This is an incredibly versatile chile sauce with loads of flavor and just a touch of heat. It is my adaptation of the incomparable Mole Coloradito Oaxaqueno from Susanna Trilling in her “Seasons of My Heart” cookbook that we’ve featured before. (Mole is pronounced “Mole-lay”!)
This makes a sauce that is 95% of her Mole, but I prefer to make a very large batch as it is a project to do and doubling of the recipe doesn’t take much more time to make. Then you have this cache of amazing flavor that spices up any dish with no extra time but lets all of the flavor and work shine through. It is a wonderful basis for enchiladas, nachos, stews, soups, sloppy Joe’s, burritos or even spooned over eggs in the morning. I like to add about half tomato sauce by volume to make a great sauce that is smooth and mellow with the taste of the chiles but none of the bite.
Colorado means “red” in Spanish, usually referring to a deep brick type of red, so coloradito is “little red”. We’ll give you the recipe first, then walk you though the preparation in photos so you can see the stages and progression. These chiles can easily be grown in your garden for most of North America, or at a well-stocked Mexican grocer. For the Mexican chocolate, Ibarra is a well-known brand that is available almost everywhere. If you really want to take the flavor to the next level, look at Taza Chocolate. It is stone ground in the traditional Mexican village tradition and has a flavor that is absolutely to die for, not to mention being fair trade and traceable to the source. You can see all about how your batch was made by entering the batch number into their website!
1/2 Tsp Mexican oregano, dried (Can substitute Marjoram if needed)
1 Plantain, ripe
1 Tbs raisins
5 Almonds, whole and unpeeled
1/2 Cup sesame seeds
2 Bars Mexican chocolate – 6 oz total
3 Tbs Coconut oil or sunflower oil
1 1/2 Qt homemade chicken stock
Salt to taste
There are 3 steps to this recipe: processing the chiles, processing the spices and processing the tomatoes, onions, plantains and seasonings.
Some cooks will stem and seed the chiles while still dry, toasting the pieces. Others will toast the chiles whole, then soak them to soften the skins and remove the stems and seeds.
Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil. Meanwhile, heat a dry comal, griddle or a cast-iron frying pan over low heat and toast the chiles on both sides for about 5 minutes. Toast the Anchos a bit slower and on a lower heat because of their thicker skins. Toasting them blisters and loosens the skins and gives off a rich chile aroma. It may be best to toast them in smaller batches so the pan or comal is not crowded. You need room to move and turn the chiles in the pan.
Remove the chiles, place them in a large bowl with the hot water. Cover or weight the bowl with a plate to keep the chiles submerged. Soak for about 20 minutes to fully soften the dried skins. If chiles have been stemmed and seeded, puree in a blender using as little of the chile water as possible to make a thick paste, usually about a cup. If chiles have not been stemmed and seeded, do this first, then puree in blender. It is best to do this in small batches to not overload and overheat the blender, as the chile puree is quite thick. Depending on your blender, you may have a smooth paste at this point, or you may have some small pieces of skin. If skin pieces are present, pass the puree through a food mill or sieve to remove the skin pieces. Set aside.
After processing the chiles, heat the dry comal, griddle or cast-iron frying pan over medium heat and toast the peppercorns, cloves, allspice, cinnamon stick, cumin and coriander until they release their aroma. Stir the spices constantly to prevent burning and to monitor the toasting process. Set the spices aside.
Grill the garlic and onion on the dry frying pan, turning often until they become translucent. They may stick a bit, but keep turning. Puree the spices, onion and garlic with 1/2 cup of the chicken stock. Set aside.
Heat the cast-iron frying pan to medium and cook the tomatoes and oregano with no oil until the condense, usually about 10 – 15 minutes. They will give off their juices, then start to condense as the juices evaporate. Once condensed, set aside.
Heat 2 Tbs of the oil over a medium heat in a cast-iron frypan and fry the plantain until brown, about 10 – 12 minutes. Remove from the pan, add raisins and fry until plump, about 3 minutes. Remove and set aside with plantain. Fry the almonds until light brown, about 4 minutes. If needed add a little additional oil, but the amount should decrease with each ingredient until the almonds are almost being dry-fried.
Puree the plantain, raisins and almonds in a blender with 1 1/2 cups chicken stock until smooth.
Heat frying pan over low heat, add 1 Tsp of oil and gently fry the sesame seeds until just turning brown, about 6 – 8 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove, cool and grind in a spice grinder or food processor.
In a heavy stockpot, at least 6 quart capacity, heat 1 Tsp of oil until almost smoking on medium-high heat. Add chile puree and cook, stirring constantly. It will splatter, but keep stirring until heated through. Once heated, lower heat to medium-low and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently. When chile puree starts to thicken add tomato mixture, lower heat to low and cook another 15 minutes, stirring to keep from sticking or burning. Then add onion and spice mixture and stir well. Add pureed plantain and sesame mixture and stir well. Cook a further 10 minutes, stirring constantly to keep from sticking.
If you are making a larger batch and freezing some, add 2 cups of chicken stock, stir in well then add the chocolate and stir constantly. Once the chocolate has dissolved, add the salt, stir in well. Reduce heat to a slow simmer and let cook for 10 – 15 minutes, stirring frequently to avoid sticking. It will be a thick sauce, ready for freezing in jars. Let cool, then ladle into mason jars leaving an inch gap at the top. Will keep in the freezer for up to a year.
If you are making the batch to use fresh, add 5 cups of chicken stock to thin the sauce, then add the chocolate, stirring constantly. Once the chocolate has dissolved, add the salt. Lower the heat to a slow simmer and let it cook down for at least 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. It should coat the back of a spoon, but not be much thicker when done.
Makes about 8 servings.
Recipe Tip! It doesn’t take much longer to make double the recipe and freeze for an easy, delicious dish later!
This may sound complicated or a lot of work, so we will walk you through the process and show you what each step looks like. It is a good day’s worth of work, but it can be broken up into a couple of days if you don’t have the time to make it all in one day. Once you taste the results, you will immediately see why it is worth the effort to make a large batch!
In the first photo, we are toasting two of the different chiles and dry frying the onion and garlic in another pan. We have learned to save a lot of time by combining a couple of steps at once. The Ancho chiles are in the back with the Pasilla Bajio or Chilacas in front.
Roasting Chiles and Frying Onions
These are the chiles after toasting, soaking and being stemmed and seeded. Most of the work happens right here, to get to this stage. After this everything is roasting and toasting, then using a blender to puree everything into a sauce. To give a sense of scale, this bowl is over 18 inches across!
Into the blender with the chiles! We have a Vita-Mix blender that is a real blessing with big projects like this. It stands up to the thick sauce without overheating, but we still need to process all of the chiles in batches. We usually fill the blender about 1/3 full with chiles and add just enough soaking water to make a thick paste. Please notice the gloves, I use them when working with chiles for extended periods of time to keep me from itching my eyes with a chile-infused finger!
It is easy to see why the name of “colorado” is applied to this sauce – look at that beautiful rich brick red color! My mouth was watering for most of the time after we pureed the chiles as the kitchen was filled with their aroma.
There is not too much volume lost from the soaking stage to the pureed stage. This is the same bowl after we’ve finished pureeing all of the chiles.
Next up is toasting and grinding the spices and seasonings. We used a smaller cast-iron pan to toast the spices and release their aromas.
A molcajete is what we use simply because we have one. It is great for grinding spices and really working them to release their flavors and aromas. A food processor or blender can do much the same with less effort.
A few minutes later, here is what the ground spices look like, ready to be mixed into the chile mixture. At this point we’ve also pureed the onion and garlic and mixed it into the chile sauce.
Now it’s time to mix it all together! This photo helps to show the scale of everything, as the whisk is almost a foot long and I’ve got my hand completely wrapped around it to work all of the purees and spices together.
After everything is mixed together and cooked at a slow simmer, we put it up in jars to freeze for later. We use pints, as this gives a generous amount of sauce without being too much after a couple of days. We leave about an inch or little more of space at the top to allow for expansion in the freezer.
All done except the clean-up! This particular batch made 17 pints of scrumptious chile sauce, with just a bit left over for the next morning’s eggs. This will give us almost a year’s worth of chile sauce.
A close-up of the color and texture of the finished product. Well worth the work!
https://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Seedlings1.jpg567850Stephen Scotthttps://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Survey-Header.jpgStephen Scott2013-01-30 09:38:512024-04-30 17:34:02Starting Seeds at Home – a Deeper Look
San Marzano tomatoes are world-famous with a long and storied history as the absolute best plum tomato for sauce and pizza. They are also excellent for canning, peeling and drying. Chefs worldwide prefer this variety to all others for making their signature sauces, and it is the only tomato that is acceptable for making true Neapolitan pizza. Many Americans are becoming fans and learning why this tomato created the peeled and sauce industry in Italy and across Europe.
San Marzano tomatoes are named for where they originate, the Campania region of southern Italy above the “toe” of the “boot”. Valle del Sarno is the valley where the recognized and protected variety is grown. The reason for this strict preference is the soil – a rich volcanic soil from Mount Vesuvius – that gives the tomato its distinct richness and depth of flavor. In fact, they are the only tomato that can be used for a true, recognized Neapolitan pizza! People who have tasted the native tomatoes grown in the volcanic soils claim that they can tell the difference between tomatoes grown there and those grown elsewhere, even if it is similar soils.
San Marzano tomatoes are thinner with a pointier end than Roma tomatoes, with a noticeably richer and mildly sweeter flavor. It has a thinner skin with fewer seeds and a meatier flesh than the Roma, with a higher pectin content that produces the thicker sauces it is famous for. This famous variety was developed from traditional breeding of three Italian tomatoes in the late 1800s; the King Umberto, Fiaschella and the Fiascona. Only the King Umberto tomato is still grown!
San Marzano tomatoes have been commercially popular since around 1875 when the first cannery was built to pack and ship these jewels across Italy and Europe. The popularity of the San Marzano declined during the 1970s as hybrids gained popularity for their thicker skins and tolerance of machine harvesting and marketability, but saw a resurgence in the late 1990s as people realized the flavor that had been lost with the original. Of 27 cultivars being grown in the Valle del Sarno area in the early 1990s, only 2 were selected as being the most representative of the traditional San Marzano. In 1996 the European Union granted Protected Designation of Origin status to the San Marzano tomato.
The San Marzano Redorta is one of the more popular cultivars of San Marzano due to its larger size and prolific production. The name creates some confusion, as this tomato comes from the Tuscany region, which is north of Campania where the tomato originated. It is supposedly named for a mountain – Pizzo Redorta – in the Lombardy region near the Italian Alps, which is much further north still. So, a larger version of the treasured San Marzano that is from Tuscany and not Campania, yet named for a mountain that is almost the length of Italy away? Stranger things have happened!
We do know that it is a great tasting and producing tomato with all of the traditional characteristics that have made the San Marzano tomatoes famous and have brought it back to being a heavyweight in the sauce tomato world. Whether you grow the traditional San Marzano or the Redorta, the flavors and production are sure to win you over.
https://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/San-Marzano-Tomato-1.jpg567850Stephen Scotthttps://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Survey-Header.jpgStephen Scott2013-01-22 09:42:042024-04-30 17:34:02World Famous San Marzano Tomatoes
Perusing the newest crop of seed catalogs while engaging in some garden planning is a favorite pastime of gardeners everywhere during the cold, short days of winter. It is an excellent way to take your mind off of the often drab and dreary days that separate the last harvest from the first plantings. Seed catalogs can be much more than a pleasant distraction and fodder for summertime daydreams. They can help you with your upcoming garden planning by helping to visualize succession and companion plantings while arranging the palette of colors in the most attractive ways possible.
You can get started in one of two ways, with neither being right or wrong. Some prefer to sort through the catalogs first, circling what interests them and what standbys are always planted. Others will use different colors for vegetables, herbs and flowers to make organizing and planning a bit easier. The other approach is to put down an initial plan of the upcoming garden on note or graph paper, using zones or areas to show what types of plants go where. Others will use different colors for different plants to determine where everything will go. These initial plans are easily changed and updated as the planning process moves forward and the new garden starts taking shape. Once the plan is solidified, our Garden Journal is an excellent tool to help keep track of your progress this year. It is free as a download.
Remember to try something new each year, while keeping the foundation of what works going in your garden. This way you can experiment with new things and see what works and fits within the framework of what you already have established without risking losing too much if the new variety doesn’t make the grade.
If you want to try saving seeds – or you already do – make that part of your plan, where to plant those items for isolation to prevent possible cross-pollination and make the seed saving process as easy as possible. Pay attention to wind patterns and think about how you will isolate them, either through time, distance or exclusion. Time isolation just means planting those varieties you’ll save seed from either earlier or later than others of its type so that blooming and pollination don’t happen at the same time. Distance is easy – how far apart are you going to plant? How much space do you have? Can you use the front or back yard on the opposite side from the garden for planting? Exclusion is a physical barrier that keeps everything out including insects, meaning you might have to hand-pollinate that item.
While working on garden planning pay attention to the number of days to maturity for a variety and how that will work in your climate. Look at where you want to locate it when reading the size and height descriptions, especially if it needs shade or full sun. Succession and companion planting can make a small or medium sized garden produce like a small scale farm, producing enormous amounts of veggies from a deceptively small space. Think about how much you or your family likes particular veggies, and plan on doing some succession planting this year. Examples of varieties that take well to succession planting are beets, carrots, lettuce, spinachand radishes, but there are others as well. Just give your plants a bit more space to accommodate succession planting alongside companion plants.
When deciding on how many plants you’ll need, seed counts are in the variety headings and in each singular variety description, as well as on the website. We are working on getting planting instructions up on the website for each variety, but each packet will have detailed instructions on the back.
Look at the colors of your garden and plan a rainbow to grow the aesthetic and nutritional benefits of different colors. Plant a few red, yellow and orange tomatoeswith yellow, purple and orange carrotsas companions. Use red Chicorywith green Kaleand rainbow Swiss chard. Pole beans in different colors partner extremely well with corn.
Plant some of the vining plants like Red Malabar spinach along the garden fence where it won’t take up space, but give you lots of great tasting heat tolerant spinach substitutes for your summer salads. Melons and squash are happy planted in corners of the garden where they can sprawl along the fence or even over and out without being in the way. Another approach is planting them in containers outside the garden where they have all the room needed and are out of danger of being stepped on.
Look at the hot and long season varieties or cold and short season ones on the website for more ideas of what works well for your climate. Use these as a start and experiment to refine into a basis of what, exactly, really works in your garden. This will take time if you are just starting out, but you might be surprised at how much you have figured out if you’ve been growing a bit, even if you haven’t thought about it just this way! Read the descriptions carefully, as we’ve worked hard to try and get good information into them to help you.
Flowers are an often overlooked, but essential component of any serious vegetable and food garden. They don’t just belong in the realm of the flower or landscape gardener! Flowers attract pollinators (not just bees) that greatly improve production in the garden; are nursemaid plants for smaller, more tender ones; are core ingredients for some incredible teas and bring a delightful aroma that soothes and grounds you. Our flowers are notated by Annual, Perennial, Biennial which depends a lot on climate zones but will allow you to do some accurate planning for where they fit in best. Some of the best ways to get started using more flowers in and around your garden is with one of our mixes, especially created for drylands, humid climates or to spread some serious fragrance in your garden.
You should have some good ideas starting about your garden this year. Spending some time during the colder times in planning will help you to create a masterpiece that will grow some incredibly tasty treats to enjoy with your family and share with some lucky friends and neighbors.
By all accounts, the FDA is a miserable failure for food safety.
Many of us remember the national food safety nightmare – a listeria outbreak in cantaloupes from around Rocky Ford, CO – in the summer of 2011. All in all, there were 147 illnesses and 33 deaths, making this incident the most deadly outbreak of food-borne illness in our country since 1924. The farms owners declared bankruptcy later that fall. All of this occurred because of jerry-rigged potato cleaning equipment had been adapted to wash melons in conditions that heavily favored bacterial growth. There were no anti-microbial solutions – such as chlorine – used to kill the bacteria, only water.
As bad as this sounds, it is only the tip of the iceberg. The real tragedy, or crime, depending on how you view it is that not once in its 20-year history had the farm been inspected by the the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), tasked with the oversight of the safety of our food supply. A third-party inspection company was used by the farm, and accepted by the FDA as certifying the safety of the equipment and processes used in its handling systems. In fact, the company had one of its auditors at the farm at the time the first people were being sickened, and gave the processing facility a “superior” rating of 96 percent after a four hour visit.
This, sadly, is not an isolated major food safety incident. There are about 48 million cases of food poisoning each year, according to the Center for Disease Control. These result in more than 3,000 deaths. Affected foods include fresh vegetables and fruits, eggs, meat and cheeses – just about everything we eat! The rate of outbreaks and food recalls has been steadily rising since 2007. In a nutshell, our national food safety record sucks.
Why have these outbreaks increased in numbers and severity? What can be done about it? Let’s address the first question, then we will look at the second one. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the FDA is riddled with shortcomings, both in the administration and regulation areas. The process it uses for product recalls is ineffective and confusing, it has waffled with the blatent overuse of antibiotics in animal feeding operations, and lacks the manpower to perform the scientific studies required to do its basic job of food and drug safety. When enforcement is attempted it only occurs about half the time and is half-hearted, with fines rarely imposed. It also accepts third-party inspections, which often have serious conflict-of-interest issues alongside questions of the quality of inspections, as shown by the cantaloupe fiasco. Another example is the Iowa based salmonella based recall of over 550 million eggs that led to the first (and only) inspection performed by the FDA, followed by a warning letter threatening “regulatory action”. A month later the company was allowed to resume selling eggs, with no corrective action being confirmed or other inspections performed. Yet another example was the salmonella outbreak in peanut butter in 2007. A plant was missed after an “intensive round of inspections” that was the cause of a second, more deadly salmonella outbreak. When that plant was finally inspected, it was found to have mold on the walls and slime covering the processing equipment.
One of the main reasons for the increased number of outbreaks is the amount of control the food industry has over the FDA. When an industry has enough political power, it uses that power to determine what the FDA will do in response to an issue. Unfortunately, that response is all too often to “do nothing” unless there are enough deaths to attract enough public attention to the issue. In addition to political pull, there is a “revolving door” policy where top industry people go to work at the FDA, sometimes while still drawing a paycheck from their “former” employers. Conflict of interest, anyone? One of the prime examples of this is Michael Taylor, a Monsanto attorney who prepared research on the constitutionality of states determining labeling laws for Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone rBGH. Then, once he had become the FDA’s deputy commissioner for policy, he wrote the guidelines for rBGH labeling policy for the FDA. Not surprisingly, they were in agreement with the research memo he worked on while at Monsanto. This is not an isolated case, either. There are many former and current employees of Federal regulatory agencies who are or were industry executives and vice versa.
Now to address the question of what can be done? Surprisingly, there are several possible movements afoot that might have a positive impact on the state of food safety. The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, a very controversial plan that was opposed by many smaller producers and supported by larger ones, may have some keys to this puzzle. It has been delayed with budget issues and has not gone into effect, but grants the FDA the power to prevent repeat offender from continuing to sell their product by revoking their registration. Another proposal by a Connecticut congresswoman would sever the ties of the food industry to inspection agencies. Third-party inspections can be effective if the inspector is not bing paid directly by the company they are inspecting. Some inspection companies have board members who are executives in client companies they monitor. Again, what conflict of interest?
These are all well and good, but can the average person trust them to be effective? Will they measurably improve the quality of the safety of our food? That remains to be seen. In the meantime you can do what has been proven to be extremely effective so many times before. If you are concerned with the safety of your food, do something about it. Take a personal interest and responsibility for what you eat. This means doing some reading and research, asking questions and listening to the answers. You will establish your own “approved list” of food suppliers that you trust and those to stay away from. This will take some work, but probably much less than you think and for a shorter time period than you would initially expect. Once you establish a safe list, you won’t have to research each and every food item you buy, just the new ones that you aren’t familiar with.
Not surprisingly, you will quickly find that the majority of food producers you come to trust are the ones you can get to know. They will be local or regional, with small to medium sized operations. They will answer your questions and your phone calls, not minding that you need some answers. They will offer farm or facility tours, which you should accept. There are already several organizations that help with finding just these sort of companies. We’ve written about several of these, one is FarmPlate, another is Horsepower and yet another is Local Harvest. All of these are online tools to help you do what I just described, find quality and trustworthy sources of good, clean and fair food.
By taking responsibility for your food, you ensure that what you eat is to your standards. You also take that decision process out of the hands and control of a corporation and put it firmly in your grasp. You might be surprised at how the quality and safety of your food improves with much less cost than you expected.
https://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/System-Failure.jpg300400Stephen Scotthttps://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Survey-Header.jpgStephen Scott2012-12-27 14:02:392024-04-30 17:34:02Can the FDA be Trusted with Our Food Safety?
The holidays come early when you work with heirloom seeds, as shipments from growers start arriving in early November and continue as the seeds are harvested, cleaned, dried and shipped to us for packing.
Some of our seeds arrive in cloth bags with hand-written variety descriptions on them, others arrive in large paper bags tied shut and yet all of them clearly show the care and love put into their growing and production. We wanted to give you a short tour of what it is like when seed arrives!
This particular shipment is always accompanied with high anticipation, as it comes to us from one of our growers who is incredibly talented and experienced. Their advice has been invaluable, whether it is in recommending new varieties to offer or catalog suggestions.
Bags of Heirloom Seeds
Each variety is in its own cloth bag with the variety name handwritten on it. They are wrapped in plastic to protect them from possible moisture in shipping. This particular box was a bit smaller this year, as we brought home almost this same amount when we visited our grower this past September.
Heirloom Seed Treasure
When we received the very first shipment of seeds, we were talking about how they resembled bags of treasure. Cindy remarked that this is very much just that- treasure from the past that has been kept alive by people before us that valued these seeds enough to save and preserve them for the future.
That future is now, and we are the recipients of that treasure of knowledge and hard work. This Katanya watermelon is from a woman named Katanya who brought its seeds with her when she immigrated from Russia. It is humbling and thrilling at the same time to hold more than a hundred years of history in a bag in your hands, along with who knows how much future!
Papalo Seed!
Some of the seed is just fun to handle and play with. Papalo is one such variety; an ancient Mexican herb that was largely replaced by Cilantro, a Chinese herb. It is extremely light and feathery, resembling a dandelion seed with its “parachute”. Papalo requires special handling and packaging, as if the seed is broken off of its parachute, the germination suffers drastically. The bag Cindy is holding weighs a couple of pounds at the most.
Handful of Papalo
This handful of Papalo has about a hundred seeds, which have to be packed and shipped in small boxes to prevent them being broken in transit. When we do bulk sales on this it is by the number of plants needed, not by weight!
Bag of Heirloom Corn
This package was a new treat for us. It is Oaxan Green Dent corn from one of our newest growers. Oaxan Green Dent makes green corn tamales for the Zapotecs of southern Mexico and a very tasty green masa. They produce everything by hand, even the shucking of the cobs and shelling of the corn kernals.
First Peek of Oaxan Green Dent Corn
Here is what we saw on our first peek into the bag! Very colorful and striking. Very unlike what we are used to seeing as bulk corn.
Oaxan Green Dent Corn
A closer look at its colors. Heirloom corn glamor shot!
Hand Packing Melrose Pepper Seed
Of course, all of this new seed arriving means there is work to do. Everything we sell is hand packed, every single packet! As each new shipment of seed arrives we re-verify the number of seeds to a packet, then count that number and find a measurement that corresponds to it. We always try to give a bit more seed than advertised, as each packet is packed by measurement, not individually counted. A new shipment of Melrose Pepper is ready to be packed here.
Thanks for joining us, we hope you enjoyed a brief look at what happens when we receive new shipments of heirloom seed!
Homemade Chile Coloradito Sauce
This is an incredibly versatile chile sauce with loads of flavor and just a touch of heat. It is my adaptation of the incomparable Mole Coloradito Oaxaqueno from Susanna Trilling in her “Seasons of My Heart” cookbook that we’ve featured before. (Mole is pronounced “Mole-lay”!)
This makes a sauce that is 95% of her Mole, but I prefer to make a very large batch as it is a project to do and doubling of the recipe doesn’t take much more time to make. Then you have this cache of amazing flavor that spices up any dish with no extra time but lets all of the flavor and work shine through. It is a wonderful basis for enchiladas, nachos, stews, soups, sloppy Joe’s, burritos or even spooned over eggs in the morning. I like to add about half tomato sauce by volume to make a great sauce that is smooth and mellow with the taste of the chiles but none of the bite.
Colorado means “red” in Spanish, usually referring to a deep brick type of red, so coloradito is “little red”. We’ll give you the recipe first, then walk you though the preparation in photos so you can see the stages and progression. These chiles can easily be grown in your garden for most of North America, or at a well-stocked Mexican grocer. For the Mexican chocolate, Ibarra is a well-known brand that is available almost everywhere. If you really want to take the flavor to the next level, look at Taza Chocolate. It is stone ground in the traditional Mexican village tradition and has a flavor that is absolutely to die for, not to mention being fair trade and traceable to the source. You can see all about how your batch was made by entering the batch number into their website!
Homemade Chile Coloradito Sauce
There are 3 steps to this recipe: processing the chiles, processing the spices and processing the tomatoes, onions, plantains and seasonings.
Some cooks will stem and seed the chiles while still dry, toasting the pieces. Others will toast the chiles whole, then soak them to soften the skins and remove the stems and seeds.
Makes about 8 servings.
Recipe Tip! It doesn’t take much longer to make double the recipe and freeze for an easy, delicious dish later!
This may sound complicated or a lot of work, so we will walk you through the process and show you what each step looks like. It is a good day’s worth of work, but it can be broken up into a couple of days if you don’t have the time to make it all in one day. Once you taste the results, you will immediately see why it is worth the effort to make a large batch!
In the first photo, we are toasting two of the different chiles and dry frying the onion and garlic in another pan. We have learned to save a lot of time by combining a couple of steps at once. The Ancho chiles are in the back with the Pasilla Bajio or Chilacas in front.
Roasting Chiles and Frying Onions
These are the chiles after toasting, soaking and being stemmed and seeded. Most of the work happens right here, to get to this stage. After this everything is roasting and toasting, then using a blender to puree everything into a sauce. To give a sense of scale, this bowl is over 18 inches across!
Into the blender with the chiles! We have a Vita-Mix blender that is a real blessing with big projects like this. It stands up to the thick sauce without overheating, but we still need to process all of the chiles in batches. We usually fill the blender about 1/3 full with chiles and add just enough soaking water to make a thick paste. Please notice the gloves, I use them when working with chiles for extended periods of time to keep me from itching my eyes with a chile-infused finger!
It is easy to see why the name of “colorado” is applied to this sauce – look at that beautiful rich brick red color! My mouth was watering for most of the time after we pureed the chiles as the kitchen was filled with their aroma.
There is not too much volume lost from the soaking stage to the pureed stage. This is the same bowl after we’ve finished pureeing all of the chiles.
Next up is toasting and grinding the spices and seasonings. We used a smaller cast-iron pan to toast the spices and release their aromas.
A molcajete is what we use simply because we have one. It is great for grinding spices and really working them to release their flavors and aromas. A food processor or blender can do much the same with less effort.
A few minutes later, here is what the ground spices look like, ready to be mixed into the chile mixture. At this point we’ve also pureed the onion and garlic and mixed it into the chile sauce.
Now it’s time to mix it all together! This photo helps to show the scale of everything, as the whisk is almost a foot long and I’ve got my hand completely wrapped around it to work all of the purees and spices together.
After everything is mixed together and cooked at a slow simmer, we put it up in jars to freeze for later. We use pints, as this gives a generous amount of sauce without being too much after a couple of days. We leave about an inch or little more of space at the top to allow for expansion in the freezer.
All done except the clean-up! This particular batch made 17 pints of scrumptious chile sauce, with just a bit left over for the next morning’s eggs. This will give us almost a year’s worth of chile sauce.
A close-up of the color and texture of the finished product. Well worth the work!
Starting Seeds at Home – a Deeper Look
Starting seeds at home is easy and gives more choice than the local garden center. We take a deeper look at germination and the needs of the seeds.
World Famous San Marzano Tomatoes
San Marzano tomatoes are world-famous with a long and storied history as the absolute best plum tomato for sauce and pizza. They are also excellent for canning, peeling and drying. Chefs worldwide prefer this variety to all others for making their signature sauces, and it is the only tomato that is acceptable for making true Neapolitan pizza. Many Americans are becoming fans and learning why this tomato created the peeled and sauce industry in Italy and across Europe.
San Marzano tomatoes are named for where they originate, the Campania region of southern Italy above the “toe” of the “boot”. Valle del Sarno is the valley where the recognized and protected variety is grown. The reason for this strict preference is the soil – a rich volcanic soil from Mount Vesuvius – that gives the tomato its distinct richness and depth of flavor. In fact, they are the only tomato that can be used for a true, recognized Neapolitan pizza! People who have tasted the native tomatoes grown in the volcanic soils claim that they can tell the difference between tomatoes grown there and those grown elsewhere, even if it is similar soils.
San Marzano tomatoes are thinner with a pointier end than Roma tomatoes, with a noticeably richer and mildly sweeter flavor. It has a thinner skin with fewer seeds and a meatier flesh than the Roma, with a higher pectin content that produces the thicker sauces it is famous for. This famous variety was developed from traditional breeding of three Italian tomatoes in the late 1800s; the King Umberto, Fiaschella and the Fiascona. Only the King Umberto tomato is still grown!
San Marzano tomatoes have been commercially popular since around 1875 when the first cannery was built to pack and ship these jewels across Italy and Europe. The popularity of the San Marzano declined during the 1970s as hybrids gained popularity for their thicker skins and tolerance of machine harvesting and marketability, but saw a resurgence in the late 1990s as people realized the flavor that had been lost with the original. Of 27 cultivars being grown in the Valle del Sarno area in the early 1990s, only 2 were selected as being the most representative of the traditional San Marzano. In 1996 the European Union granted Protected Designation of Origin status to the San Marzano tomato.
The San Marzano Redorta is one of the more popular cultivars of San Marzano due to its larger size and prolific production. The name creates some confusion, as this tomato comes from the Tuscany region, which is north of Campania where the tomato originated. It is supposedly named for a mountain – Pizzo Redorta – in the Lombardy region near the Italian Alps, which is much further north still. So, a larger version of the treasured San Marzano that is from Tuscany and not Campania, yet named for a mountain that is almost the length of Italy away? Stranger things have happened!
We do know that it is a great tasting and producing tomato with all of the traditional characteristics that have made the San Marzano tomatoes famous and have brought it back to being a heavyweight in the sauce tomato world. Whether you grow the traditional San Marzano or the Redorta, the flavors and production are sure to win you over.
Catalog Reading and Garden Planning Tips
Perusing the newest crop of seed catalogs while engaging in some garden planning is a favorite pastime of gardeners everywhere during the cold, short days of winter. It is an excellent way to take your mind off of the often drab and dreary days that separate the last harvest from the first plantings. Seed catalogs can be much more than a pleasant distraction and fodder for summertime daydreams. They can help you with your upcoming garden planning by helping to visualize succession and companion plantings while arranging the palette of colors in the most attractive ways possible.
You can get started in one of two ways, with neither being right or wrong. Some prefer to sort through the catalogs first, circling what interests them and what standbys are always planted. Others will use different colors for vegetables, herbs and flowers to make organizing and planning a bit easier. The other approach is to put down an initial plan of the upcoming garden on note or graph paper, using zones or areas to show what types of plants go where. Others will use different colors for different plants to determine where everything will go. These initial plans are easily changed and updated as the planning process moves forward and the new garden starts taking shape. Once the plan is solidified, our Garden Journal is an excellent tool to help keep track of your progress this year. It is free as a download.
Remember to try something new each year, while keeping the foundation of what works going in your garden. This way you can experiment with new things and see what works and fits within the framework of what you already have established without risking losing too much if the new variety doesn’t make the grade.
If you want to try saving seeds – or you already do – make that part of your plan, where to plant those items for isolation to prevent possible cross-pollination and make the seed saving process as easy as possible. Pay attention to wind patterns and think about how you will isolate them, either through time, distance or exclusion. Time isolation just means planting those varieties you’ll save seed from either earlier or later than others of its type so that blooming and pollination don’t happen at the same time. Distance is easy – how far apart are you going to plant? How much space do you have? Can you use the front or back yard on the opposite side from the garden for planting? Exclusion is a physical barrier that keeps everything out including insects, meaning you might have to hand-pollinate that item.
While working on garden planning pay attention to the number of days to maturity for a variety and how that will work in your climate. Look at where you want to locate it when reading the size and height descriptions, especially if it needs shade or full sun. Succession and companion planting can make a small or medium sized garden produce like a small scale farm, producing enormous amounts of veggies from a deceptively small space. Think about how much you or your family likes particular veggies, and plan on doing some succession planting this year. Examples of varieties that take well to succession planting are beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach and radishes, but there are others as well. Just give your plants a bit more space to accommodate succession planting alongside companion plants.
When deciding on how many plants you’ll need, seed counts are in the variety headings and in each singular variety description, as well as on the website. We are working on getting planting instructions up on the website for each variety, but each packet will have detailed instructions on the back.
Look at the colors of your garden and plan a rainbow to grow the aesthetic and nutritional benefits of different colors. Plant a few red, yellow and orange tomatoes with yellow, purple and orange carrots as companions. Use red Chicory with green Kale and rainbow Swiss chard. Pole beans in different colors partner extremely well with corn.
Plant some of the vining plants like Red Malabar spinach along the garden fence where it won’t take up space, but give you lots of great tasting heat tolerant spinach substitutes for your summer salads. Melons and squash are happy planted in corners of the garden where they can sprawl along the fence or even over and out without being in the way. Another approach is planting them in containers outside the garden where they have all the room needed and are out of danger of being stepped on.
Look at the hot and long season varieties or cold and short season ones on the website for more ideas of what works well for your climate. Use these as a start and experiment to refine into a basis of what, exactly, really works in your garden. This will take time if you are just starting out, but you might be surprised at how much you have figured out if you’ve been growing a bit, even if you haven’t thought about it just this way! Read the descriptions carefully, as we’ve worked hard to try and get good information into them to help you.
Flowers are an often overlooked, but essential component of any serious vegetable and food garden. They don’t just belong in the realm of the flower or landscape gardener! Flowers attract pollinators (not just bees) that greatly improve production in the garden; are nursemaid plants for smaller, more tender ones; are core ingredients for some incredible teas and bring a delightful aroma that soothes and grounds you. Our flowers are notated by Annual, Perennial, Biennial which depends a lot on climate zones but will allow you to do some accurate planning for where they fit in best. Some of the best ways to get started using more flowers in and around your garden is with one of our mixes, especially created for drylands, humid climates or to spread some serious fragrance in your garden.
You should have some good ideas starting about your garden this year. Spending some time during the colder times in planning will help you to create a masterpiece that will grow some incredibly tasty treats to enjoy with your family and share with some lucky friends and neighbors.
Can the FDA be Trusted with Our Food Safety?
By all accounts, the FDA is a miserable failure for food safety.
Many of us remember the national food safety nightmare – a listeria outbreak in cantaloupes from around Rocky Ford, CO – in the summer of 2011. All in all, there were 147 illnesses and 33 deaths, making this incident the most deadly outbreak of food-borne illness in our country since 1924. The farms owners declared bankruptcy later that fall. All of this occurred because of jerry-rigged potato cleaning equipment had been adapted to wash melons in conditions that heavily favored bacterial growth. There were no anti-microbial solutions – such as chlorine – used to kill the bacteria, only water.
As bad as this sounds, it is only the tip of the iceberg. The real tragedy, or crime, depending on how you view it is that not once in its 20-year history had the farm been inspected by the the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), tasked with the oversight of the safety of our food supply. A third-party inspection company was used by the farm, and accepted by the FDA as certifying the safety of the equipment and processes used in its handling systems. In fact, the company had one of its auditors at the farm at the time the first people were being sickened, and gave the processing facility a “superior” rating of 96 percent after a four hour visit.
This, sadly, is not an isolated major food safety incident. There are about 48 million cases of food poisoning each year, according to the Center for Disease Control. These result in more than 3,000 deaths. Affected foods include fresh vegetables and fruits, eggs, meat and cheeses – just about everything we eat! The rate of outbreaks and food recalls has been steadily rising since 2007. In a nutshell, our national food safety record sucks.
Why have these outbreaks increased in numbers and severity? What can be done about it? Let’s address the first question, then we will look at the second one. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the FDA is riddled with shortcomings, both in the administration and regulation areas. The process it uses for product recalls is ineffective and confusing, it has waffled with the blatent overuse of antibiotics in animal feeding operations, and lacks the manpower to perform the scientific studies required to do its basic job of food and drug safety. When enforcement is attempted it only occurs about half the time and is half-hearted, with fines rarely imposed. It also accepts third-party inspections, which often have serious conflict-of-interest issues alongside questions of the quality of inspections, as shown by the cantaloupe fiasco. Another example is the Iowa based salmonella based recall of over 550 million eggs that led to the first (and only) inspection performed by the FDA, followed by a warning letter threatening “regulatory action”. A month later the company was allowed to resume selling eggs, with no corrective action being confirmed or other inspections performed. Yet another example was the salmonella outbreak in peanut butter in 2007. A plant was missed after an “intensive round of inspections” that was the cause of a second, more deadly salmonella outbreak. When that plant was finally inspected, it was found to have mold on the walls and slime covering the processing equipment.
One of the main reasons for the increased number of outbreaks is the amount of control the food industry has over the FDA. When an industry has enough political power, it uses that power to determine what the FDA will do in response to an issue. Unfortunately, that response is all too often to “do nothing” unless there are enough deaths to attract enough public attention to the issue. In addition to political pull, there is a “revolving door” policy where top industry people go to work at the FDA, sometimes while still drawing a paycheck from their “former” employers. Conflict of interest, anyone? One of the prime examples of this is Michael Taylor, a Monsanto attorney who prepared research on the constitutionality of states determining labeling laws for Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone rBGH. Then, once he had become the FDA’s deputy commissioner for policy, he wrote the guidelines for rBGH labeling policy for the FDA. Not surprisingly, they were in agreement with the research memo he worked on while at Monsanto. This is not an isolated case, either. There are many former and current employees of Federal regulatory agencies who are or were industry executives and vice versa.
Now to address the question of what can be done? Surprisingly, there are several possible movements afoot that might have a positive impact on the state of food safety. The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, a very controversial plan that was opposed by many smaller producers and supported by larger ones, may have some keys to this puzzle. It has been delayed with budget issues and has not gone into effect, but grants the FDA the power to prevent repeat offender from continuing to sell their product by revoking their registration. Another proposal by a Connecticut congresswoman would sever the ties of the food industry to inspection agencies. Third-party inspections can be effective if the inspector is not bing paid directly by the company they are inspecting. Some inspection companies have board members who are executives in client companies they monitor. Again, what conflict of interest?
These are all well and good, but can the average person trust them to be effective? Will they measurably improve the quality of the safety of our food? That remains to be seen. In the meantime you can do what has been proven to be extremely effective so many times before. If you are concerned with the safety of your food, do something about it. Take a personal interest and responsibility for what you eat. This means doing some reading and research, asking questions and listening to the answers. You will establish your own “approved list” of food suppliers that you trust and those to stay away from. This will take some work, but probably much less than you think and for a shorter time period than you would initially expect. Once you establish a safe list, you won’t have to research each and every food item you buy, just the new ones that you aren’t familiar with.
Not surprisingly, you will quickly find that the majority of food producers you come to trust are the ones you can get to know. They will be local or regional, with small to medium sized operations. They will answer your questions and your phone calls, not minding that you need some answers. They will offer farm or facility tours, which you should accept. There are already several organizations that help with finding just these sort of companies. We’ve written about several of these, one is FarmPlate, another is Horsepower and yet another is Local Harvest. All of these are online tools to help you do what I just described, find quality and trustworthy sources of good, clean and fair food.
By taking responsibility for your food, you ensure that what you eat is to your standards. You also take that decision process out of the hands and control of a corporation and put it firmly in your grasp. You might be surprised at how the quality and safety of your food improves with much less cost than you expected.
The FDA Is Out to Lunch
The Amazing Revolving Door – Monsanto, FDA & EPA
New Heirloom Seed Arriving!
The holidays come early when you work with heirloom seeds, as shipments from growers start arriving in early November and continue as the seeds are harvested, cleaned, dried and shipped to us for packing.
Some of our seeds arrive in cloth bags with hand-written variety descriptions on them, others arrive in large paper bags tied shut and yet all of them clearly show the care and love put into their growing and production. We wanted to give you a short tour of what it is like when seed arrives!
This particular shipment is always accompanied with high anticipation, as it comes to us from one of our growers who is incredibly talented and experienced. Their advice has been invaluable, whether it is in recommending new varieties to offer or catalog suggestions.
Bags of Heirloom Seeds
Each variety is in its own cloth bag with the variety name handwritten on it. They are wrapped in plastic to protect them from possible moisture in shipping. This particular box was a bit smaller this year, as we brought home almost this same amount when we visited our grower this past September.
Heirloom Seed Treasure
When we received the very first shipment of seeds, we were talking about how they resembled bags of treasure. Cindy remarked that this is very much just that- treasure from the past that has been kept alive by people before us that valued these seeds enough to save and preserve them for the future.
That future is now, and we are the recipients of that treasure of knowledge and hard work. This Katanya watermelon is from a woman named Katanya who brought its seeds with her when she immigrated from Russia. It is humbling and thrilling at the same time to hold more than a hundred years of history in a bag in your hands, along with who knows how much future!
Papalo Seed!
Some of the seed is just fun to handle and play with. Papalo is one such variety; an ancient Mexican herb that was largely replaced by Cilantro, a Chinese herb. It is extremely light and feathery, resembling a dandelion seed with its “parachute”. Papalo requires special handling and packaging, as if the seed is broken off of its parachute, the germination suffers drastically. The bag Cindy is holding weighs a couple of pounds at the most.
Handful of Papalo
This handful of Papalo has about a hundred seeds, which have to be packed and shipped in small boxes to prevent them being broken in transit. When we do bulk sales on this it is by the number of plants needed, not by weight!
Bag of Heirloom Corn
This package was a new treat for us. It is Oaxan Green Dent corn from one of our newest growers. Oaxan Green Dent makes green corn tamales for the Zapotecs of southern Mexico and a very tasty green masa. They produce everything by hand, even the shucking of the cobs and shelling of the corn kernals.
First Peek of Oaxan Green Dent Corn
Here is what we saw on our first peek into the bag! Very colorful and striking. Very unlike what we are used to seeing as bulk corn.
Oaxan Green Dent Corn
A closer look at its colors. Heirloom corn glamor shot!
Hand Packing Melrose Pepper Seed
Of course, all of this new seed arriving means there is work to do. Everything we sell is hand packed, every single packet! As each new shipment of seed arrives we re-verify the number of seeds to a packet, then count that number and find a measurement that corresponds to it. We always try to give a bit more seed than advertised, as each packet is packed by measurement, not individually counted. A new shipment of Melrose Pepper is ready to be packed here.
Thanks for joining us, we hope you enjoyed a brief look at what happens when we receive new shipments of heirloom seed!