Growing Black Chickpeas

I met a fascinating plant on the farm this week - the black chickpea.  I'm accustomed to seeing tan chickpeas in the grocery store, but it turns out that chickpea skins come in the same variety of colors as human skins - light tan through yellow to red, dark brown and black.  Maybe it's because I am reading the Hunger Games trilogy (probably shouldn't have admitted that), but these plants sound like something that would be found in the arena - useful and dangerous at the same time.  You'll have to see if you agree with me - check it out:

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) flower.

Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) have miniature pea flowers, with the typical pea's asymmetrical petals.  The flowers each contain a tiny, elongate ovary that will elongate into a pod with seeds once the flower is pollinated.  Each pod contains one to three seeds, many fewer than English peas.  Chickpeas, regular peas and beans are all in the same plant family - the fabulous Fabaceae, or legume family.

Green chickpea pods.

The leaves and youngest green pods of chickpeas can be eaten raw.  The enlarged but green pods can be cooked like regular peas.  The mature pods turn brown and contain dry seeds. These seeds are usually eaten cooked.  The black chick peas do not turn black until they are mature and dry, and they retain their black color even after they are cooked.  Regardless of skin color, all chick peas are the same on the inside - tan. 

Chickpea pods and leaves with acid secretion making the plant glisten.

The really strange thing about chickpeas is that their leaves and pods secrete a liquid that contains a dangerous soup of acids (Katniss would know that!).  When you brush against these plants, they feel moist.  If you have any scratches on your skin, you will notice that the secretion burns painfully.  If you go blackberry picking one day then chickpea harvesting the next, you will be uncomfortable!  I imagine if you picked them all day, you might have some skin erosion.  On large farms, chick peas are harvested by machine, so don't worry too much about fingerless chickpea harvesters.  The acid is very useful to the plant.  If you were a disease organism or an insect looking to eat a garbanzo bean plant, you would definitely change your mind when you were burned by the malic, oxalic and hydrochloric acids on the plant.

Besides deterring pests, the garbanzo bean secretion does another important job.  It works just like sweat and keeps the plant cool!  The plants secrete their sweat later in their lifespan when their seeds are mature, and presumably when the growing season is edging toward summer heat.  The sweat keeps their leaves and pods cooler than non-sweating leaves when the temperature is high.  As what happens when we sweat, the plants lose water.  They are at risk of dehydrating if there is not enough soil moisture for them to absorb.  Also, moist things tend to rot or become infected as a general rule, so the acid is necessary to protect the moist plants from rotting.

Nearly dry chickpea pod.

The acid secretion on chickpea plants is both useful and harmful to people.  It tastes good, since acids taste sour.  In fact, one of chickpea's acids is malic acid, which provides the tartness in apples.  The acid secretion can be collected by draping a thin cloth over the leaves, letting it sit all night until dew forms, then wringing out the cloth.  It can be used to make a unique lemonade-type drink.  The harmful part comes from oxalic acid.  Oxalic acid interferes with the absorption of calcium and some other minerals from food, and it can aggravate kidney stones.  Oxalic acid is also found in spinach, and that's why spinach and chickpea leaves should not be eaten every single day, though moderate consumption is harmless.. 

Black Kabuli chickpea.

Above is a black garbanzo bean (chickpea) freshly picked.

So what's the verdict?  Would chickpeas make a great Hunger Games plant?  Edible but covered in burning acid - perfect!

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa

This is a special cooking edition of my blog.  Don't panic - cooking is nothing more than applied Biology (and Chemistry and Physics and Math and Art...), so there are some way interesting biological phenomena to write about here.  One of my cooking heroes, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, has issued a cooking challenge, and I took the bait.  Isa Chandra is the author of several vegan cookbooks, including Appetite for Reduction, the most useful and well-thought-out cookbook I've ever used.  The challenge is to cook a vegan entrée in under 40 minutes using black-eyed peas, bittersweet chocolate, mint and blackberries.  The recipe must be published on the internet, and there are prizes and fame/fortune involved.  I'll report back about the results of the contest!

Here is a picture of my invention, Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa: 

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa

The contest ingredients got me thinking about agricultural centers of origin.  Agriculture started in many concentrated locations (centers of origin) throughout the world, and cuisines arose based on what crops were domesticated from the species growing in the area, with foreign ingredients added in to the extent that cultures traveled and mixed.  See if you can match the crops with the center of origin here based on what you know about modern international cuisines.  Answers are below the table.

Center of Origin	Crop
1. China	a. wheat, oats, fig, pomegranate
2. India	b. maize, beans, tomato, potato, pumpkins
3. Ethiopia	c. wheat, barley, sorghum, okra, coffee
4. South America	d. wheat, rape (canola), peas, lettuce, asparagus
5. Mediterranean	e. rice, chickpea, eggplant, tangerine
6. Middle East	f. millet, soybean, cabbage, radish, apple

Answers: 1f, 2e, 3c, 4b, 5d, 6a

Since two of the challenge ingredients (chocolate and blackberries) originate from the New World, and beans are mostly a New World crop (though black eyed peas originated in Africa), I decided to mine this vein and emphasize New World crops.  I ended up with enchiladas based on the agricultural icons, the three sisters: beans, corn and squash.  I also used tomatoes, peppers, onions, blackberries, chocolate and sunflower seeds in the recipe.  If only I could have figured out how to add cranberries, potatoes and sweet potatoes, I would have hit all the biggest crops to have originated from the New World.  Ingredients from elsewhere in the world include cumin, cilantro, oregano, wheat, cucumbers and lemon.  Isn't it strange that cumin, cilantro and cucumbers, ingredients that are indispensable to Tex-Mex cuisine, were imported to the Americas?  And that tomatoes were not an original part of Italian cuisine but were brought to Europe from Central America? 

So who are these sisters, and what are they doing in a vegan recipe?  The three sisters are staple crops grown together as companion plants by several groups of Native Americans.  The seeds of beans, corn and squash are planted in a group on a mound.  The corn grows tall and straight, providing both food for people and a pole for the beans to climb.  The squash stays low to the ground and keeps the soil cooler and moist by shading it around the base of all three plants.  It also has prickly leaves, deterring some potential pests.  The beans stalks climb the corn, lifting their fruits off the ground and taking advantage of light above the squash leaves.  At the same time, the bean roots enrich the soil with nitrogen for all three plants.  The three sisters produce more food when grown together than any of the plants grown separately.  In addition, the beans and corn provide complete protein from vegetarian sources for their human cultivators.

The recipe is below, if you'd like to make this meal-with-a-story.  It turned out to be delicious, and it's a low-calorie and low-fat meal as well.  The first time you make these, you'll need to be a Zen kitchen master to get everything done in less than 40 minutes: banish the pets and kids, turn off the radio, stand up straight, elbows in, breathe into your abdomen.  You can do it.  It's quick and easy the second time through, since all the components are actually very simple once you know how they go.  I've found this to be the case with any new recipe I make - there's always a learning curve.  You can also prepare the salsa a day ahead and let it sit in the fridge to develop its flavors, but that would violate the 40 minutes thing.

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa

Three Sisters Molé Enchiladas with Blackberry Salsa
* Ingredients with asterisks evolved and were domesticated in the New World
Serves 6, at approximately 450 calories per serving, depending on your corn tortillas

Molé Enchilada Sauce Ingredients
1 T sunflower oil*
1 T whole wheat flour
2 T chili powder*
1 t cumin
2 c vegetable broth
1 small can tomato paste*
2 t fresh oregano, minced (1 t dried)
2 oz vegan bittersweet chocolate*
1/2 t salt


Enchilada Ingredients
1 t sunflower oil*
1 large onion, chopped (reserve 2 T for salsa)*
1 medium zucchini, chopped*
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalepeno, diced*
1 t cumin
1 15 oz. can black eyed peas, drained and rinsed (*most beans originate from South America, but not black eyed peas)
1 15 oz can hominy, drained and rinsed* (you could substitute sweet corn if you prefer, but add it with the zucchini while cooking)
12 soft corn tortillas
2 T roasted, salted, shelled sunflower seeds*

Salsa Ingredients
2 T chopped onion (from above)*
Juice of one lemon
1 t olive oil (ok, you could use sunflower, but olive oil is yummy in salsa)
2 cucumbers, chopped (peel if you like)
1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 c chopped fresh mint
1/2 t cumin
1/4 t cayenne*
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup blackberries*

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Make the enchilada sauce:  In a medium saucepan heat the oil on medium, add the flour and stir until toasty (30 seconds), stir in chili powder and cumin for 30 seconds, stir in broth, add all other ingredients.  Bring to a boil, reduce temperature and simmer 5 minutes, stirring often.

3. Make the enchiladas:

• In a large sauté pan on medium heat, sauté the onions in the oil until they start to soften, add the zucchini, garlic, jalepeno and cumin and continue to sauté until the zucchini starts to soften.  Stir in the black eyed peas and hominy and allow to heat up. 
• Dunk the tortillas in the enchilada sauce and wrap a large spoonful of filling in each tortilla.  Careful - everything should be hot at this point - don't burn yourself.  Line up the tortillas in a large glass baking dish.  Pour the enchilada sauce over the enchiladas and sprinkle sunflower seeds on the top.  
• Bake for 10-15 minutes uncovered, until the edges of the tortillas start to brown and the sauce is bubbling.

4. Make the salsa while the enchiladas bake: Combine all ingredients except blackberries in a dish and stir well.  Gently stir in the blackberries.

5. Serve enchiladas topped with a spoonful of salsa.



I owe a big thanks to my friend, Jenny, a vegan food aficionado, for the idea to make enchiladas.  Thanks also to my friends for being guinea pigs: Bruce, Coke and Linda, your bravery and enthusiasm are inspiring!

The Ladybug's Obnoxious Cousin

Everyone loved ladybugs as a child.  We picked them up; we counted their spots, and we may have even brought them inside.  The cute, round bugs are ubiquitous on children's books and clothes.  Ladybugs are some of our earliest friends, so it's surprising to find a pest dressed up like our little pals.

The Mexican bean beetle looks like a ladybug that has rolled in the dust.  It's coppery-brown but still covered in spots and half-dome-shaped.  These beetles are true ladybugs, and they are classified in the ladybug family, the Coccinellidae, which is a subset of the beetle order, the Coleoptera.  All my entomologist readers just cringed a bit after reading that last sentence (sorry!), since ladybugs are not actually bugs.  Entolomogists call them ladybird beetles.  I still use the term ladybug, because that's what I learned when I was 4 years old.  True bugs are in a different group of insects, Order Hemiptera, that includes stink bugs, aphids, leafhoppers and cicadas, but definitely not beetles.

Unlike almost all the other types of ladybugs, Mexican bean beetles are damaging to crops.  Ladybugs are generally famous for their ability to eat vast quantities of aphids and other pest insects.  But Mexican bean beetles are infamous for their herbivorous appetites.  The adult beetles are only moderate consumers of bean leaves, but after they lay their eggs, the larvae which emerge are voracious and insatiable.  Right now the larvae are out in full force.  Their little spiky orange bodies look like tiny Pokemon characters covering the bottoms of the leaves.  Every few days, as they grow, they slip out of their skin and leave it behind to grow a new one.  After a few weeks, they shed their skin and emerge as adult beetles.  Here is a spiky Mexican beetle larva along with some major leaf damage:

The Mexican bean beetle is currently helping itself to the snap beans on the farm, and it seems to show a slight preference for one of the two varieties we have.  They technically will eat any kind of bean plant, but snap beans and lima beans are their favorites.  Many of this season's bean plants have been reduced to lacy brown ghosts of themselves.  The plants are still are squeezing out a few green beans, but these poor plants are stressed to the max by their little inhabitants.

There are many strategies to dealing with Mexican bean beetles on an organic farm.  One strategy is to time the bean crops to minimize damage.  The beetles emerge every year around mid June.  They have overwintered as adults, hiding in warmer places or under debris, and the first adults to emerge are especially drawn to bean plants to lay eggs.  If you plant your bean crop early, you can harvest beans before the scourge begins.  Also, you can wait until the first round of adults emerges and flies somewhere else to look for beans and then plant your crop.  It is thought that eliminating probable overwintering locations can be helpful.  Beans in infested areas should be harvested quickly before the beetles can damage them. In addition, the larvae are susceptible to insecticidal soaps, which disrupts their cuticles and they desiccate. 

The farmer I work for is using a neat but gruesome approach to eliminating the Mexican bean beetles.  She and her son ordered wasps through the mail and released them into the bean field.  These wasps lay their eggs on Mexican bean beetle larvae.  The wasp eggs grow inside the larvae, eating its flesh, and then they emerge from the larvae as adult wasps that go on to lay their eggs on other unsuspecting beetle larvae.  As you might suspect, the larvae do not survive this process!  The parasitized larvae enlarge and turn orange-ish.  At this stage, they are referred to as mummies.  Here is a picture of a bean leaf with both yellow larvae and orange mummies:

The wasps' life cycles repeat in quick succession, and soon the larvae should be mostly mummified.  The bean plants will hopefully recover - even now, their newer growth looks healthy and robust.  Soon I'll be able to stop looking at every ladybug with a suspicious eye.

Here is your reward for making it to the end of this post:  All members of the ladybug family can secrete a noxious compound from their knee joints when they are irritated.  The compound is subtle to our noses, but you can smell it if you bother a ladybug and sniff its knees.  The scent from Mexican bean beetles is a little stronger.  This secretion is a deterrent to predators, who find it distasteful.