Nopales (no-pall-ehs)

Nopales, or cactus pads (leaves), have been at the top of my Wanted Foods List for awhile. They are right above cooking with banana leaves. They always have fresh nopales at Suvianda for super cheap and they carry jars of nopalitos as well. As far as I understand, diced and cooked nopales are called nopalitos (the -ito again...)

I talked to some of the cooks at work and they recommended sauteing nopales, I tried a couple of ways of cooking them today. I boiled and sauteed some cleaned, de-thorned, and chopped nopales. I made a chipotle pepper sauce by putting 2 chipotle peppers, fresh red pepper, garlic, salt, pepper, and tomato in the food processor. Then I served them with black beans and sauteed red peppers and onions and avocado.

After reading about nopales a little bit, I think they are a fairly neutral food that people traditionally pair with more flavorful food, like spicy chipotle sauce.
The texture is a lot like a sauteed green bell pepper but they are a little bit sour.

The thorns made me a little nervous, but they keep tongs near the nopales in the grocery store and I just had to kind of knock and scrape the thorns off with a big knife. The leaves ooze a mucous type of liquid after they've been cut.

So they mystery is gone, nopales are not too difficult to work with. I might pair them with some eggs someday (the popular juevos con nopales), but I can't eat eggs right now because I'm so sick of them from Easter weekend.

Nutritionally, the nopales are pretty good for you. They have dietary fiber, a low glycemic index, low carbs, and a good amount of Vitamin A and C and minerals.

Fry Bread: Simple, yet Complex

In the class that I'm writing this blog for, I had to do a cultural traditions presentation. I made a PowerPoint and did my research on a food that I've always enjoyed but had never really thought about before--fry bread. For those who've never had it, fry bread is a Native American food that is exactly what it sounds like, fried bread. Its contemporary version still has simple ingredients, some variation of flour, salt, baking powder, water, and shortening.

I learned a lot from researching fry bread, but there were two points that really made me think. This first is that fry bread is controversial to some. It's not a traditional food in the way that one would consider the products of hunting and gathering or early agriculture to be. Native Americans developed fry bread as a survival mechanism. After they were moved to reservations and had to live off of government rations because they didn't have their hunting and growing areas, they used the products given by the government to create a calorie dense food. Lard, flour, sugar, and water made fry bread, and since then this food has evolved into a source of pride, and really, is a very beloved food that tastes good. It's become a food that is sold at pow-wows, county fairs, rodeos, and the like.

It is also the only universal food among Native Americans, because it was the one thing that they all shared no matter what their traditional ways were, they were all forced into a dependent state that resulted in eating rations. In recent years, a woman named Suzan Shown Harjo of the Morning Star Institute made the point,"Just because it was a food that was forced on us, doesn't mean we have to keep eating it." Harjo believes that fry bread magnifies the poor diet and sedentary lifestyle of many Native Americans, exasperating health problems like diabetes with its 27 grams of fat and 700 calories per plate.

Although I understand Harjo's point, I don't think she will win many people over with her anti-fry bread campaign. For most people in my generation, and probably the 3 generations before me, it is the only "traditional" native food that we know. This brings me to my second point, that it is probably a waning tradition as well. I know that my siblings don't know how to make fry bread, and my mom rarely makes it. In a reflection on fry bread I had done before doing research I wrote:

"If I ever do have a meaningful conversation with my grandma, I’d like to ask her how to make Fry bread, but I think it might be one of those things that you have to learn how to do after years of helping and observation."

On frybreadlove.org, Annie Humphrey writes about how she learned how to make fry bread and sort of backed up my thoughts on how most people learn and pass it on,

"She didn't speak English to us and so I was instructed to follow gramma around the kitchen and watch her every move...from choosing the right bowl to mix up the dough to placing the finished bread into a bed of paper towels.”

So I didn't learn from my grandma (above), instead I learned the 21st century way, by researching on the internet. That's sort of a trend for me, I've learned how to cook from TV, the internet, and cookbooks. Fry bread is finicky--it's so easy to mess up, so I read a lot of suggestions before I tried it. I practiced on a Saturday before I made it for the class and I was pleased that it turned out well. It kind of freaked me out at first because I'd never fried anything before and putting dough in hot oil reminded me of how making fried chicken can scar your arms.(One of the tidbits I've picked up in reading about southern cooking.)

Anyway, we ate the fry bread with a breakfast of eggs, tomatoes, and sauteed spinach and then again ate it with a dinner of Southwestern Vegetable Soup (Bittman's recipe is one of the best vegetarian soups, in my opinion.) Fry bread also goes well with honey or "indian tacos."



If you're feeling adventurous and want to try some "native" cuisine, this is a pretty excellent recipe for newbies. Enjoy!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fry-Bread-I/Detail.aspx

Adventures in Pasta Making

My Christmas gift to myself this year was a pasta maker. It's a purchase I feel good about because I eat a ton of pasta, and now I know where all of the ingredients came from. Also, I can make pasta in bulk and have it on hand for a 10 minute dinner anytime. I was a little apprehensive at first because I've never made pasta before, but it could not be easier. I got my pasta maker on overstock.com for $36.00 with shipping, which is a pretty good deal for the quality. I've come to the conclusion that it's just a grown up version of the Play-Doh Fun Factory.




Making pasta really is a lot like playing with Play-Doh. Using the flour bowl technique to mix up the ingredients is probably the funnest way to go and it feels more authentic. Basically, you mix your flour (or flours if you're doing whole wheat pasta) with a pinch of salt. Then, make a bowl in the middle with your fingers and throw in a splash of olive oil. Put the eggs in one or two at a time and stir them up.



When they're all in, go to town kneading it all together with your hands. You'll end up with a dough ball that might be kind of ugly, but it will be fine in the end. Cover the dough and let it sit for 30 minutes before cutting it into three pieces. Flatten the pieces out so that they will fit into the pasta maker and roll 'er through. The flattened piece of dough can either be used for making ravioli or for slicing into linguini and spaghetti.

The pasta recipe I've been using calls for 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1/2 white flour. I had an unsuccessful attempt at using 2/3 wheat to 1/3 white and the consistency was like Play-Doh that has been left out over night. Moral of the story, never go full wheat. You can also add beets, spinach, mushrooms, and sundried tomatoes to the mix to make colorful flavored pasta.

Once the pasta is all sliced up, it's ready for drying. I think it's unnecessary to buy a drying rack. John and I just rigged up a string in the corner of the kitchen. It's literally just two nails and a piece of wrapping ribbon, but it works.



There are going to be pieces of pasta that either fall off the string and break into little pieces or won't fit on the string to begin with. Throw these ones in a bowl to dry-they're good for things like no chicken noodle soup (or chicken noodle soup if you're into that.)
This pasta maker can also be used to make sugar cookies and fondant, which will come in handy if you're like me and you want to work for Charm City Cakes someday. Also, I think that homemade pasta would be a great gift. Maybe a combination of beet and spinach pasta around the holidays, in a nice basket with a ribbon...
That was my Martha Stewart moment for the day-and yes, everyone's getting homemade pasta from me next Christmas.