Three Sisters Griddle Cakes

Inspired by this gorgeous book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, our family has been talking this week about the Indigenous practice of planting corn, beans, and squash together in a Three Sisters garden as a way of learning about interdependence, reciprocity, and taking care of each other and the land. These three plants nourish each other and the people who plant them. This Three Sisters griddle cake, adapted from this recipe, brings the three together—gifts from the land—and asks what we will give in return.

This is easiest to make if you can cook something with kabocha squash and/or adzuki beans earlier in the week, and just save a bit of the leftovers, rather than having to cook each one from scratch.

Ingredients
½ cup coarse ground cornmeal
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 tbsp whole wheat flour
1 tsp chili powder
¼ tsp cumin
Pinch dried thyme
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 large egg
½ cup milk
1 tbsp butter, melted
1 tbsp honey
1 cup frozen corn kernels, thawed
½ cup cooked adzuki beans
½ cup diced roasted kabocha squash (or substitute roasted butternut)
1 green onion, finely chopped
Olive oil, for frying

Combine the dry ingredients (cornmeal, flours, spices and herbs, baking powder and salt) together in a medium bowl. 

In a separate smaller bowl, beat the egg and then whisk in the milk, butter, and honey. Stir in the corn, beans, squash, and green onions. Then, pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir to combine.

Heat a pan over medium heat. When hot, drizzle with olive oil. Drop the batter by the tablespoonful into the pan, using about 2 tbsp per cake. If it stays very high. use the spoon to flatten it a bit so that it will cook through. Cook about 2-3 minutes per side or until golden brown and cooked through (you may need to turn the heat down a bit after the first side—the batter is thick and these will take awhile to cook all the way through).

Remove from pan onto a paper towel to soak up any excess oil. Serve hot.

Makes 9 cakes.

Wordless Wednesday: Blog vs. Kansas, Round 2

Sauteed Corn with Cilantro and Avocado

Smoked Bacon and Mushroom Risotto

 

Black-Eyed Peas and Polenta

Sauteed Green Beans with Almonds and Balsamic Reduction

~Shopping Lists~

From Door-to-Door Organics: Local sweet corn, green beans, red onion, parsley, cilantro

From Whole Foods: Heirloom tomatoes, Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon, yellow lentils and black-eyed peas from a great bulk aisle, baby arugula, beautiful mushrooms

From Trader Joe's: Basmati rice, Trader Giotto's balsamic vinegar, sliced almonds

From Natural Grocers: Avocado, Bhutanese red rice, Imagine chicken and veggie broth, and assorted herbs and spices from a top-notch bulk spice selection.

~

Corn Soup with Sauteed Huitlacoche

There's no delicate way to phrase this. My husband is obsessed.

It all started innocently enough. In our Co-op, or in a corn field, depending on how far back you want to go. It doesn't really matter. The end result is still the same.

He returns home one day with An Announcement. "You'll never BELIEVE what I saw at the co-op." I perk up. (This was back at the beginning of September, when I was young and naive and innocently hopeful.) I think he's about to name a new exotic fruit that's shaped like a pear and colored like a parrot, or perhaps a six-foot long vegetable that gets roasted whole over a fire pit in certain areas of the Yucatan. "What??" I say, excitedly. He beams at me, or grins fanatically, depending on how you look at it. He leans forward. 

"There's this crazy mushroom that grows on corn."

"Yes," I say.

"Hyoo-it, hyoot, hwit..."

"Huitlacoche?" I say. (I had encountered it once in a phenomenal quesadilla at Toloache
in Times Square, where I'd learned both to pronounce it—weet-la-COH-chey—and not to think too carefully about what it looked like before it was prepared.)

"That," he says. He leans forward a little further.

"WE ARE GOING TO COOK IT," he says.

"Well," I hedge, "It's kinda..."

"WE ARE GOING TO COOK IT."

"It's like corn mold. I don't know if..."

"I'll cook it. We're cooking it. It's amazing."

He turns to his laptop, starts typing. I think maybe it's a reprieve—he's gotten distracted by email. Five minutes later, he looks up, clearly delighted. "It's also called CORN SMUT," he announces happily.

 
I think that was the moment I knew. It was huitlacoche or bust.

To prepare huitlacoche, which you'll be reassured to learn is a delicately corn-flavored, nutrition-packed delicacy, rather than a fearsome fungal predator, peel back the corn husk and silk and gently pry the "kernels" of the mushroom from the cob either by hand or using a table knife for a little leverage. You can either chop them, slice them, or leave them whole, depending on how adventurous you're feeling in terms of texture and taste (we left the smaller ones whole, just to see what they were like, but I think next time I'd try slicing or chopping to keep the texture a little more even). The mushroom (also known as Mexican truffle) should be fairly firm, like corn itself, and a cloudy, faintly bluish-tinged color when you buy it (slimy means it's over the hill). And despite my initial skepticism, this truly was delicious.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 small yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, 1 pressed and 1 smashed
3 ears fresh corn, kernels sliced from the cob
Chicken and/or veggie broth (about a cup)
Pinch ground cumin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1-2 tbsp cream
1 tbsp chopped Anaheim chile
2 tbsp huitlacoche
1 tsp chopped fresh cilantro, plus extra leaves for garnish 

Heat a pot over medium heat. When hot, add half the butter and a glug of olive oil. Add the onion and a pinch of salt, and saute until soft. Stir in the pressed garlic clove and saute a minute more, then add the corn. Cook, stirring occasionally, for another couple of minutes, then pour in enough broth to just cover the kernels. Bring to a gentle boil, turn the heat down to medium low, and cover. Simmer 5-10 minutes, until the corn kernels taste tender and fully cooked.

Meanwhile, heat the rest of the butter and a glug of olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add the smashed garlic and the Anaheim pepper, and saute for a minute or so until they soften, pressing the garlic into the olive oil to flavor. Add the huitlacoche and a pinch of salt, and saute for about two minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the garlic clove, and sprinkle in the cilantro.

When the soup is done, puree with an immersion blender until smooth or desired consistency. Add a dash of cumin, a slosh of cream, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Ladle soup into bowls. Place a dollop of the huitlacoche in the center, drizzle the soup with a little of the extra oil from the pan, and garnish with cilantro leaves. Serve hot.

Serves 2-3.

Sauteed Corn with Cilantro and Avocado

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you are trapped in Tahoe. In a condo, overlooking the lake. With the sound of water lapping away below you.

Clearly, the circumstances are dire.

(You pause, to contemplate the pink tinge of sunset washing over the dire circumstances.)

To make matters worse, there is nothing in the fridge. Well, there's corn, technically. And there is a bag of rice on the counter. And there's a bit of cilantro. But there are no beans. And nothing else. A clove or two of garlic, yes, but nothing you could make a meal out of. And you are—did I mention?—totally trapped. The only way to acquire proper dinner ingredients would be to find your sandals, track down the front door, open it, walk out, get in your car, and...well, you can see the problem. Even the first part would be too much for a sunset-addled brain.

Fear not, good readers. Dinner is hidden everywhere. Even when all you've got is rice and corn and a sunset to steer them by.

Serve this over Bhutanese Red Rice or one of the nuttier varieties of brown rice. And don't be fooled by its simplicity. It is totally amazing, and worth making even if you have to go to the store. Or, you know, send someone to the store while you make sure the lake keeps lapping.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 medium clove garlic, smashed
3 ears sweet corn, shucked, de-silked, and kernels sliced from the cob
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Large handful fresh cilantro, chopped
1/2 - 2/3 cups grated pepper jack cheese (Petaluma Creamery is still by far our favorite)
1 avocado, quartered and sliced just before serving
1 small ripe tomato, chopped and tossed with a bit of the cilantro

Heat a pan over medium heat. When hot, add a glug of olive oil (just enough to lightly coat the bottom), wait ten seconds, then add the garlic. Saute for about a minute until it softens slightly, then add the corn and a pinch or two of salt and stir. Saute 2-3 minutes until the kernels are al dente (they should still retain a hint of crunch while also bursting with juicy sweetness...just taste them every minute or so until they taste amazing, then stop cooking).

Turn off the heat. Toss in about two-thirds of the cilantro, sprinkle with pepper, then taste and adjust salt and cilantro as needed.

Serve in layers: Rice first, then a thin layer of cheese, then the corn. Top with avocado, and add a dollop of the tomato salsa to finish it off.

Serves 2-3.

Grilled Corn Soup with Peppers and Cilantro

I am deeply ambivalent about corn.

On the one hand, everything I wrote here.

On the other hand, corn muffins, corn bread, cornmeal gnocchi, corn pancakes, cornmeal pizza crusts, grilled corn on the cob. Back on the first hand, corn on the cob after it's gotten stuck in your teeth when you're sitting somewhere trying to have a polite conversation with someone while developing a new technique for turning your tongue 270 degrees in order to try, and of course ultimately fail, to get it out. On the second hand, corn soup. CORN SOUP.

I have this fixation about it. Can't not order it when I see it on a swanky restaurant menu. Roll my eyes around embarrassingly in front of fellow diners while eating it. Chatter about it incessantly through the rest of the meal. "Go home!" the fellow diners say, and I reply, "Corn soup! Corn soup! Did you taste it? Wasn't it amazing?"

After a recent episode involving corn and zucchini soup at Chez Panisse, I decided it was finally time to stop mooning over it in restaurants and make it ourselves. So we did. This version serves two (or maybe three, if you were just serving little cups of it), but would be easy to double or triple. If you can find Padrón peppers (available right now at our co-op in Sacramento as well as The Spanish Table in Berkeley), they work perfectly as a garnish on the top, and you can fry a batch up to serve on the side while you're at it.

Ingredients
3 ears fresh summer corn
1 clove garlic, pressed
Olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1-1/2 cups chicken broth
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1-2 tbsps cream
3-4 Padrón peppers (optional -- you could also try a little grilled bell pepper, chopped, or just a bit of mild jalapeno, minced)
Small handful baby arugula, coarsely chopped
A few fresh cilantro berries (15 or so) or sub a little chopped fresh cilantro

Shuck the outermost leaves off the corn, leaving a couple layers of husk all the way around. Dunk the ears in a bowl of cold water and let soak for about 15 minutes. Preheat the grill to 350 degrees.

Shake the water from the ears, peel back the husk (but don't rip it off) and remove the silk. Rub each ear with some olive oil and garlic, then replace the husk and tie once around each ear with twine. Grill over medium heat for about 8 minutes, turning two or three times as it browns. Move away from the heat or to the upper rack and continue cooking another 10 minutes or so until kernels are tender. Set aside to cool, then cut the kernels from each ear.

Heat a pot over medium heat. When hot, add the olive oil, then the onion and a pinch of salt. Saute until the onion is soft and sweet-smelling. Add the corn and saute for another couple of minutes, then add enough chicken broth to cover the corn. Bring to a gentle boil, turn the heat down to medium low, and cover. Simmer 5-10 minutes, until the corn kernels taste tender and fully cooked.

Meanwhile, heat a frying pan over medium heat. When hot, add a drizzle of olive oil, then the Padrón peppers. Fry for 1-3 minutes, turning as white blisters develop on the bottom of each pepper. When all sides are blistered, turn off the heat and set the peppers aside for a couple minutes to cool. Slice crosswise into small rings.

When the soup is done, turn off the heat and puree with an immersion blender until smooth or desired consistency. If the soup is too thin, you can simmer off a little more liquid for a minute or two; if it's too thick, stir in just a bit more broth to thin it out. Next, add a dash of cumin, some freshly ground black pepper to taste, and a little more salt if needed (you probably won't need it unless your chicken broth is very low in salt). Stir in a small slosh of cream, and serve.



Garnish with cilantro berries, sliced peppers, and some chopped arugula.


Serves 2.