Late Summer Vegetable Soup

My whole household is fighting a summer cold right now, and I wanted something hearty that would be appealing for several meals over the next few days.  I decided to build a main dish around fresh green beans, while also including lots of other fresh seasonal vegetables.  The end of summer means that a plethora of New World vegetables are all in season simultaneously, not only several varieties of bean, but also tomatoes, potatoes, and zucchini.

Starting Point: Soupe au Pistou by Caroline Bretherton.

Soupe au Pistou is a Provençal dish made using summer vegetables and pasta, so it seemed well-suited for my purposes. Preparing New World variants of Mediterranean dishes is always a interesting challenge. On the one hand, many of the vegetables strongly associated with contemporary Mediterranean cooking--such as tomatoes, peppers, and squash--originate from the Americas.  On the other hand, without signature flavorings such as garlic and basil, Mediterranean dishes made with New World ingredients rarely have the distinctive flavors such dishes normally possess.

Pistou is a mashed garlic sauce that is traditionally prepared separately in a mortar and pestle and then spooned onto the soup at the time of serving.  Separate prepataion is less essential when excluding the customary parmesan cheese from the sauce, but I went ahead and did it anyway for this variation.

I started with a bunch of green onions (8-9), which are my usual substitute for ramps. I finely chopped the white and light green parts only, then mashed them in a large prep bowl with some kosher salt. I then peeled and chopped two tomatoes and drained away a majority of the liquid.  I added the tomatoes to the onions, as well as 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 3 tablespoons of sunflower oil, and 1/4 cup of finely ground pecans.  The pecans add an extra dimension of flavor to the sauce, and make up a bit for the absence of cheese. It's possible to make a closer vegan parmesan analogue using nuts, salt, and nutritional yeast, but I didn't have any of the latter on hand.

For the soup, I first quick-soaked 2 cups of dried navy beans for an hour, and then boiled them in water for 15 minutes. After draining the beans, I threw them in an extra-large saucepot with the vegetables: three more peeled and chopped tomatoes, four medium chopped zucchini, two medium diced russet potatoes, and about half a pound of sliced fresh green beans.  I covered the beans and vegetables with water, added plenty of J&D's Bacon Salt, and simmered (covered) for a little over an hour. I then added about 4 ounces of Ancient Harvest Gluten-Free elbow macaroni, which is made with a quinoa and corn flour blend (I found mine at my local Dierbergs supermarket). I kept simmering the soup for about another 8 minutes, until the pasta was al dente.

This soup should be served right away. Salt to taste and spoon on the sauce. Good stuff.

Zucchini-Onion Soup

I went to the Tower Grove Farmer's Market this morning in search of fruit, but I walked away with several zucchini--two large and four small--and a bunch of green onions.  Accordingly, I whipped up an easy zucchini soup for lunch and made plans to bake a zucchini cake for the holiday.

Like acorn squash, zucchini is the the mature fruit of Cucurbita pepo. I discussed this plant and its cultivation a bit in April's post on baked acorn squash, so I won't retread the topic here.  The zucchini as we know it was not grown in the New World prior to European contact, as the variety was first developed in Italy from C. pepo in the late nineteenth century--hence its wonderfully Italian moniker.  Elsewhere in Europe, the fruit is often referred to by its French name, the courgette.

Starting Point: Zucchini-Leek Soup by Carol Gelles.

I first thawed two freezer bags' worth (2 cups) of my New World harvest broth.  I then coarsely shredded one large and one small zucchini, yielding about 2 1/2 cups of shreds.  I heated 1 1/2 teaspoons of sunflower oil in a saucepan and added 3/4 cup of sliced green onion (white and light green parts; about 8-9 large onions).  (The green onions are subbing for ramps, as usual.)  I cooked the onions for about a minute, then added the broth, 1 cup of water, and the zucchini shreds.  I brought the whole thing to a boil, then reduced to a simmer and let it cook for 10 minutes, uncovered.

I removed the soup from the heat and allowed it to cool on the stovetop for about 10 minutes.  I don't own a large-size food processor--no additional gadgets, thanks--so I then transferred the soup to my two-speed, 6-cup Oster blender in two batches, blending until relatively smooth.  Unless you like your vegetable soups bland, I recommend adding salt and black pepper.  If you don't mind cheating a little with some European herbs, throw a teaspoon of oregeno, marjoram, or thyme in there when you add the zucchini.  Serve hot or cold with a chunk of crusty bread and you're golden.

Spicy Sweet Potato Shepherd's Pie

We're home with a newborn baby this week at the Cahokia Cuisine homestead, and the wife requested a Friday meal that was hearty but sort of sweet. Enter the sweet potato.

The sweet potato is the root of the perennial flowering vine Ipomoea batatas, a member of the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae.  Although sometimes called a "yam," I. batatas is a quite different from the Old World yam (Dioscorea sp.), botanically speaking.  Nearly all American markets and grocery stores label fresh I. batatas roots as "sweet potatoes" to avoid confusion.

Sweet potatoes were first domesticated in the Americas around 5,000 years ago (3,000 BCE). Although the origin of cultivation is still uncertain, the current thinking seems to point to Central America, with domestication spreading thereafter into South America.  Remarkably, sweet potato cultivation appears to have expanded westward into Polynesia prior to European contact with the Americas, likely through direct transport of cuttings.  Today the vast majority of the world's sweet potatoes are grown not in the tropical Americas, but in China.

Starting Point: Jamaican Yuca Shepherd's Pie with Sweet Potato, Kidney Beans, and Plantains by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

I've simplified this recipe a little, both to accommodate this blog's approach to cooking and to keep things no-hassle, given the demands of attending to a recovering wife and newborn.  I started with about three pounds of medium-small red potatoes.  Other varieties of potato work just as well--or better--for mashed potatoes, but little reds are what I had on hand.  After peeling and cutting them into 1- to 1 1/2-inch chunks, I boiled the potatoes (covered) with a little salt for about 30 minutes.  I then drained them, returned them to the same pot, and mashed them with 1 tablespoon of corn oil until they had a semi-chunky consistency. I then set the mashed potatoes aside, covered.

Over medium-high heat, I sauteed the following in 2 tablespoons of corn oil for 5 minutes: one bunch of green onions (about 8 onions, light green and white parts only), diced; one green bell pepper, diced; and four jalapenos, seeded, de-veined, and diced.  (The green onions are subbing for ramps, as usual.) I then added two large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2- to 3/4-inch chunks.  I also added 1 teaspoon of allspice, 2 teaspoons of kosher salt, and 1/3 cup of water.  I covered this mixture and cooked for about 15 minutes.

I then added the following to the mixture: 2 cups of unsweetened coconut milk (Soy Delicious); one 8-oz can of sweet corn, drained (Del Monte Fresh Cut); one 8-oz can of lima beans, drained (Del Monte Fresh Cut); one 15-oz can of kidney beans, drained (Full Circle); two medium bananas, sliced in 1/2-inch pieces; and 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.  (The bananas are subbing for pawpaws, as usual.) Fresh corn and beans are ideal, but high-quality canned versions work good in a pinch when you need a relatively quick meal.  I cooked the whole mixture for another 5 minutes.

I then poured the mixture into a 13-inch by 9-inch baking dish.  I spooned the mashed potatoes into several small mounds on top of the mixture, spreading it out roughly with a tablespoon until the mixture was evenly covered.  I baked the dish for about 10 minutes on a lower rack with the oven on broil, before transferring it to the top rack directly under the broiler for another 2 minutes.

This dish is vegan, obviously. With two kinds of potatoes, two kinds of beans, and a little vegetable, it can serve as an entree or a one-bowl meal.  I served it with a cool summer dessert to complement the spiciness: blackberries, raspberries, plain low-fat yogurt, and honey.

Jersusalem Artichokes with Black Beans

A few weeks ago I went searching for Jerusalem artichokes and found them at Global Foods, which is probably St. Louis' best international food store by a long shot.  I promptly forgot about these funky-looking tubers in my fridge, but they seemed to hold up pretty well even after a month.  However, I suspected they wouldn't last much longer, so this past weekend was the time to put them to work.

Also known as sunchokes, Jerusalem artichokes are neither from Jerusalem, nor artichockes.  They are the root of the perennial flowering forb Helianthus tuberosus, a member of the sunflower family, Asteraceae.  This is a diverse family that includes several significant food and horticulture crops, such as lettuce, true artichokes, chamomile, chicory, echinacea, marigolds, zinnias, and chrysanthemums. (It also includes some despised pest plants, such as ragweed.)

The root of H. tuberosus resembles ginger, and the flesh has the crisp quality of a water chestnut or jicama, as compared to the starchy, waxy quality of a potato.  The flavor isn't strong, but has a distinct, earthy sweetness.  H. tuberosus is native to North America, including the present-day United States, but cultivation has somewhat obscured its original range.  The exact date of domestication does not appear to be well-established, although the plant was being actively cultivated by Native Americans at the time of European contact.  H. tuberosus was transported to England in the early seventeenth century, and like sunflowers it now grows quite successfully in Europe.  Incidentally, a carbohydrate in Jerusalem artichokes causes--ahem--flatulence.  One of the plant's early English cultivators observed, "they stirre and cause a filthie loathsome wind within the bodie."

Starting Point: Jerusalem Artichokes with Black Beans by Carol Gelles.

This is fairly simple recipe using one small package of Jerusalem artichokes (about six small roots). After washing the roots thoroughly, I used a paring knife to slice off the tips of the knobs, where dirt can accumulate.  I then diced the root, leaving the skin on.  (Like potato skin, the 'choke skin is both hearty and edible.)  This yielded about 2 cups of diced 'chokes.

I heated 1 tablespoon of sunflower oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  I then added 1/2 cup of sliced green onions (white and green parts only), which is my usual ramp substitute.  I cooked the onions, stirring, for about a minute and then added the 'chokes, 1/2 cup of my New World Harvest Vegetable Broth, and 1 tablespoon of pure cranberry juice (not cocktail).  I cooked the mixture, stirring, for about five minutes.  I then added 1 cup of black beans, which I had cooked the previous day from quick-soaked dry beans.

The resulting vegetable-legume medley is quite hearty, and very crisp even days later.  I recommend adding plenty of salt and pepper--or perhaps some thyme--to taste.

New World Harvest Broth

A lot of the recipes that I make call for vegetable broth.  Boxed broth keeps pretty well, but it's not cheap, and I never seem to have it around when I need it.  So I decided to make my own and freeze it for later.

This broth isn't based on any particular recipe.  If you don't own a juicer--and I don't--it's still pretty easy to make broth from whole or sliced vegetables.  I used:

• 1 medium tomato (halved)
• 1 medium jicama (peeled and cut into four or five chunks)
• 2 medium-small sweet potatoes (peeled and cut into two to three chunks each)
• 2 medium-small zucchini (peeled)
• 1 bunch (8 or so) green onions (white and light green parts only)
• 1 8 oz. package (10 or so) button mushrooms (roughly chopped)

Everything on this list is of New World origin, except for the green onions, which as I've mentioned before are my go-to substitute for ramps (wild leeks).

I threw all of the vegetables into a 4-quart pot with 8 cups of water and brought the mixture to a boil.  I then simmered covered on low heat for an hour, followed by another hour uncovered.  I then strained the vegetables and broth through a fine strainer into a large, deep bowl, discarding the cooked vegetables.

I covered the broth and allowed it to cool for about 30 minutes. I then transferred 1 cup portions into individual heavy-duty 1-pint freezer storage bags.  I placed a large cookie sheet in the freezer and laid the broth-filled bags on them so that they would freeze flat.  After an overnight freeze, I was able to stack the flat bags to save space.  This recipe yielded about 5 1/2 cups of broth all told.

It's generally not advisable to thaw and refreeze broth, so freezing in these relatively small portions works great.  You can place a single bag in a microwave-safe bowl and zap it for 30 to 60 seconds to thaw it as needed for use in recipes.

Quinoa Salad with Potato and Navy Beans

Following up on last week’s cupcakes, I wanted to work again with quinoa.  However, this time I was interested in cooking a stovetop whole-grain meal, as opposed to baking with quinoa flour.

Starting Point: Giada de Laurentiis’ Quinoa and Purple Potato Salad

The original recipe seems to be designed as a visually appealing Peruvian-Italian fusion side dish.  Not only did I want to shift away from the Old World ingredients, but I wanted something much more utilitarian: a hearty grain-potato-legume salad that I could have as a main dish every day for the next week.

Instead of gardens peas, my variation on this salad used small navy beans.  I used dry, bagged beans, not canned.  I first applied the so-called “quick-soak” on them: boiling 2 cups of beans in water for five minutes, removing the pot from heat, and then letting the beans sit in the warm water for an hour.  I then drained the soaked beans, transferred them back into fresh water, and cooked them at a simmer for an additional two hours.

Purple potatoes are attractive and all, but large red potatoes worked just fine for my purposes. I prepared two large potatoes as directed: unpeeled, cut into cubes, boiled for 15 minutes, and drained.

I moved on to the dressing next.  Instead of black olives, I used Bella Sun Luci sun-dried tomato halves, going for the soft, bagged variety, rather than the kind packed in jars with oil.  I used sunflower oil instead of olive oil, and pure cranberry juice (not a blend or cocktail) instead of lime juice.  I left out the oregano and swapped 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper for the 1/4 teaspoon black pepper.  All of these I combined with light agave nectar and salt in my 3-cup food processor.  I then refrigerated the resulting dressing while I prepared the quinoa.

For the quinoa, I added 2 cups of Bob’s Red Mill Organic Whole Grain Quinoa to 4 cups of Swanson organic vegetable broth (stretched with a little water).   Instead of garlic, I used the bulbs from about four green onions, which are a good substitute for the flavor of wild leeks, or ramps.  After bringing the quinoa, broth, and onions to a boil, I let the mixture simmer for 20 minutes, giving it a thorough stir every few minutes.  There was no need to remove the onions once the quinoa was cooked.  After letting the quinoa rest for a few minutes off of the heat, I combined it with the beans and potatoes in a large bowl.  I then added the dressing and tossed.

The result is perhaps I little heavier on the quinoa than I was initially anticipating, much more of a grain dish than what one typically thinks of as a salad.  Swapping beans for peas makes it even heartier.  Ultimately, I think of it as a South American version of succotash.  Accordingly, next time I might try a more vegetable-like bean, such as lima beans.

This dish can be eaten cold like any potato salad, but I prefer it hot.  I’ve been eating it with a little leftover wild rice, just to add yet another whole grain to the mix.

Quinoa Chocolate-Banana Cupcakes

If you're going to bake from American origin and not make the same handful of recipes all the time, you're going to have to look beyond cornmeal.  Quinoa (keen-wah) is one of the staple grains of the Western Hemisphere, and it's starting to appear more frequently in standard supermarkets, both as a whole grain and as a flour.

Quinoa is the seed of the annual flowering forb Chenopodium quinoa, a member of the amaranth family, Amaranthaceae.  This family includes not only amaranth itself, but also tumbleweeds and several species cultivated as ornamental plants.  The plant is not a true grass, so the grain is therefore regarded as a pseudocereal.  In its natural state, the grain is coated in a bitter chemical called saponin, which is toxic to humans.  The grain must therefore be carefully washed before preparation. (Packaged whole grain quinoa is almost always pre-washed.)   C. quinoa has been utilized as a food source in South America for thousands of years, with cultivation dating to around 1500 BCE in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Bolivia and Peru.

Quinoa makes a good South American stand-in for a related North American species, C. berlandieri, also known as pitseed goosefoot.  C. berlandieri is one of the only grains known to have been domesticated in the present-day United States, with evidence of cultivation appearing around the same time as its southern cousin.  Pitseed goosefoot has effectively vanished as a cultivated grain in the U.S., although it is still grown in Mexico, primarily as a leaf vegetable under the name huauzontle or red Aztec spinach.

Starting Point: Bob's Red Mill Sour Cream Fudge Cupcakes

For starters, I used peanut oil instead of butter, heating it with a little water and then whisking in the cocoa (Hershey's works fine).  My quinoa flour is Bob's Red Mill Organic Quinoa Flour.  I sifted the flour with the baking power, baking soda, and salt.  Instead of sifting this mixture with sugar, I added 1/2 cup of maple syrup and 1/2 cup of light agave nectar after sifting, and then blended it all together with the cocoa mixture.

I wasn't using eggs, which simplified the final steps in the batter preparation.  After blending in the cocoa mixture, I added two pureed bananas.  The banana is, of course, originally Asian, but the flavor and consistency mimics the North American fruit known as the pawpaw (Asimina triloba).  Pawpaw can be gathered locally in the St. Louis area, but the fruit isn't mature until late summer or early autumn.  I then added vanilla and, instead of sour cream, 1/4 cup of unsweetened coconut milk and 1 teaspoon of white vinegar.

These cupcakes needed about 22 to 23 minutes in my oven, instead of the recommended 20 minutes.  Far from being dry, they turned out extra-moist, almost like a boxed "pudding cake".  Very decadent.  The nutty taste of the quinoa combines well with the cocoa and banana flavors.

These go really well with a peanut butter frosting. To prepare that one either needs to cheat a little and use regular confectioner's sugar (as I did) or hunt down some maple sugar.

It's likely that pitseed goosefoot would have been harvested in the fall in North America, so quinoa-based baked goods such as these cupcakes make an excellent autumn treat.

Faux-Asian Wild Rice and Vegetable Stew

Our household was in need of some hot comfort food last night, and a wild rice stew seemed like a good choice.

There are three species of American wild rice, but only Zizania aquatica and Zizania palustris are cultivated.  Z. texana is an endangered Texas species.  All of these are annual flowering aquatic grasses in the family of true grasses, Poaceae.  Just as with the more familiar Asian rice (Oryza sativa), the wild rice grain is the edible seed of the plant.  Wild rice is the only cultivated grain native to the continental United States, and, as a true grass, it is the New World’s only cultivated cereal other than corn. (Amaranth, cassava, and quinoa being non-grass grains, or pseudocereals.)

Cultivation of wild rice is a twentieth-century phenomenon, prompted by revived interest in the grain as a food source.  However, the grain was and still is gathered from Zizania plants by native Americans in the Great Lakes region, using two-person canoe teams gathering along freshwater shorelines and stream banks.

Starting Point: Guy Fieri’s Creamy Wild Rice

Wild rice often appears as a component in bagged or boxed rice blends, but most supermarkets now also carry a brand of pure wild rice.  I found Reese products at my local Dierbergs and picked up two 2.75 oz. boxes of their Quick Cooking Minnesota Rice, as I was motivated by a need for a short boiling time.  (Uncooked rice takes about 30 to 45 minutes to boil.)

The two boxes yielded around 4 cups of cooked rice, which was just about right for a double batch of the original recipe.  Red bell peppers and crimini mushrooms are native to the Americas, but the other vegetables required a little substitution.  The ramp or wild leek (Allium tricoccum) is a native substitute for the conventional bulb onion, but it’s rare to find it in produce aisles.  I used green onions, which approximate the ramp’s flavor.  (In future batches, I’m considering using a little garlic as well.)

I used jicama for both the carrots and celery.  Also known as the “Mexican potato,” this is the tuber from the yam bean plant (Pachyrhizus erosus).  Jicama seems to be enjoying some popularity right now as a component in Mexican American cooking, as it can be found in some mainstream supermarkets.  (I found mine at Dierbergs.)  Jicama is a bit tougher to peel than your typical potato, owing to the roughness of the skin and the size of the root.  Per Jack Bishop’s recommendation, I also took off the very outer layer of flesh, which tends to be fibrous.  The flesh underneath is reminiscent of a potato, but more watery and less starchy, with a little bit of a carrot-like odor.

I wanted to prepare this stew as a hearty main dish rather than a side, so I went heavier on the vegetables than the original recipe, using about 50% more than called for in a double batch (e.g., 3 tablespoons of bell pepper instead of 2).  I sautéed the veggies in sunflower oil and added salt and cayenne pepper, skipping the black pepper.

Heavy cream presents a challenge when cooking from American origin.  The best substitution in vegan cooking is unsweetened coconut milk.  Coconuts are natural globe-trotters even without direct dispersal by humankind, but it’s debatable whether the plant was distributed in the Americas prior to European contact.  Regardless, there aren’t many good substitutes for the richness of cream.  On the positive side, I surmised that the combination of rice, vegetables, cayenne pepper, and coconut milk would lend the dish a pleasant Asian quality.   So Delicious Unsweetened Coconut Milk was my choice.

After adding the milk and cooked rice, I cooked everything for an additional 8 minutes or so, skipped the mustard and parsley, and served.  The result was in fact something closer to an Asian soup or stew than a creamy side dish, with a thick mound of rice and vegetables in a “broth” of coconut milk, oil, and hot spice.  Very good, and very filling.

Wild rice is typically harvested in September in the Great Lakes region, so this dish is appropriate for seasonal eating in autumn.

Update 4/23/11: I made a second batch of this dish last weekend. I used standard dry wild rice instead of quick rice, cooking it for about an hour.  I also used a bit more rice, so it soaked up the coconut milk better.  It made the resulting dish a little less soup-like and more like a grain-and-vegetable entree or side.  I also cheated a little on the origin for the second batch, adding black pepper and two tablespoons of spicy brown mustard for variety.  It turned out really well and fed me for the rest of the week.

Quick Blueberry "Jam"

In all honesty, the corn muffins in yesterday’s post are really just a delivery device for this blueberry jam.  Something about blueberry’s mellow sweetness seemed a good fit for baked goods made from cornmeal.

The northern highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) is the most widely grown commercial blueberry native to North America.  V. corymbosum is a perennial flowering shrub of the heather family, Ericaceae.  In botanical terms, the fruit itself is a true berry: a simple, pulpy fruit with seeds and an edible pericarp, grown from a single ovary.  Domesticated V. corymbosum is a relative newcomer, have been first cultivated in the early twentieth century by the collaborative efforts of a USDA botanist, Frederick Coville, and a family cranberry farmer, Elizabeth White.  However, the conspicuous, edible fruit was well-known to native American gatherers throughout the present-day eastern United States, where V. corymbosum grows naturally.

I don’t have any experience with canning, so I was looking for a recipe that would allow me to quickly make a small quantity of refrigerated blueberry jam, or at least a sweet sauce that could pass for jam.  Jill McKeever’s Fresh Blueberry Spread fit the bill.

I started with two 6 oz. packages of Driscoll’s blueberries, which yielded just shy of three cups of fruit.  Even after washing the fruit, I had to carefully inspect them for stray stems, leaves, and flower parts.  It was a bit laborious, but thankfully I was working with a relatively small quantity of fruit.  I added about 3/4 cup of water, gently boiled for five minutes, and then let the juice strain off naturally through a thin towel for about an hour.  If, unlike me, you are a canner, the juice can be used to make blueberry syrup.

I then transferred the boiled, drained fruit back into the saucepan with about 1/4 cup of SpringTree Grade A Maple Syrup and 2 tablespoons of water.  I boiled for ten minutes, then added two teaspoons of R.W. Knudsun Just Cranberry Juice.  There are no true citrus trees native to the Americas, but cranberry juice has a comparable acidity.  I then let the mixture cool for a few minutes, stirred it well and transferred it to a couple of jelly jars.  This isn’t true canning, so the jars don’t have to be sterilized, but this means that the jam must be eaten within a few weeks.

The resulting spread is more akin to cooked blueberries in sweet sauce than a true jam, as it doesn’t have jam’s viscosity or stickiness.  However, it seems like an especially good fit for pancakes and waffles, or in this case, for spooning on warm muffins.  Northern highbush blueberries are picked during the middle of the growing season, so if you’re eating seasonally this is a good summer spread.

Sweet American Corn Muffins

Like baked acorn squash, cornbread is one of the foodstuffs that is tied to my paternal grandmother’s kitchen table in my memories.  Unlike squash, however, I was sort of ambivalent towards cornbread as a child.  Oh, I would always eat it if was placed it in front of me, but there was something about the dense, crumbly quality of cornbread that never really sat well with my picky childhood palate.  Wasn’t bread supposed to be smooth and light, like a slice of Roman Meal Whole Wheat?  Of course, I’ve since come around to cornbread’s virtues, particularly when it’s of the thicker, firmer variety that doesn’t fall apart when you bite into it.

A kernel of corn, or maize, is the fruit and seed of the annual flowering grass Zea mays.  The plant is a member of the true grass family Poacaeae, which means that maize kernels are by definition a cereal.  An ear of maize is kind of a strange beast, from a botanical anatomy point of view.  Each ear consists of the fruit from a cluster of a few hundred female flowers (what botanists term an inflorescence).  However, the maize kernels never fuse together into a single mass, as they do in figs, mulberries, pineapples, and other edible fruits that develop from flower clusters.  This is fortunate for us humans, since the discreteness of the tiny maize kernel is one of the features that makes the grain so useful as a staple crop.

Maize is, of course, probably the single most important food crop to be cultivated in the Americas.  There is disagreement about the origin of Z. mays, which genetic analysis has enlightened but not resolved.  The plant may be the result of a direct domestication of a single wild Zea species, or a hybridization of multiple Zea species, or a hybridization with a related genus.  Regardless, archaeological evidence suggests that Z. mays cultivation began around 9,000 years ago (7,000 BCE) in the Balsas River valley of southeastern Mexico.  Maize cultivation seems to have taken off in the second millennium BCE, when the grain began to spread rapidly throughout the Americas and the ears started to attain something closer to their current proportions.  By the second millennium, A.D., maize was the staple crop of the Mississippian culture embodied at nearby Cahokia, some 1,500 miles or so from the plant’s point of origin.  While maize’s need for a relatively warm climate precluded its cultivation in the far north or south of the Western hemisphere, it’s fair to say that corn had conquered the Americas by the time of European contact.

I recently had a particular craving for cornbread muffins with blueberry jam, which seemed like a nice complement for a sweeter, smoother sort of muffin.  Accordingly, I shied away from recipes that used whole corn, cheese, or spices.   Patrick and Gina Neely’s Honey Cornbread Muffins seemed like a good starting point.

For flours and meals, my choice is usually Bob's Red Mill, an employee-owned brand that you can now find fairly consistently in supermarkets.  For the cornmeal, which provides the distinctly coarse texture of cornbread, I went with their Stone Ground Medium Cornmeal.

When cooking from an American origin, wheat is out, which means that you're essentially doing gluten-free baking.  Subtract rice, barley, sorghum, oats, rye, and so on, and New World baking can be a real challenge.  For the all-purpose flour, I substituted 3/4 cup of corn flour, 2 tablespoons of tapioca flour, and 2 tablespoons of quinoa flour.  Using tapioca is cheating a bit, since the cassava from which it is made is native to South America and the Caribbean.  However, tapioca contributes to the thickening the batter would normally get from eggs, adds a distinctive sweet sort of flavor, and helps with the texture of the finished product.  Quinoa constitutes a bit of a cheat too, since it is from the Andes Mountains.  However, a closely related species, pitseed goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri), was evidently domesticated in the present-day eastern United States before falling out of favor with the arrival of corn and beans.  The quinoa available in supermarkets today is about as close as we're going to get to that heirloom grain.  Quinoa flour is sort of sharp-smelling, but in baking it provides a really flavorful nutty quality.  I mainly threw it in for a little variety. (Gluten-free baking seems to thrive on flour blends.)

I swapped water for milk, and added a tablespoon of corn oil to compensate for the loss of milk fat.  Instead of eggs, I used 4 tablespoons of corn starch and a bit more water.  In most instances, one would use equal parts corn starch and water to substitute for eggs, but I went a little light on water to compensate for the for fact that I used maple syrup instead of sugar and honey.  Instead of using more oil in place of the butter, I went with sunflower butter, which added a bit of a "peanut butter-ish" flavor to the mix.

My final, modified ingredient list goes:

• 1 cup Bob's Red Mill Medium Cornmeal
• 1/2 cup Bob's Red Mill Corn Flour
• 1/4 cup Bob's Red Mill Tapioca Flour
• 1/4 cup Bob's Red Mill Quinoa Flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons SpringTree Grade A Maple Syrup
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup + 1 tablespoon water
• 1 tablespoon Mazola Corn Oil
• 4 tablespoons Argo Corn Starch
• 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons Sunbutter Organic Sunflower Seed Spread

The result was pretty good, way better than I was anticipating for a first try.  The muffins rose nicely for a recipe with no wheat flour; I was afraid I'd end up with little hockey pucks.  The combination of the expected classic cornbread sweetness with the maple, sunflower, and quinoa flavors is really appealing.  If anything, the sunflower butter was a little more prominent than I intended, and the overall impression is "cornbread plus peanut butter, but not quite."

My main complaint is that the muffins still ended up pretty crumbly, which I think is partly attributable to my forgetting one of my "fake eggs".  I added just two tablespoons of corn starch instead of four (D'oh!), which means there wasn't as much binding as there should have been.  Other than that, the only thing I might change on the next try is to swap some of the sunflower butter for corn or sunflower oil, to reduce that "peanut-buttery" aspect of the flavor a bit.

In the next post, I'll get to the no-pectin quickie blueberry jam that was the real reason for making these muffins in the first place.

Baked Acorn Squash

Acorn squash is one of several comfort foods that I strongly associate with my paternal grandmother’s Southern-influenced cooking.  I’m sure that I ate it on other occasions during my childhood, but my memories of consuming this squash always seem to be tied to Grandma Geneva’s kitchen table.  I haven’t had the dish in years, but I’ve been thinking about squash lately for this diary.  Perhaps as a result, the sight of the acorn squash at my local Schnucks got me pining for that distinctive taste.

Acorn squash is the mature fruit of Cucurbita pepo, an annual flowering forb/vine in the cucumber family, Cucurbitaceae. Many of the familiar domesticated squashes are varieties of the single species C. pepo, including yellow summer squash, yellow crookneck squash, spaghetti squash, delicata squash, pattypan squash, zucchini, and some varieties of pumpkin.  Acorn squash is one of the so-called winter squashes, in that it is harvested when the fruit is fully mature.  Consequently, the rind of the fruit is thick and tough, which provides some measure of protection during storage.  As a result, the fruit resists spoilage well into the winter months, hence the “winter squash” appellation.

C. pepo has been cultivated in the Americas for thousands of years, and may have been independently domesticated twice.  There is evidence of cultivation of a C. pepo progenitor in Oxaca, Mexico as early as 10,000 years ago (8,000 BCE), which would make it a much older food crop than the other two staples of Mesoamerican agriculture, corn and climbing beans.  Squash cultivation eventually spread northward from Mexico, into the present-day United States.  However, there is evidence that C. pepo was domesticated separately in the eastern United States as early as 5,000 years ago (3,000 BCE).  In fact, the archaeological site that provides this dating (Phillips Spring) is located in the Pomme de Terre River valley in west-central Missouri.   As it happens, this “American” lineage of cultivated C. pepo--as opposed to the “Mexican” lineage--is a candidate for the ancestor of acorn squashes.

Baking acorn squash is pretty easy.  Almost all recipes can be summed up thusly: halve, seed, add a little fat and sugar, then bake for an hour or so.  And rightly so: Anything beyond that and you’re gilding the lily, in my opinion.  The main variation you’ll see on this formula is the addition of hot and/or savory spices, sometimes in place of the sugar.  Some examples:

• Baked Acorn Squash by Cathy Lowe (Food Network)
• Baked Acorn Squash with Brown Sugar and Butter by Paula Deen (Food Network)
• Baked Acorn Squash by Martha Stewart
• Acorn Squash by terrylee51 (Allrecipes.com)
• Baked Acorn Squash by corwyn darkholm (Allrecipes.com)

My goal was simply to prepare the squash in this spirit, but without butter or sugar. At my local Schnucks I found Big Chuy acorn squash, which are grown in Mexico.  When seasonal eating is the goal, preparing acorn squash throughout autumn and winter is appropriate, given the fruit’s hardiness following harvest.

I halved the squash lengthwise (stem to tip) and scooped out the seeds and string, separating the seeds out for roasting (more on this at a later date).  I then scored the inside of the seed cavities with a small knife.

Okay, what about butter?  Dairy products are generally out of the question if adherence to American foodstuffs is the goal. Of the handful of mammal species domesticated in the Americas, only the alpaca appears to have been utilized for its milk, and that milk evidently isn't too palatable. And Peru is pretty far afield from the Mississippi Valley, anyway...

No problem.  The growing popularity of vegan cooking has expanded the options for dairy substitutions.  When cooking from American origin, one loses access to those Old World fat staples, the olive and rapeseed (the source of canola oil).  However, there are plenty of other options to be found in the oils and butters derived from native grains, nuts, and seeds, and in pureed native fruits.  In this instance, I turned to sunflower oil, specicially Hain Pure Foods 100% Expeller Pressed Sunflower Oil.

American origin substitutions for sugar are more limited, but the Big One is easy to obtain: maple syrup.  I used SpringTree Maple Syrup, Grade A.  The darker Grade B works just fine, however, and is generally less expensive.  One of my goals in the near future is to find a cheap source of Grade B syrup in larger quantities.

I used a silicone pastry brush to coat the inside of the seed cavities with sunflower oil, then drizzled about 2 teaspoons of maple syrup into the cavity of each half.  I placed the halves in a baking pan with a little bit of water and baked at 400° degrees for 60 minutes.  There was a little excess oil and syrup in the cavities after baking, which I just drained off.

The flesh of the fruit can be eaten right out of the rind; a grapefruit spoon works well for this.  If they aren't eaten right away, the squash halves can be wrapped in aluminum foil and refrigerated.  One to two minutes in the microwave will do to resuscitate them.