Recipes

Yummm! Eating pancakes at the 2003 Desert Harvesters Mesquite Pancake
Breakfast & Milling Fiesta.

MESQUITE WAFFLES
from Daniel Baker
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup mesquite flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 beaten egg yokes
1 1/4 cup oil
2 stiff beaten egg whites

Sift together dry ingredients. Combine egg yolk, milk and oil. Stir into dry ingredients. Fold in egg whites leaving some fluffs. Don't over mix. Makes about 8 waffles.

PRICKLY PEAR SYRUP
From Pearl Mast
Buy a box of Pamona’s Brand Pectin
Inside the box find the recipes and use the recipe for grape jelly, but halve both the amount of pectin and calcium that is called for in the recipe. Pearl uses 2 cups of sugar (though Anastasia and Brad only use 1 cup). Add 1/4 cup of lemon or lime juice per batch.

PEARL’S MESQUITE PANCAKES
From Pearl Mast
Measure the following dry ingredients into a glass jar or other tight container in which the dry mix can be stored. Shake to mix. (I usually double or triple this recipe and mix and store it in a gallon jug.)
1 cup mesquite meal
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 and 1/2 teapoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

When ready to make pancakes - In mixing bowl whisk together:
1 egg
1 tablespoon oil
1 cup buttermilk, sour milk, or fresh milk with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice added

Add a cup of the dry mix to the liquids and whisk all together. Add more milk as needed to thin batter. (I usually end up using about a cup and a half of milk.)

Cook on hot griddle and enjoy with your favorite syrup or toppings.

ANASTASIA'S MESQUITE PANCAKES
From Anastasia Rabin
DRY MIX:
2 cups mesquite flour
2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Make as much dry mix as you like and store in a cool dry place for later use.

To make pancakes for two people mix the following WET INGREDIENTS:
1 egg
2 tablespoons oil
2 cups of liquid (milk, buttermilk, or a milk substitute)

Beat the wet ingredients together, then add a cup of dry mix. Add liquid or mix as needed to get the desired consistency. I like to make my batter thick for extra hearty pancakes. Mesquite burns easily so be careful when cooking. Lowering the temperature of your griddle can help.

NEIGHBORHOOD MESQUITE HOLIDAY BARS
From Brad Lancaster
These are made with mesquite flour ground from pods harvested from native
mesquite trees planted along my brother and I’s neighborhood’s streets during
our annual tree plantings. Our bees visited the same trees and made the honey.
We like to celebrate the desert’s bounty by giving these holiday bars to our
neighbors (especially those that helped us plant the trees).

1/2 cup of organic backyard honey 1 tablespoon baking powder
1/3 cup of water 2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 tablespoons organic butter touch of nutmeg
1 1/2 cup of organic whole wheat flour 1/2 cup of organic nuts
1 1/2 cup of mesquite flour 1/2 cup of organic raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease two 8-inch square pans.
In a large saucepan, slowly heat honey, water, and butter until butter is
melted and honey is liquid. Mix flour, mesquite meal, baking powder, and spices in
a medium bowl. Add to honey mixture and stir until well combined. Stir in
nuts and raisins. Divide batter between pans and spread evenly. Bake for
twenty to twenty five minutes. Over-baking will make the holiday bars very hard.
When properly baked a straw or toothpick will come out clean. Cool in pans;
slice into bars.

HOME CURED OLIVES
Based on a recipe by Sandal English (Fruits of the Desert)

Pick them full sized dark or green (just as they are beginning to change color). What makes a black or green olive is how ripe it is when picked.

Rinse olives. Slit each olive deeply. Submerge and soak olives in a brine of 1 cup of salt to a gallon of water. Don't use metal containers - I like to use 5 gallon pickle buckets from a local deli. Leave in a cool place for two months or so.

Stir the olives daily if you like, though you don't need to. A mold will form on the surface of the water, that's OK. Change the water once every two weeks or once a month. Don't put this salty water on your plants. Skim off the mold and put it in your compost. To keep the olives from contacting the mold, submerge a ceramic plate just below the surface of the water, above the olives. The plate may come into contact with the mold, but not the olives.

After two months or so, rinse your olives well. Fill screw-top jars 2/3 full of olives, add herbs (garlic cloves, oregano, sage, rosemary, thyme, chiles, what you like) and two lemon wedges (find a neighborhood lemon tree). Cover all with a mixture of 1 pint vinegar, 1 pint water, 1 tablespoon salt. Top all this with a 1/2 layer of olive oil and screw the lid on tight. Turn the jar upside down for a week (so the oil will seep through the olives) and then store right-side up. The olives will keep for several years.

PINOLE
(serves one)
1 tablespoon mesquite flour
1tablespoon saguaro seed meal
1 cup of water
Stir all together and drink before flour settles to the bottom. Milk can be used instead of water.

TEPARY BEAN HUMMUS
BARBARA ROSE
Cook tepary beans till real soft (can cook plain or with onions and garlic. Mash them or blend them. Add lemon juice and olive oil. You could also choose to add from the following...salt water to taste, brine from home pickled olives, alyosia wrightii leaves (just for taste), chopped up onion, chile and/or chipotle, tahini to make things creamy (just add more olive oil if you don't want to use tahini). Garnish with Tohono O'odham I'itoi onions and olive oil.

PRICKLY PEAR PUNCH
BARBARA ROSE
Pick 30-40 prickly pear fruit and toss them in the freezer. When you want to make the juice put the frozen fruits in a colander lined with light cloth. As the fruit thaws it will fall apart and the juice will pour through the colander and cloth strained and ready (so put something under the colander to catch it all.

Now you can drink that juice in the pure state or extend it by adding it to water. To the brilliant color and subtler flavor you could add such things as carbonated water, honey, local citrus, tequila, creosote tincture, and/or sweetened lemonade water.

IRONWOOD TRAIL MIX
BARBARA ROSE
Roast ironwood seeds in a cast iron skillet on low heat; add a bit of olive oil and salt to taste. You may just eat all the ironwood seeds right then and there, but if you don't you can add them to pumpkin seeds, Hopi parched corn, and chile powder.

SIMPLE MESQUITE DRINK
BRAD LANCASTER
This is a great way to enjoy mesquite without having to grind the pods. Boil mesquite pods in a volume of water twice the volume of mesquite beans along with a cinnamon stick for two hours, let it sit overnight, strain out the solids, then you've got one tasty drink which I usually serve chilled!

You can also prepare this like a sun tea, just put all ingredients in a glass jar with lid and set out in the hot sun for a day.

PRICKLY PEAR PADS RAW OR COOKED
BRAD LANCASTER
These recipes work best with cultivated prickly pear such as Opuntia ficus-indica. Young pad growth kicks in with the summer and late winter rains.

In the hotter months I love to eat the young pads raw in a very simple and refreshing dish Bill and Athena Steen showed me. Harvest small, young pads from this season. Slice off the small thorns (glochids), wash the pads, and then cut into strips. Salt them up, sprinkle with lime juice, and if you like (I do) splash with chile sauce. Eat 'em up quick, as they will get a bit slimier with time.

To cook the dethorned, washed and cubed pads sauté them, watch for slime to appear, continue cooking, and when slime disappears the cooked cactus is ready to be seasoned or added to any dish you can imagine. If you don't want to sauté them boil 'em. Watch for foam to appear, and when the foam dies down the cactus cubes are done and ready for seasoning and mixing.

BASIC YELLOW MESQUITE CAKE
Courtesy Desert Tropicals, www.desert-tropicals.com.

Mesquite flour will give a delicate and distinctive flavor to your cakes.

2 1/4 c. flour
3/4 c. mesquite flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tbsp. salt
3/4 c. oil or non-dairy margarine
1 1/3 c. sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/3 c. milk

1. Sift the flours, salt, and baking powder in a bowl
2. Beat the sugar, vanilla, and oil or margarine in a separate bowl
3. Mix slowly the content of the 2 bowls, and the milk. Beat until smooth.
4. Pour the batter into 2 greased 9-inch round cake pans.
5. Bake for 30 minutes in a pre-heated, 350 degrees F oven.

Mesquite Shortbread
Rita Gibbs

3/4 C butter, softened
1/4 C maple syrup (optional-use for a sweeter cookie)
1/8 C ground flax seed
1/8 C oat bran (or use ground up oats or flour if you don't have this handy)
1/4 C chopped pecans or walnuts
pinch salt
1/2 C mesquite meal-any variety
3/4 C flour-white, wheat, spelt, etc.
*I use a wheat-free baking mix. It makes the cookies very light.

Roll out 1/4" thick and cut with a cookie or biscuit cutter.
Bake at 300 degrees for about 10-12 minutes.

Saguaro and Cashew Ice Cream

2 1/2 cups cashews
1/2 cup agave syrup
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 1/2 cups fresh saguaro fruit

Blend cashews with sweeteners until smooth (vita-mix blenders do the
best job...others leave the cashews gritty), add saguaro fruit and blend
briefly until incorporated, but not long enough to break up too many of
the seeds.
If the mixture has gotten warm from blending, refrigerate until cool.
Put mixture into an ice cream maker and follow instructions. Add chunks
of saguaro fruit once mixture has begun to thicken but before completely
frozen.

Visit the San Pedro Mesquite Company for more recipes, including mesquite pancakes, mesquite cornbread, mesquite coffee and mesquite beverage, mesquite mole, apple nut muffins and more.