Flower Powered! Flor de Itabo

Its THAT time of year! You can see these on top of a yuca type tree, and hanging in the grocery stores, and you might wonder – whatever do they do with THAT?

Flor de Itabo is an edible and much prized seasonal culinary treat. The flavor is delicate and a little bitter if prepared with the centers. They are especially good with eggs and tomato based dishes. Preparation is simple, and the uses are many and varied.

Carefully strip the petals from the stems. Put them in a large pot or strainer. If you include the center pieces, it will have a slightly bitter taste. (I take mine out – the chickens don’t care).

     

After rinsing, add them to lightly salted boiling water.  Cook a few minutes, until the petals go from white to a translucent.

Drain well..  At this point you can add them to many things, or freeze them. They will keep a few days in the fridge.

I have used them in omelettes, frittatas, quiches, stir fries, and mixed with egg and a little flour as pancakes. They go really well with tomato sauce. I will be trying it on a pizza soon. Today, I have a decent container for the fridge, one for the freezer, and I threw some into a rice pasta dish with homemade tomato sauce and sweet potatoes for lunch.

It was delish! Enjoy!

I “Heart” Heart of Palm

 

Palmito – Heart of Palm is the spongy innards of certain palm species. Pejibaye, Coconut and other Palm varieties are used, all with slight variations in flavor.  Most popular are the pejibaye palms.  The palm tree sends up several hijos (literally “sons”) close to the mother trunk which can be harvested. Removing the outer spiny covering and inner needle-like fiber is not easy, a prickly and labor-intensive affair.  What you are left with is a porous, mild vegetable that is delightful and versatile.

When you cut down a tree, you get a LOT of palm heart.  But don’t worry – they will keep in the fridge for a few days (longer if pickled) and chunks can be given to appreciative friends and neighbors.

What to do with it?

Here are a few things I have done with palmito:

1) Salad – This vegetable can be the star, or a respectable supporting staff member. My salad today had palmito with chopped parsley and scallion, drizzled with lemon juice, olive oil, sprinkle of sea salt and fresh ground pepper.  perfect.

2) Pickles – use the broth in my pickle post, or make your own favorite brine.

3) Add to stir fry, quiches, or stuff in tortillas or empanadas. (Yes, I will do this for you soon – promise!)

4) Picadillo – a chopped, sauteed version with garlic, onion, turmeric, hot pepper.

Palmito is something that lends itself well to almost everything, because it absorbs the flavor of whatever is around it.  Today, because my worker brought the palmito up while I was making bread,  I experimented with a palmito-filled bread roll, with cheese, palmito and a drizzle of olive oil.

It was yummy enough, I would do that again.

TAMALE time!

Christmas in Costa Rica = tamales.  Families will make hundreds, to eat, to give to neighbors and friends, and to offer anyone who comes by for the next two weeks…Think of the tradition of fruitcakes in the US – but with EVERYONE doing it…

In limited doses, they are delish – so, of course, I had to get my vegetarian, gringa-ized ones made.

Cut (or buy already prepared) banana leaves. There is supposedly a kind that is better to use, but I just cut mine from the bananas I had here. Remove the center rib, wash them well, and soften them over an open flame.  You will see them change color slightly, and they will be very pliable. This is important, because you need to fold them later, without their breaking.

Next, prepare your masa.  (Corn meal filling.) This is where I differ radically from the Tico preparation.  They will add some salt, manteca (solid palm oil) and maybe some pig fat. I do mine with butter, olive oil, sea salt, salsa Lizano and a smidge of hot sauce.  In the past, I have also used garlic powder, but I didn’t have any this time.  Add enough water until you get a soft squishy dough. Some people add mashed potatoes to the masa. This amount was one bag of masa, and made 7 pinitas (15 tamales).

Prep your veggies, small strips to press into the top of your masa. For this year’s tamales, we used green beans, carrot, sweet pepper, olives, and cucumber pickle.  Start your large pot of salted water to boil.

Assemble your tamales. You will be double wrapping the tamal in banana leaves.  Wrap in one leaf, then wrap that in a second leaf, like a little package.

Place 2 double wrapped tamales together, and tie together with cotton thread in a little gift bundle, called a pina. (not to be confused with piña, pineapple). They should be a little tight, so the masa stays and cooks in the leaves.

Cook them in your boiling salted water for at least 45 minutes. Remove, drain, and enjoy, or store them in your fridge until unsuspecting neighbors come over…

Heat in a little bit of water, unwrap and serve warm. Enjoy!

Palatable cow corn? Yes! – Chorreadas

Growing up in New Jersey, August was the month of huge, sweet silver queen ears dripping butter.  Here, it is a little too humid for good corn. The varieties that grow here are good for eating ONLY when very young. After that, they are starchy and mostly tasteless, compared to the corn of my youth.  Good for grinding into masa (flour) for tortillas and tamales…or feeding livestock. My chickens love it.

The exception is the chorreada. A national favorite, it is a somewhat dry, large pancake of – you guessed it – ground corn.  They are very easy to do.

   

Scrape off a few ears into your blender. Three small ears made about a cup of corn kernels.

I added a tablespoon of olive oil, (butter works too) and about a 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Other options to add here would be chopped garlic, some parsley, or some hot chili.  Ticos do it “puro”, but they generally don’t use a lot of spices. Blend on pulse, scraping and folding in the sides, until you have a thick, gloppy paste. It doesn’t have to be completely ground up.

Heat a skillet with a small amount of oil

   

Put your chorreada mix into the pan, and spread with spoon, knife or spatula until about 1/4 inch thick.

Cook it longer than you would think for a pancake, the corn needs to cook.  If you haven’t cooked it enough, it will fall apart when you try to pick it up. When lightly browned, loosen your pancake on all sides, and flip it over

    

Mine got a little TOO browned, but still tasted fine! The traditional way to serve it is smothered with natilla (sour cream). Here, I used homemade cream cheese, which I make from the leftover whey after making butter.

Mmmmm…..que rico! (delicious!)

A couple months earlier, at the time of the main corn harvest, friends invited me to their annual corn festival party. With about 60 people there, the chorreada making was in full swing. Here is the grinding and cooking operation. Traditionally, a flat pan is used for frying these over a wood stove.

   

Tica-Gringa Mashups: Chayote Chips and Soup.

Chayote – those funny looking pear-shaped things that you have NO idea what to do with them…In the squash family, just peeled and boiled, they taste like slightly chewy water.

But, don’t throw them out yet – there are many (wonderful) things that can happen with chayote. Today, we have chayote chips.

Wash and peel your chayote. For this, you want to do it under running water, because it gets slimy and knives can slip. I narrowly missed slicing off the tip of a thumb once. You also might want to oil your hands first, as the slimy stuff is like banana juice, it’s sticky and makes your hand look like a 90 year olds.

   

Once your chayote are peeled, you can slice them on the long sides. I like to take out the pit, as it is a change in texture I don’t care for, but some people don’t mind, and it is edible.

             

Once they are sliced, put them in a large bowl and add your seasonings.  Today, I used a favorite combination of sesame seed oil, soy sauce, mustard and brewers yeast.  I added about a half teaspoon of salt and 1 tsp of cane syrup to round out the flavors.

Sometimes I do the “Italian” seasonings – tomato paste, oregano, garlic, basil.  Really, just think about it like a salad dressing or barbecue sauce…Toss it all together and put those babies on your dehydrating tray.

Now, this is really the first time I have done this in the dehydrator – all the other times, I have baked them on a lightly greased cookie sheet in a low oven. Bake or dehydrate until dry and slightly crunchy on top, turn over and continue until the other side is also crisped.

They will get more concentrated in flavor, and take on the flavorings you basted them in. I can’t stop eating these things!

Today you also get a bonus recipe…I used my side cuttings and pieces of chayote near the center pit and made a great creamy vegan soup too.

Here’s what I did:  Cut all the veggies you want to add.

In your soup pot, start with a little oil of your choice (I use olive or coconut exclusively, uh, unless I use sesame for flavoring) and saute some chopped onion. Today, I made a vegan cream with almond milk (soak almonds overnight, rinse and blenderize with fresh water covering the nuts) but you can use milk, yogurt, heavy cream or any other vegan milk product. Add about a cup of the milk and all the above vegetables and spices to the pot. (Above there is garlic, ginger, carrot, chayote and corn – but again – this is flexible, use what you like and have). Add water, so that you have a mix of creaminess, but not too thick to cook your veggies.

Cover and let them cook a while. Adjust your seasonings to taste. Today, I added some green curry powder that a friend gave me. I then ran about half of it through the blender to thicken it up.  It came out like a Thai style soup, really great.

DIsfute!/Enjoy!

Better Butter

One of the things I really like about being in Costa Rica is having more control over the quality of my food. Growing organically, bartering with neighbors, making many of the things I used to buy, all good.

Some friends have been making their own butter and yogurt for a while, and last year, I started making my own butter too. When I started reading the ingredients in the so-called “healthy” butters, I became very alarmed. If you want a good scare, read the Land of Lakes label sometime. Like, WHY would anyone want to ingest anti-freeze? (Propylene glycol is an approved additive in many processed foods, and is a known neuro disrupter and carcinogen.) And who knows what antibiotics and stuff they feed their cows, or HOW LONG your butters have been travelling before you get them?

Making your own butter is EEEEEASY!!! Start with fresh cream. Anyone who has cows is probably skimming off the cream to make natilla, and selling the skim milk or making cheese.

My neighbor has one cow. And one growing teenage boy who drinks a lot of milk.  She sells me her cream, or barters it for my picking up animal feed in town for her. I don’t know what kind of grass her cow eats, but she produces the butter-fattiest cream ever!

Put your heavy cream in a blender. Use a little salt if you want. I add about 1/2 teaspoon to a half full blender (about 2 cups cream.)

Blend blend blend, for several minutes at high speed, using a spatula to fold in the cream on the sides. First, it will become like whipped cream.  Take some out if you want it. After a few more minutes, it will start separating, and will look like the fluffy chunks floating in milk above. And somehow, it magically turns color from cream white to pale yellow too.

At this point, gather your butter ball and gently squeeze out the whey.  This part is a little messy – so no photos… Save your squeezed whey – you might be able to make cheese from it. Mine are about 50/50 – sometimes they turn into a great cream cheese, sometimes, they just don’t curdle…but don’t worry – its also very good for dogs, chickens and (mixed down with water) plants.

Once you have squeezed out most of the whey, squeeze and fold your butter ball a few times in running cold water over your sink.

Put your cleaned butter into a container, and refrigerate or freeze.

There’s NOTHING like fresh homemade butter on anything! I promise, you will notice the difference!!

Disfrute!

Bread and Bread type stuff

Costa Rica is wonderful for many many things, but good bread is not one of them.  And that is being generous. And I have friends who own bakeries here. Sorry, but the stuff here is mostly tasteless cardboard. I needed to learn how to make my own, or face a life of only tortillas and crackers. Today, a friend reminded me I hadn’t posted anything for a while, so since I already had dough going for bread, here we are.

I did figure out a simple adaptable dough that works well in this climate.  Today, I will share it with you, with one nice variation, in honor of a friend who just returned from Israel – BOUREKAS. Bourekas are a middle eastern version of empanadas.  Empanadas are available everywhere here and come with all kinds of fillings – potato, bean, cheese, chicken, pork, but they are ALWAYS deep fried, usually in some kind of palm oil mix. I eat them when really hungry if I’ve run out of my own food on the bus, as they are little self-contained sandwich units that don’t make a mess.

Dough – I reccomend the Nacarina brand here – it is the only one that has the consistent quality for bread. Sometimes I will mix in some oats or whole wheat. Today was just white. To about 3 cups of flour, I added 2 tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, and the proofed yeast.

Proofing yeast here is critical – so many things can go awry. Put 1 tsp yeast in about 1/2 cup warm (NOT hot!) water with a teaspoon of sugar, stir gently and wait 5 minutes. If your yeast is good, it will bubble up on top and smell, well, yeasty. If it doesn’t do that, you need a new package of yeast. I store mine in the freezer in an airtight package.

Add your yeast water to your flour, and stir well, it should still be dry, and will need a little more water. Add water 1 or 2 tablespoons at a time, until you get your right consistency – this takes time to learn – it is soft, smooth, not too dry, not too sticky, but elastic – stretchy.  Knead by flipping and squishing, for a couple of minutes.  Put it in a greased bowl, and cover with a damp cloth. Put in a warm place.

I use the the hood of my car for this – it is the perfect warmth, and the bread rises to double in bulk in about 45 minutes.  This is where the art comes in – it could be longer, or shorter, depending on your conditions.  I like to give my bread a shorter, second rising, before the shape and bake – the texture comes out better.

While your dough is rising, make your boureka filling. I went out to the greenhouse and cut some pak choi, bok choy, spinach, parsley and scallions.  It looks like a lot, but as you will see, it cooks down to very little.

In a frying pan, fry a small chopped onion, a little finely chopped garlic, and add your greens from hard to soft. I added about 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg (nuez moscada here), some salt, and a couple of tablespoons of the local grated cheese.

At the filling stage, you can be completely creative. In India, its curried potatoes,  but you could fill with just cheeses and have Italian calzones, or squash, cauliflower, well seasoned yuca, or almost anything that can be chopped and put into a pie.

Very important – strain the liquid out of the veggies – or your bourekas will open up while baking and be a mess. I press the juice out through a strainer. Its loaded with nutrients, so reserve and drink the liquid too.

Here’s where I start my oven to preheat. (350 degrees F, or 180 C)

Take a ball of your dough, roll it out to a circle about 1/4 inch thick. Note that my circles are not perfect. Place about a heaping tablespoon of the filling on one side  of your circle, leaving space around the edges for sealing.

With fingers dipped in water, wet a circle around the edge. Fold the top over your boureka and pinch the edges together. Put on your greased baking sheet, leaving a little space around them, and let them rise for another 15 minutes.

Bake them until the bottoms start to brown, about 15 minutes. If you want to get fancy and have that glazed top, in the last couple of minutes brush the tops with beaten egg yolk. (As you can see, I didn’t.)

When they come out, loosen from the baking sheet right away, and let cool, or just eat them.

Sometimes I  smother them with tomato sauce, or chimichurri (fresh salsa) Disfrute!

yuh yuh Yuca!

I admit – I really did NOT like this tuber for a long time. Big, ugly, and almost tasteless, as it is usually served here boiled or in a meat soup dish. (olla de carne). It is just bland and tasteless. But I have since learned the error of my ways – I was missing out on a good comfort food…think cousin of potatoes…

So yesterday, we dug up some tubers. They were monstrous suckers that weighed about 10 lbs. What the heck to do with all that yuca? After I gave a large chunk to my neighbor, I thought about how many ways I know to do this…

I peeled and grated the yuca – which is the most labor intensive part.  I don’t have a food processor, which makes that part go faster, but I do have a spirooli, (spiralizer) which works fine. Soon I had a pot full of skinny slivers.

All the leftovers from the spiralizer went into a pot of water, to be boiled with a little salt. Dogs and chickens love this. I am still unimpressed.  With some of the strands, (about a cup) I mixed in one egg, some minced garlic, salt, black pepper and olive oil. Put it through the blender together to mix it up a little more,

and then fried it into big pancakes. In the same general family as potatoes, they act very similar in cooking..

The taste was a lot like an old family favorite – potato latkes. (pancakes). Especially topped off with a little natilla (sour cream).

OK, that was one cup used. I still had about 5 more in the pot. What to do?  I want yuca cake!

Now – this is about as varied as it can possibly be.  No two people make it the same. My bakery makes it one way – with a little finely ground yuca and a lot of flour, and it is like a dense pudding. I have also had it like a kuggel – a mix more featuring the vegetable. I could remember some of the ingredients, but a quick call to my neighbor resulted in this conversation:

(roughly translated) Take your grated yuca and add flour, butter, sugar, a pinch of salt, some natilla, some dry grated cheese, and baking powder. Add milk if the mix is too dry.  If you want it sweet, add more sugar. and a teaspoon of vanilla if you have it.

That was it, no measurements. If you have an idea about cake mixes and textures, this will get you there. And you really can’t do it wrong.

Eggs apparently are optional,as the yuca will stick together on its own  if it has enough liquid.

I used 2 beaten eggs, about 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour (this can be done vegan or gluten free) and about 1/8 cup sour cream, and a tablespoon of cheese.

Press it into a greased plate and bake until set or lightly browned on top. (Depending on your oven, 35 to 45 minutes)

Mine came out good, dense, chewy and nicely flavored, not too sweet – but next time I will try it creamier, with more sour cream, mild cheese and milk. The best one I ever had was made by a woman in Grecia (if you are there, go into the market and say hi to Olga who has a fruit stand), and hers was almost all cheese and cream. I wish I could find her recipe again!.

enjoy!

The Life Cycle of the Passion Fruit

 Pasiflora edulis , the passionfruit or maracuyá  as it is known in Spanish is one of my favorite fruits.

First tasted on a romantic trip to the island of Dominica, in a place with hot and cold-running waterfalls, it holds great memories, and was a delightful flavor surprise. I named my farm after it (sortof – Finca Paz y Flora is an unsuccessful Spanish pun.) They grow here – prolifically. So when a friend told me he once lived on a farm where they grew but had no idea what to do with them…well, here we are…

  

They grow on a vine. A large gangly vine that needs to be in the air with supports or tree branches. Mine orginally grew on guava trees, but started choking the trees, so now they have their own support structures. They fall to the ground when they are ripe.  Harvest is a little like hunting for Easter eggs. Mostly they are yellow, but there is a salmon pinkish variety too. There are a few other close relatives – one that is shaped more like a banana, and not so citrussy, and the grenadilla, which is rather bland by comparison.

The flower is beautiful. Amazing, really. Wasps love the flowers, and will attack the young fruit. I’m not sure why they leave mine alone – maybe because they prefer the more easily accessed papaya growing nearby?

So, we go from flower to fruit to ground to table – the above photos are in reverse order, oh well, deal with it…

How to use them…

Cut open your passionfruit across the middle, and scoop out the pulpy seed mess in the middle.  It is a tart citrussy fruit, and the seeds can be eaten.  Kids here love them and eat it seeds and all.

  

Most often, they are used in drinks. If I am making drinks and NOT saving seeds, I just throw the whole thing in the blender with water (about 5 parts water to 1 part fruit, adjust if its too tart for you) and sugar optional to taste. Buzz and drink. Straining is also optional.

IF I am saving seeds – and since I just built two new support structures for them, I will be putting in some more plants, I press the pulp and juice through a strainer, reserving the seeds.

The strained juice can then be mixed with water, water and sugar, or cooked with a sweetener to make a reduction sauce. I had this on fish once – it was heavenly! It also works well on cheesecake, or can be made into jam. A friend freezes her juice in ice cube trays, and pops one or two into a glass of water.

If you aren’t growing your own – pick the ones in the store that are the heaviest – they have the most pulp and juice.  Sometimes, for whatever reason, you cut into one, and there is almost nothing there. But it is SO worth putting up with a few duds to get the good ones! Kindof like life, no?…

Strange but wonderful fruits

I continue to marvel at how many fruits I not only never tasted before coming here – but also had never even SEEN! Winters in the US north have apples, and imported oranges and bananas mostly. They travel well. But the tropics are so amazing for the incredible variety of what grows here!

  

Above are mangosteens – quite possibly my favorite fruit EVER! You slice through the thick soft skin, and eat the little sweet pulpy white parts. Indescribably yummy!

After 9 years living here, I keep thinking I’ve probably seen it all – but almost every year – I get a new surprise fruit or vegetable. This year, it is the uchuva, or ground cherry.  Similar to tomatoes with a wrapper, but sweet and only slightly citrussy, I’ve carefully spit out the seeds from these for planting, and I can’t wait to have enough to make a pie!

Carambola, or star fruit is not new to me – but putting them into a dehydrator IS!  Someone gave me a huge bag from her tree yesterday. Aren’t they cute all lined up on the dehydrator tray?  From the early taste tests – this will be a successful experiment! 

And these little guys are the first ever crop of mamon chinos,  aka litchees, from a tree I started from seed. These have a wonderful spiky rubber like skin that you crack with your teeth and slip the peel off, then enjoy what is a little like an oversize grape. Peel the sweet fleshy fruit off the center pit with your teeth…The grafted ones from lower altitudes are all over in the stores now – but I’m thrilled to be able to have my own soon!!