, Mrs Burns’ lemon basil provides many possibilities for the kitchen and the cosmetic chest, the first being olfactory delight. Brush its foliage lightly with your hands and you get an instant rush of enlivening yet calming lemon bouquet. Like Monarda or lavender, this lemon basil is definitely one to plant in a “moon garden” for nighttime enjoyment, or along a narrow walkway where you have to pleasantly brush up against it, getting a hit en route, always a reminder that life is good.

I wish this blog could be “scratch-and-sniff” so you could sense the sweet lemony aroma of this heirloom right now. Maybe technology can do that for us someday, but meanwhile, find a Native Seeds/SEARCH aficionado who has planted it and get yourself a sprig to sniff. On any Saturday morning, come visit and whiff this desert-adapted basil at Mission Garden (the living history exhibit at the base of “A”-Mountain created by Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace). There, among Padre Kino’s heirloom fruit trees, in the monsoon Huerta vegetable plot, a group of herbalists known as Tucson Herbalist Collective (usually referred to as THC—like far out, righteous herbs, man, whatever) has planted a patch of traditional Mission-period medicinal and culinary herbs within reach of the fence. Lean over and touch Mrs Burns’ lemon basil for a real treat. At present (mid-September) “her” basil is a mound of dense smallish leaves and is sending up a zillion flower stalks sporting tiny white flowers. High time to snip the tops to encourage more foliage. Snippings can be used to zest a salad, to bedeck a platter of lamb chops, or to dry for a long-lasting potpourri.

Close-up view of Mrs Burns’ Famous Lemon Basil flowers and foliage (MAB)

Mrs Burns’ lemon basil—not your typical, soft, floppy-leafed basil—is bred for desert living, with smaller, sturdier foliage. Yes, it does need water, but it can take the desert’s heat and sun. This heirloom’s history is worthy of note and relating it honors the Burns family. The person who put “Famous” into the name Mrs Burns’ Famous Lemon Basil was Dr. Barney T. Burns, one of the founders of the seed conservation organization NativeSeeds/SEARCH and an amazing seed-saver himself, whose recent passing we mourn and whose life we gratefully rejoice in. It was his mother, Janet Burns, transplanted from Canada to Carlsbad, NM, who, with a neighbor over several decades, continued to grow and select surviving, desert-hardy seed in Southwestern heat. Barney contributed her basil seed as one of the first arid heirlooms to become part of the NSS collection. Interestingly, these tiny seeds have since traveled around the globe. One year Johnny’s Seeds picked it up, grew it out for their catalog, and sent NSS a check for $600 in royalties, having profited considerably from its sale.

You can use Mrs Burns’ Famous Lemon Basil leaf in many marvelous dishes. Layer fresh leaves with slices of farmers’ market tomatoes and thin slices of feta or fontina cheese and droozle with flavored olive oil. (I like Queen Creek Olive Mill blood-orange.) And OMG—this basil makes phenomenal pesto. Include this lemon basil with roast chicken for the best lemon-chicken ever. Dry it and put it in stuffing. Add a few fresh leaves to salad for a taste surprise. Or, add a sprig to soups to add a tang. You can even bedeck a glass of V-8 or your Bloody Mary with a lemon basil sprig to fancy up your presentation.

Handmade soap with Mrs Burns’ Lemon Basil-infused jojoba oil (MABurgess photo)

Once when I enthusiastically grew a 50-foot row of Mrs Burns’ basil, it produced for me bags of dried herb, inspiring some fragrant projects. I distilled the aroma-rich herb to make a gentle hydrosol spray which, I feel, carries medicinal/psychological qualities of soothing, pacifying refreshment. By first infusing this marvelous herb in jojoba oil, I create beauty bars—with Mrs Burns’ Famous Lemon Basil as the exfoliant in the soap—available at the NativeSeeds/SEARCH store, the Flor de Mayo booth at St Phillips Farmers Market, or at http://www.flordemayoarts.com.

In my mass planting of lemon basil, I observed bees going totally ecstatic over the profuse flowers and so wished that I had had bee boxes close-by. If any desert bee-keepers want to try a new gift to their bees and to us consumers of honey, I recommend they plant this one. Can’t think of anything finer than Mrs Burns’ Famous Lemon Basil honey!

Brush leaves of devilsclaw for a cooling sensation (MABurgess)

Here in culinarily-exciting Baja Arizona, as we promote the uniqueness of Tucson as an International City of Gastronomy, it is fun to consider another of our unique local food plants, a wild and unlikely weed which pops up with monsoon rains in low places, including at Mission Garden and is respectfully spared there. Known as i:hug by the Tohono O’odham (pronounced eee’hook), devilsclaw or unicorn-plant by Anglos, and Proboscidea spp by taxonomists, ours is not to be confused with the herb devilsclaw of commerce, Harpagophytum procumbens native to South Africa. Our native i:hug (of which there are a few species, some yellow-flowered, some pink) is a weed of many uses.

Tohono O’odham coiled basket by Juanita Ahil with domestic long-clawed i:hug (MABurgess photo)

It is primarily known as the fiber used by Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’odham, and N’de weavers to create the striking black designs in their coiled basketry. Otis Tufton Mason’s tome Aboriginal American Indian Basketry, first published by Smithsonian Institution in 1904, shows beautiful specimens of unicorn-plant weaving, and mentions its use by many desert people including Panamint basket-makers of Death Valley.

I have a feeling that the devilsclaws that are volunteering now at Mission Garden are the children of plants that have been grown by Native People in that very place along the Santa Cruz for many centuries.

Devilsclaw (Proboscidea) flower close-up (MABurgess photo)

As an ornamental, unicorn-plant or devilsclaw can be a welcome surprise of greenery in late summer into fall, making a mound of large leaves sometimes 2’ high and 3’ wide. Tucked among its spreading fuzzy branches, under velvety maple-leaf-shaped foliage, will appear tubular flowers edged in pink. Should you need a cooling touch on a hot day, just lightly brush one of its big leaves and you are instantly refreshed. The velvety look of devilsclaw foliage is actually one of the plant’s defenses against water-loss. Each leaf is covered with fine hairs. At each hair tip is a gland containing a microscopic bead of moisture. Hair causes wind-drag, slowing evaporation from the leaf surface. What evaporates from the glands acts to cools the leaf—what remains can also cool our skin, should we touch it.

Young, harvestable devilsclaw pods (MABurgess photo)

Most interesting of all are the foods that our native devilsclaw can provide. After pollination of the flower, a small green curved pod emerges like a curled, fuzzy okra. When young, that is, under about 2 ½” long, and before the pod develops woody tissue inside, these small green unicorns can be steamed as a hot vegetable, stir-fried with onion, green chile or nopalitos, or pickled for a Baja Arizona snack.

Maturing green devilsclaw pods beyond the food stage (MABurgess)

Tangled wild devilsclaw dry pods ready to split for basketry and seed harvesting (MABurgess)

When the long green pods of devilsclaw ripen, the skin will dry and slough off leaving a tough, black, woody seed-pod that splits with very sharp tips. (Beware how they can grab—they were “designed” to hitch a ride on a desert critter’s hoof or fur and thus spread the seed.) With care, and sometimes the need for pliers, open the pod and out will come little rough-surfaced seeds. If your incisors are accurate, and if you have lots of time to get into meditations on i:hug, you can peel off the rough outer seed skin. Inside is a yummy, oil-rich and fiber-rich seed that looks like an overgrown sesame seed. (In fact, scientists at one point had classified Proboscidea in the same taxonomic family as sesame but it now stands in its own.)

Black seeds of wild devilsclaw from split pod. White inner seeds delish after peeling (MABurgess photo)

Black seeds of wild devilsclaw from split pod. White inner seeds are delish after peeling. (MABurgess photo)

White-seeded domestic devilsclaw has slightly larger seeds like giant sesames (MABurgess photo)

White-seeded domestic devilsclaw has slightly larger seeds like giant sesames. Peeled inner seed between fingers is ready to eat. (MABurgess photo)

When I see cutesy figurines of roadrunners or Christmas ornaments made with devilsclaw pods, my first thought is, wow, what a waste of a good treat, but then gladly, I realize that this unique plant produces more than enough fresh pods and mature pods to satisfy all the purposes of Nature or hungry and/or creative humans. Give i:hug a try!

It’s Saguaro Season

June 19, 2014June 19, 2014 / Savor Blog Partners / 3 Comments

Saguaro flowers and unripe fruit. Photo by Rael B.

Our fire has burned and the sun has gone down;

Our fire has burned and the sun has gone down.

Come together, following our ancient custom.

Sing for the liquor,

Delightfully sing.

This was the song that called the people of the Tohono O’odham villages together for the saguaro wine ceremony that followed the harvest. During the ceremony, they people invoked the intercession of a deity far away in a “rainhouse” full of wind, water and seeds in the hopes of hastening the storms.

This and many other songs were collected and translated by Ruth Murray Underhill, an early anthropologist who lived among what were then called the Papago in 1938. They appear in her book Singing for Power.

When I go saguaro gathering, I get up around 4:30 a.m. and aim to be out among the saguaros just at dawn. I am always joined by doves and other birds looking for their breakfast. Alone on the desert, I occasionally find myself talking to the saguaros. “So what have you got for me?” I ask. I might worry about my sanity, but I know others have felt the same way. The late desert chronicler Edward Abbey agreed, calling saguaros “planted people.”

Dove getting breakfast

My harvest

The orginal desert dwellers used a dead saguaro rib to push the fruits off the cactus. If you can’t find one, any long pole or a fruit picker will do. You can separate the fruit from the rind in the field or bring it home to clean. Each fruit comes with its own sharp-edged knife, like a natural can opener.

Opening a fruit with the calyx on the blossom end.

Sharp edge of the calyx can be used as a knife.

Once you have extracted the fruit, you can either dry it whole or separate it into the seeds and juice. This is a simple process. To your pan or bucket, add as much water as you have fruit. Let it sit, covered loosely for six to eight hours. Then plunge your hands in and break up the fruit. Strain off the juice. Boil to concentrate. If you want to make syrup from the concentrated juice, add half as much sugar as you have juice and boil until clear. Store in a clean glass jar in the refrigerator. It will usually keep for months.

So what are the options for the seeds. You can put them in any baked good, make pilaf or porridge or cookie filling. But an easy use is homemade crackers. Spread the wet seeds on a cookie sheet in the sun. There will be some white material left from the juice, but either blow it off or ignore it. I made these crackers in around a half hour. We are accustomed to eating commercial crackers that are very sweet and salty. So if you want a familiar flavor, use the higher amounts of salt and sugar.

Black Beauty Wafers

1/4 cup saguaro seeds

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 to 3/4 teaspoon salt

1-2 teasp0ons sugar

1/4 cup water

1 tablespooncider vinegar

1/4 cup vegetable oil

8 teaspoons whole saguaro seeds

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grind the 1/4 cup saguaro seeds in a blender or coffee grinder. In a large bowl, combine seeds, flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add water, vinegar and oil and mix, stirring and kneading until a stiff dough forms.

Shape dough into two rolls, 6 inches long and 1 inch in diameter. Then slice each roll into eight wafers. Sprinkle some seeds on a flat surface, place one disk of dough on it, sprinkle some more seeds on top and roll with a rolling pin as thinly as you can. The thinner the cracker, the crisper they will be. The shapes will be irregular.

Form dough into log and divide into eight portions.

Roll out each portion of dough.

Transfer the crackers to an ungreased nonstick cookie sheet. If you have a regular metal pan, use a sheet of parchment paper. Bake in the preheated oven for just 5 to 7 minutes. Watch closely to ensure they do not burn.

You can serve with soup or salad. Or spread with a soft cheese.

Serve your Black Beauty Wafers with a crisp salad.

And when you eat your saguaro syrup or enjoy your Black Beauty Wafers, remember the words an elderly Tohono O’odham woman said to Ruth Underhill back in 1938:

“To you Whites, Elder brother gave wheat and peaches and grapes. To us, he gave the wild seeds and the cactus. Those are the good foods.”

____________________

For more recipes using both saguaro fruit and seeds, consult Cooking the Wild Southwest: Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants. You can find a copy at Native Seeds SEARCH or order online here.

Wild Greens and Mole Enchiladas

June 16, 2014June 16, 2014 / Savor Blog Partners / 1 Comment

Hello, this is Amy Valdés Schwem, and I’m honored to be here with such esteemed plant and cooking women!

I love harvesting wild greens, but my day job is making mole as Mano Y Metate. Today I’m going to make enchiladas made with Mole Dulce and fill them with wild greens and summer squash. It won’t heat up the house, if you take the toaster oven outside! Enchiladas made with tomato sauce instead of chile are called entomatados, and those made with mole are enmoladas. So the menu can read: Enmoladas de Mole Dulce con Quelites y Calabacitas.

Quelites can refer to several unrelated wild greens, but to me they are wild amaranth greens, Amaranthus palmeri, also known as pigweed.

I grew up eating quelites with my maternal grandfather, and he knew no shame jumping fences to pick weeds. They make a few tiny black seeds, unlike its Mexican domesticated relatives that make enough blond seed to fill bulk bins at the health food store.

It is native to the southwest US and northwest Mexico, and its wild and domesticated relatives are enjoyed around the world both as a green and for its grain-like seed. It easily out-competes summer garden and field crops and is becoming resistant to glyposphate (Roundup). But you wouldn’t want to harvest from those over fertilized fields anyway, since it can absorb too much nitrate, making it unsafe for humans and animals. However, grown in native desert soil, they are safe and nutritious, high in vitamin A, vitamin C, and folate, among other vitamins and valuable minerals.

Some species and cultivars available at Native Seeds/SEARCH are used for dye and have red leaves, and some make a huge red inflorescence pretty enough to grow as an ornamental, even if the birds eat all the seed. I’ve never had much luck popping the seed I grew, but you can buy commercially popped seed, like miniature popped corn.

I just visited my closest community garden, Las Milpitas de Cottonwood, and found these beauties in the irrigated beds already in flower. If this was all I had, I would pick the smallest leaves from the stalks and use those.

Hopefully you find quelites before flowering, shorter than a foot tall. I found a few plants in my yard where other things get watered. Many more will sprout with the summer rains.

Last year I had so many from my Tucson Community Supported Agriculture share that I dried some, just like my great aunt Tia Lucy told me they used to do. I just plucked leaves from the stems and air dried them in the house. To use, I soaked in water overnight, then sauteed with the others. I’ll dry more this summer, for sure.

To prepare the fresh quelites, wash, chop tender stems and all, and saute with a little onion and garlic in oil. My grandfather always used bacon grease, so that’s what I did.

It’s also prime season for calabacitas, so use them if you don’t have any fresh or dried quelites. My grandfather also collected and cooked verdolagas for us, which would work here, too.

Calabacitas, sauteed with onion and garlic. This filling with mushrooms and queso fresco, inside mole dulce enchiladas, is my brother’s signature dish. Well, one of his signature dishes.

Now for the mole! For a half dozen enchiladas, to serve two people, I used about half of a tin of Mano Y Metate Mole Dulce powder, cooked in mild olive oil to make paste.

Then I added about half a cup homemade chicken stock and a dash of salt, but veggie stock is great, too. Water doesn’t quite do it. Simmer until you have a nice sauce, adding more broth as necessary. There will be steam and good smells.

The secret to enchiladas: start with thin corn tortillas and fry briefly in oil hot enough to sizzle, but not hot enough to make them crispy!!! DO NOT skip this step!

If the tortilla cooks too much, or if it breaks, just turn up the heat and make that one into a corn chip.

Dip the flexible tortilla in the mole dulce.

Put quelites or calabacitas in the tortilla and roll.

Top with homemade queso fresco and bake until heated though. My grandfather used the toaster oven outside on the patio in the summer to make enchiladas. No need to heat the house!

Depending on your oven, you may need to cover them with foil, but I didn’t. I like crispy edges. Serve with a cucumber, tomato salad dressed with a squeeze of lime, beans, and prickly pear grapefruit-ade.

Leftovers are best fried in a cast iron pan until crispy.

Mano Y Metate moles can be purchased from Martha Burgess of Flor de Mayo Arts at the Sunday Heirloom Farmers’ Market at St. Philip’s Plaza, Native Seeds/SEARCH, and ManoYMetate.com.

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Savor the Southwest:

Forage, Raise, Cook

wild food

April Brings Nopales

Here’s to the Budding Desert!

Sweet Roasted Mesquite for a Happy Valentine’s

More Ideas for Wild Dates in Borderlands Towns

Playing with Washingtonia palm fruit

Mesquite Gingerfolk for Christmas

Savoring Our First Anniversary (and Mesquite Cake)

Gifts from September Gardens–intentional and otherwise

It’s Saguaro Season

Wild Greens and Mole Enchiladas

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