Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa

This is a special cooking edition of my blog.  Don't panic - cooking is nothing more than applied Biology (and Chemistry and Physics and Math and Art...), so there are some way interesting biological phenomena to write about here.  One of my cooking heroes, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, has issued a cooking challenge, and I took the bait.  Isa Chandra is the author of several vegan cookbooks, including Appetite for Reduction, the most useful and well-thought-out cookbook I've ever used.  The challenge is to cook a vegan entrée in under 40 minutes using black-eyed peas, bittersweet chocolate, mint and blackberries.  The recipe must be published on the internet, and there are prizes and fame/fortune involved.  I'll report back about the results of the contest!

Here is a picture of my invention, Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa: 

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa

The contest ingredients got me thinking about agricultural centers of origin.  Agriculture started in many concentrated locations (centers of origin) throughout the world, and cuisines arose based on what crops were domesticated from the species growing in the area, with foreign ingredients added in to the extent that cultures traveled and mixed.  See if you can match the crops with the center of origin here based on what you know about modern international cuisines.  Answers are below the table.

Center of Origin	Crop
1. China	a. wheat, oats, fig, pomegranate
2. India	b. maize, beans, tomato, potato, pumpkins
3. Ethiopia	c. wheat, barley, sorghum, okra, coffee
4. South America	d. wheat, rape (canola), peas, lettuce, asparagus
5. Mediterranean	e. rice, chickpea, eggplant, tangerine
6. Middle East	f. millet, soybean, cabbage, radish, apple

Answers: 1f, 2e, 3c, 4b, 5d, 6a

Since two of the challenge ingredients (chocolate and blackberries) originate from the New World, and beans are mostly a New World crop (though black eyed peas originated in Africa), I decided to mine this vein and emphasize New World crops.  I ended up with enchiladas based on the agricultural icons, the three sisters: beans, corn and squash.  I also used tomatoes, peppers, onions, blackberries, chocolate and sunflower seeds in the recipe.  If only I could have figured out how to add cranberries, potatoes and sweet potatoes, I would have hit all the biggest crops to have originated from the New World.  Ingredients from elsewhere in the world include cumin, cilantro, oregano, wheat, cucumbers and lemon.  Isn't it strange that cumin, cilantro and cucumbers, ingredients that are indispensable to Tex-Mex cuisine, were imported to the Americas?  And that tomatoes were not an original part of Italian cuisine but were brought to Europe from Central America? 

So who are these sisters, and what are they doing in a vegan recipe?  The three sisters are staple crops grown together as companion plants by several groups of Native Americans.  The seeds of beans, corn and squash are planted in a group on a mound.  The corn grows tall and straight, providing both food for people and a pole for the beans to climb.  The squash stays low to the ground and keeps the soil cooler and moist by shading it around the base of all three plants.  It also has prickly leaves, deterring some potential pests.  The beans stalks climb the corn, lifting their fruits off the ground and taking advantage of light above the squash leaves.  At the same time, the bean roots enrich the soil with nitrogen for all three plants.  The three sisters produce more food when grown together than any of the plants grown separately.  In addition, the beans and corn provide complete protein from vegetarian sources for their human cultivators.

The recipe is below, if you'd like to make this meal-with-a-story.  It turned out to be delicious, and it's a low-calorie and low-fat meal as well.  The first time you make these, you'll need to be a Zen kitchen master to get everything done in less than 40 minutes: banish the pets and kids, turn off the radio, stand up straight, elbows in, breathe into your abdomen.  You can do it.  It's quick and easy the second time through, since all the components are actually very simple once you know how they go.  I've found this to be the case with any new recipe I make - there's always a learning curve.  You can also prepare the salsa a day ahead and let it sit in the fridge to develop its flavors, but that would violate the 40 minutes thing.

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa
* Ingredients with asterisks evolved and were domesticated in the New World
Serves 6, at approximately 450 calories per serving, depending on your corn tortillas

Molé Enchilada Sauce Ingredients
1 T sunflower oil*
1 T whole wheat flour
2 T chili powder*
1 t cumin
2 c vegetable broth
1 small can tomato paste*
2 t fresh oregano, minced (1 t dried)
2 oz vegan bittersweet chocolate*
1/2 t salt


Enchilada Ingredients
1 t sunflower oil*
1 large onion, chopped (reserve 2 T for salsa)*
1 medium zucchini, chopped*
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalepeno, diced*
1 t cumin
1 15 oz. can black eyed peas, drained and rinsed (*most beans originate from South America, but not black eyed peas)
1 15 oz can hominy, drained and rinsed* (you could substitute sweet corn if you prefer, but add it with the zucchini while cooking)
12 soft corn tortillas
2 T roasted, salted, shelled sunflower seeds*

Salsa Ingredients
2 T chopped onion (from above)*
Juice of one lemon
1 t olive oil (ok, you could use sunflower, but olive oil is yummy in salsa)
2 cucumbers, chopped (peel if you like)
1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 c chopped fresh mint
1/2 t cumin
1/4 t cayenne*
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup blackberries*

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Make the enchilada sauce:  In a medium saucepan heat the oil on medium, add the flour and stir until toasty (30 seconds), stir in chili powder and cumin for 30 seconds, stir in broth, add all other ingredients.  Bring to a boil, reduce temperature and simmer 5 minutes, stirring often.

3. Make the enchiladas:

• In a large sauté pan on medium heat, sauté the onions in the oil until they start to soften, add the zucchini, garlic, jalepeno and cumin and continue to sauté until the zucchini starts to soften.  Stir in the black eyed peas and hominy and allow to heat up. 
• Dunk the tortillas in the enchilada sauce and wrap a large spoonful of filling in each tortilla.  Careful - everything should be hot at this point - don't burn yourself.  Line up the tortillas in a large glass baking dish.  Pour the enchilada sauce over the enchiladas and sprinkle sunflower seeds on the top.  
• Bake for 10-15 minutes uncovered, until the edges of the tortillas start to brown and the sauce is bubbling.

4. Make the salsa while the enchiladas bake: Combine all ingredients except blackberries in a dish and stir well.  Gently stir in the blackberries.

5. Serve enchiladas topped with a spoonful of salsa.



I owe a big thanks to my friend, Jenny, a vegan food aficionado, for the idea to make enchiladas.  Thanks also to my friends for being guinea pigs: Bruce, Coke and Linda, your bravery and enthusiasm are inspiring!

Birds Do It, Bees Do It........Even Zucchinis Do It

I am the only person in the world who seems to have trouble growing zucchini.  They are notoriously generous in fruit, and you always here gardeners joke about being overwhelmed by their zucchini crops. There are even stories about gardeners secretly dropping of baskets of zucchinis at their neighbors' houses just to get rid of them.

I've gotten better at growing zucchini plants through the years, but still have little luck with the actual fruits.  (Yes, they're fruits, according to the botanical definition.  Any plant part that contains seeds is a fruit.  Don't worry - I call them vegetables when I'm cooking.)  My home garden has a lot of shade for a garden, and my first few years of planting zucchini in the shadier regions allowed the plants to be overcome by a dusty white mildew.  Any zucchinis would wither and rot before they grew two inches.  Now my plant is in the sunniest patch I have, and it's healthy, but my zucchinis are still withering prematurely.  Here is this year's zucchini plant, recovered from the hail damage:

After talking with the farm owner where I'm working this summer, we agreed it might be a pollination problem.  Pollination is how plants reproduce, and seeds and fruits are the offspring of plant reproduction.  Pollen, is the plant equivalent of sperm, and it must reach the botanical equivalent of eggs, called ovules, for seeds and fruits to develop.  There seem to be two possible pollination problems in my case:  maybe there aren't enough bees to pollinate the flowers; or maybe there must be two plants for successful pollination.

Option 1, not having enough bees, is a distinct possibility.  There aren't many bees in my neighborhood.  I do see bumble bees, but they tend to cluster out front where all my ornamental flowers are.  I have seen no honey bees this year, which I fear is due to colony collapse disorder - see a future post on this.  To remedy this problem, I could plant some bee-attracting plants near my zucchinis so there is more of a reason for the bees to fly all the way over there.  I could also start a honeybee hive in my back yard, which I will do some day if my neighbors aren't reading this blog.  Or, I could hand-pollinate the flowers when they open every morning, which is what I have been trying.

To hand-pollinate the flowers, you must understand a little about the reproductive organs of zucchini plants.  Flowers are always reproductive organs for plants, but each type of plant is a little different.  Zucchinis and all squash-type plants produce separate male and female flowers.  Most types of plants have male and female in the same flower, but some may have entirely separate male plants with only male flowers and also female plants.  Hollies have separate genders, which is why only some hollies grow berries - only females can grow fruits and only males can produce pollen.

On zucchinis, the female flowers grow out of what looks like tiny immature zucchinis.  This organ is the female flower's ovary, and it is filled with ovules.  The ovary will one day actually become a zucchini, and the ovules will become seeds after the flower is pollinated.  Notice the thick regions behind the female flowers below - they are ovaries.

Male flowers have a normal stalk, and inside the male flowers are pollen-producing organs called anthers.  Here is a male flower:

For pollination to occur, the pollen must be transferred to sticky pads, called stigmas, inside the female flower.  Each pollen grain then produces two actual sperm cells that burrow down through the flower to an ovule and fertilize it.  Many pollen grains are needed to fertilize all those ovules inside a zucchini ovary.  When the ovules are fertilized, the fruit begins to enlarge and grow into a mature zucchini with mature seeds.  If no pollen is transferred, or only a little is transferred, there is no signal to the plant to grow the fruit, and the ovary just withers and rots like mine have been doing. 

I have been hand-pollinating for a couple of days now, by touching my finger to the anthers in the male flowers and smearing the pollen on the female flowers.  I think it may have worked!  Here you see the stigmas inside of a female flower and what I think may grow into an actual zucchini:

Regarding the second possible pollination problem, I may have to plant two zucchini plants next year.  Since I only have one zucchini plant, the pollen I used came from the same parent plant as the flower I transferred it to.  Some plants don't mind reproducing with themselves, but zucchinis may be somewhat pickier.  The zucchini that seems to be growing could have been pollinated by pollen from a neighbors plant.

On the farm, the year they had a bee hive, the squashes were much more productive, since all their flowers were being pollinated.  It really makes you appreciate the bees more when they are not there to do that garden task for us.