I believe I've gone off the deep end, but before you tell me it couldn't have been a very long trip, let me tell you that I've been enjoying 100% pure corn tortillas thanks to this wonderful machine.
I bought it in Puebla and had it shipped back. I'm really thrilled to know that after all my trials I will now always have decent masa.
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Of course things never grow fast enough but it's hard to complain. After an erratic Spring with Biblical heat waves and cruel cold snaps, it's been pretty steady here in Napa: marine layer mornings that burn off to hot afternoons.
The plants that are doing the best are volunteer amaranth and tomatillos. The weed purslane is doing fine as well. When I was growing tomatoes, I'd always plant two Early Girls to not get frustrated while waiting for the rest of the heirloom varieties to ripen. With beans, the one to pick for my area is called California. It's a little slow to germinate but it once it does, it thrives and blossoms almost immediatley and so far it's always been the first one to have beans. I would think in a good year you might even get away with two crops. The problem is that the final beans are kind of ugly.
The most stubborn bean has been the small red lima from Chiapas. It's nearly September and it seemed like not a single flower, let alone a bean. And then almost overnight it produced inconsequential flowers followed by small thin beans!
The prettiest flowers are always the runner beans. I saw the flowers for sale in a market in Oaxaca. If the season threatens to end early, remember you can harvest the flowers and eat them like sprouts, toss them in a salad or saute them with chiles for a taco filling.
So far most of my new beans are doing great, if not better. There are a few that seem healthy and happy but show no signs of flowering, let alone beans. There are a lot of factors like the number of daylight hours, altitude and heat the might affect different varieties. I'm not so worried as we still have a ways to go.
Gemme is the gardener at the the seminal Napa restaurant Mustard's and here's a shot of her round black beans. These beans were actually from San Cristobal and hunted down by Connie Green of the Wine Forest.
Her friend Rebecca seems to be laughing at Gemme's lack of beans!
But it's a glorious plant!
Debbie Morton over at Kenwood has the same issue:
Perhaps you can tell me if I'm doing something wrong? I planted Patz
Cuarenzes from Mexico on 5/17, they are definitely pole beans and are
trellised and beautiful, but not one flower to date! Is this usual or am
I growing ornamentals!
That's the fun of bean trials! They may never bloom and bear beans and it may be they blossom and produce beans in a flurry. And it may be they belong in their regions in Mexico and not anywhere else.
Posts here are going to be touch and go until September. I'll be in Mexico and after that we need to take a breather before The Book comes out and all those promotions start. The staff at Rancho Gordo is waiting to full your orders, however, so that part of the company is never at rest.
If you're planning farmers market visits, I just want to remind you we traditionally take Labor Day off and this year is not different. We've got to give Joan and Sara a break!
| I'm doing some research for a pre-Columbian dinner (details to come shortly) and while I knew that a lot of our indigenous food was a real gift to the world, it's almost staggering seeing it in a list like this. It's not complete (I left off a lot of the hard-to-find exotic fruits and edible weeds) but it's impressive!
LIST OF AMERICAN FOOD PLANTS
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| Agave Cacao Sarsaparilla Sassafras Corn Quinoa Squash Sunflower Wild rice Avocado Gooseberry Blackberry Sapote Blueberry Cacti (nopales and tunas) Cashew Cranberry Elderberry Grapes (particular species are native to N. America) |
Potatoes |
Can you imagine an Indian curry without a chile? Italian food without tomatoes?
I would have bet that persimmons and purslane were Asian. Do you know? I've seen purslane listed as both Asian and as Mayan.
Images: The top illustration is from Mexico: A Study of Two Americas by Stuart Chase and the photo is a detail from a mural in the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City, both by Diego Rivera.
I've been a fan of purslane for a long time. There's a famous Mexican stew with pork and purslane but sometimes you don't want a big old pork fiesta. It's rare, but sometimes you just want a nice soup.
I made this delicious soup with purslane from my back yard. I had about 4 cups of chicken stock and 4 cups of mostly bean liquid with a some beans in it. While I heated these two ingredients together, I sauteed the cleaned purslane with onion, garlic, a minced serrano and some olive oil. When these were soft, I added them to the soup. Finally, I added about a cup of boiled tomatillos and some of their boiling water to the blender, made a puree, and then this went into the soup. It cooked for another 10 minutes or so and it was a little ugly but very delicious.
It's totally out of my league but the annual Tour d'Organics event is coming up September 17th in Sebastopol. There's more information here but of course the real reason to sign up and ride is that we donated a big sack of Midnight beans for the cyclists!
It's totally out of my league but the annual Tour d'Organics event is coming up September 17th in Sebastopol. There's more information here but of course the real reason to sign up and ride is that we donated a big sack of Midnight beans for the cyclists!
I was in lovely Galt, California with one of my growers and instead of the deli sandwiches we normally get, I asked it he wouldn’t mind trying the Mexican place next door. He agreed (I think reluctantly) and I was pretty happy.
Much to my surprise, on the menu was “CARNE EN SU HUGO”, which is one of my favorite dishes from Jalisco. There are many version but they all seem to have thin cuts of cheap steak, beans (Normally Mayacoba/Peruanos/Cannarios) and bacon. This version was loaded with zucchini, something I’ve never seen before but it made a nice summer soup.
I have version on the Rancho Gordo website that’s worth checking out.
Rancho Gordo: Experiments from my mostly New World kitchen and gardens 