A Hot Mess in the Kitchen | Florida Panthers | Recipe: Hummus
Issue No. 13
Welcome to Sunshine + Microbes. This week’s issue delves into lessons learned in the kitchen, a grandmother visiting every U.S. national park, and why we can still enjoy an Impossible Burger even if it’s not exactly healthy.
Follow our new Facebook page. If someone shared this newsletter with you, sign up!
The single biggest kitchen fail of my life was my first attempt to make mole negro, a complicated Mexican sauce involving what felt like a million and one ingredients, including chocolate, bananas, nuts, and chiles. This low point in my culinary career came at 19. I was home from college and cooking a big family dinner.
At that point, I had never tasted mole negro, but I had read all about the mythical, pulse-quickening sauce in Laura Esquivel’s magical realist culinary novel “Like Water for Chocolate”. Based on the lengthy, unfamiliar ingredient list, I knew it would be a challenge, and different from anything I had ever attempted in the kitchen. But being the ambitious, arrogant teenager I was, I felt confident I could wow my family with something special.
The mole that I produced in my brother’s kitchen was a hot mess - totally inedible. Acrid and bitter and way too spicy. Still to this day, I have never tasted anything worse. All of the expensive ingredients and hours of hard work went in the trash. I had a good cry on the kitchen floor. My patient sister-in-law Ashley comforted me and quickly ordered takeout from the local Mexican restaurant. The dinner party was saved. But the taste of that mole-gone-wrong still haunts me.
Mole, which is Nahuatl for “sauce”, is a culinary wonder. It’s peasant food that has been elevated to cultural icon. There are countless versions of mole made in Mexico. This class of sauces is a fascinating amalgamation of history, terroir, and technique as explored in this excellent episode of my favorite food podcast Gastropod. Mole was not something that I — a clueless teenager growing up in suburban Florida — could whip together in a flash. It’s a complex balance of flavors that requires much more skill, patience, and understanding than I possessed at 19.
This week I shook off the years of fear and tried again. A decade and a half later, the recipe wasn’t nearly as daunting. The hardest part by far was tracking down some of the chiles. But the result was a rousing success. It wasn’t mole at a market stall in Oaxaca delicious. But definitely gringa cook delicious.
I served it with roast chicken and poblanos and cactus on freshly nixtamalized corn tortillas. Simple ingredients, coaxed into something exquisite through skill and care.
If you want to follow in my footsteps, the mole recipe I made is from renowned chef Enrique Olvera’s cookbook Tu Casa Mi Casa, which I highly recommend. And if it doesn’t turn out quite how you expected, you can always order take out.
love,
Jackie
Viral Culinary Tales
Sometimes strange and whimsical stories go viral online without them ever receiving the same attention IRL. Our Extremely Online Correspondent Matt Levin is here to report on the singular stories you might’ve missed.
In one of those advice column letters that seem too far-fetched to be true, a woman wrote into Slate years ago about suspicions that her mother-in-law was purposely including foods she was allergic to in her home-cooked meals. In August 2019, she updated that her hunch was correct and she was getting a divorce. And it turned out she wasn’t alone. Out of the woodwork this summer came victims of in-law dinner poisonings. Marie Claire compiled a few of them including the woman with a pepper allergy who was fed bell peppers in Korean dishes that never called for bell peppers. Just when the horrible in-laws trope looked to have grown stale, this little twist gets sprinkled into a family dinner.
Have your in-laws ever purposely sabotaged your meal? Let us know cause that’s nutty.
Get Involved!
Write the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) to help save the Florida panther
A controversial new highway project known as the M-CORES project signed into law by Florida’s governor in May could imperil what remains of the panthers’ territory and threaten the state’s wilderness altogether.
The number of Florida’s famous big cats once dwindled down to about 20 in the late 1960s. Since then, conservation projects such as wildlife corridors have helped boost the population back to approximately a couple hundred. But vehicle collisions with panthers remain their leading cause of death, and disappearing habitat makes that — and fights over territory — more likely. Experts believe this new toll road project could further endanger the species, and the FDOT has put together a task force to evaluate the state’s biggest highway expansion in decades. Unfortunately, saying “no” to the new toll roads is currently not an option. But Florida residents can still contact the commission and push back against the changes before the task force’s results are presented to Gov. Ron DeSantis on October 20.
You may submit a comment at any time:
Online at FloridaMCORES.com
By email to FDOT.Listens@dot.state.fl.us
By mail to Ann Howard, FDOT Communications Director, 605 Suwannee Street, Tallahassee, FL 32399-0450
Fresh Links
Our favorite reads this week about the environment and food. Give’em a read👇
👵This 89-Year-Old Grandma is Visiting Every National Park | Outside Mag
Joy Ryan had only seen mountain ranges in movies. She spent most of her life working at a minimum wage job in small-town Ohio while raising a family. That all changed four years ago when her grandson Brad took her camping in the Great Smoky Mountains.
After Brad finished veterinarian school two years later, he unveiled a plan to visit every U.S. national park with Grandma Joy. So far they’ve visited 38 states and have traveled more than 25,000 miles — checking off 29 national parks from their list.
🍴Dieting While Latinx | The Outline
Paola de Varona looks at the troubling ways that U.S. “wellness” culture has affected the Latinx community, including her own life and that of her Cuban immigrant parents.
🍔Impossible Burgers Aren’t Healthy, and That’s the Whole Point | Gizmodo
Not everything that’s healthy for the environment has to be healthy for one’s body. And Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meats are by no means the key to a nutritious balanced meal. Eating a hamburger, even if it’s plant-based, is unlikely to be a way to improve one’s diet. But is that the point?
The goal of taking on a vegetarian or vegan diet, or even just eating less meat, is to support animal welfare and to choose foods whose production contributes less to global warming. A vegetarian diet is not necessarily healthier than an omnivorous diet, and that’s OK. The nutritional status of the Impossible Burger doesn’t matter, because, like a regular hamburger, it’s a treat. You shouldn’t eat an Impossible Burger every day, just like you shouldn’t eat a hamburger every day.
Eating processed foods of any kind will have drawbacks when it comes to nutrition. Not even Impossible Foods mission statement makes outlandish claims about its burgers’ nutritiousness. Enjoy the burger — they’re tasty and better for the environment. But enjoy other meals too.
Jackie’s Best Hummus
My work involves cooking elaborate meals for other people. So when I’m feeding myself, I tend to keep it simple. An apple with peanut butter is a common dinner; as is toast with hummus. I feel confident saying that my hummus recipe is flipping fabulous. I make a big batch every so often, portion it out into smaller containers and freeze, and then defrost as needed.
Ingredients
1 cup dried chickpeas
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup tahini (I like the brand Alkanater)
2-3 garlic cloves
Salt and pepper to taste
Spices, fresh herbs, preserved citrus to taste (optional)
Step-by-step
Soak chickpeas the night before making the hummus. Cover with double or triple the amount of water, as they will grow in size.
The next day, drain and rinse the chickpeas. Cover with fresh water at least 2 inches above the top of the beans. Throw in a small palmful of salt and bring to a boil. Cook until the chickpeas are super soft — about 45 minutes. Soft, almost mushy beans produce a lovely smooth textured-hummus.
Drain chickpeas and place them in a food processor or powerful blender (Vitamix, Ninja, etc) with the other ingredients and blend. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. The hummus should be very smooth. If not, throw in a splash of water. Or if you’re a fan of chunky hummus, which is perfectly legitimate, blend until happy with the consistency.
What happens when an Instant Pot falls into the wrong hands.
Talk to Us
Send in your comments, mailbag questions, recipe mishaps, or cooking tips: sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com. Also do us a favor and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
If you enjoyed this email, please share it with others. If someone forwarded this to you, click the button to sign up:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is the current Chef-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a freelance reporter based in Colombia. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue