OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for sopes piled high with early autumn vegetables.

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Early autumn is the very best time of year to be a New World crop. Ingredients like corn, chiles, potatoes, squash, beans, tomatoes and even vanilla and avocado changed the way the entire world eats, and they’re all ready for harvest right now. Even though we think of these as summer crops, October spells the end of the season for most of them (though chiles and tomatillos, bless them, seem to keep producing right up until a frost). These crops that have come to exemplify bounty — the foods we depict spilling from our American cornucopia — were all domesticated and bred by Mesoamericans (in what is now Mexico) for millennia before Europeans came to plant a flag, and they’re all still central to the cuisines of the North, Central and South America today. With a little over a week left of Hispanic American Heritage Month, let us all celebrate the staples that not only feed the world, but make it more delicious. However, two of the main ingredients of one Mexican national dish, chiles en nogada, are actually from the Old World, not the Americas — do you know which ones they are? Read on to find out!

Help us grow our subscriber community for a chance to win a special gift box from ‘Superabundant’

There are only two weeks left of our “Grow Our Garden” campaign! This is your last chance to win an incredible assortment of local goodies handpicked by our team of food lovers. We want to thank you — our tremendous subscribers — for being an essential part of “Superabundant” and ask you to help us keep this garden growing.

Invite your friends to subscribe to the “Superabundant” newsletter. Until Oct. 20th, when they fill out the form, you’ll BOTH be entered for a chance to take home a basket of delicious Northwest-made comestibles. Send the link to all your fellow food and beverage lovers, growers and creators and watch our community plot continue to grow into a spectacular garden.

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Note from Heather: One of the goodies in the gift basket will be from my own garden!

Stumptown’s Funkiest Food Fest is back

The Portland Fermentation Festival returns for its 12th event on Thursday, Oct. 10, 6-9 p.m. Come sample pickles, miso, cheeses, kraut, kombucha and other gut-friendly foods, pick up tips from the pros on fermenting at home and say hi to me (I’ll be wrangling a bacterial petting zoo)! Find tickets here.

Sober October

Whether you’re sober-curious or occasionally teetotal, it’s one of the two months per year when many drinkers take a break. Portland Monthly ran a story this week about local zero-proof heroes Wilderton and Dhōs, but OPB’s own Crystal Ligori was on the beat a year ago with her coverage of Oregon’s burgeoning booze-free movement.

Rising egg prices are no yolk

The price of eggs may be on the rise again, as avian flu continues to impact supply. As infected wild birds migrate in the spring and fall, flocks may see surges in the outbreak and since it takes around four or five months for hens to begin laying after being hatched, replacing the supply takes time to catch up.

Canning conundrums solved

Don’t get in a pickle panic! Get your last-minute burning canning questions out of the way now — the Oregon Master Food Preservers’ food safety and preservation hotline will close for the year on Oct. 11.

It is officially decorative gourd season, but those winter squash aren’t just for arranging in a horn-shaped basket for tablescapes (even though they look so autumnal). There are so many delicious, attractive heirloom varieties that will have you saying “Brandywine? I don’t know her.” Look for Oregon Homestead Sweet Meat, Buttercup, Red Kuri and my new favorite, Honeynut — it’s like a butternut that’s been shrunk down, concentrating all the flavor and sweetness into an adorable, small package.

Chestnuts and hazelnuts are plump and sweet, and it’s the ideal time to buy apples for storing — look for Newton Pippins, Winesap and Galer if you want something special that’ll keep all winter long. For eating, this is truly the apple and pear lover’s time to shine; if you live in the Portland area it’s a nice time to stock up at Portland Nursery which will carry a couple dozen locally grown varieties for $1.99 per pound.

Inconveniently, plants from the tropics and warmer Mediterranean climes don’t really love Oregon winters, so many of the more tender herbs will either be done soon or will need to come inside. I’ve been potting up my basil and shiso to move to a sheltered spot in a DIY cold frame I cobbled together from straw bales and a storm window, and the hoja santa has to be brought indoors when the temps drop to freezing (technically it’s hardy from zones 8-11, but my Zone 9a garden still gets annual cold snaps and I don’t want to risk it). However, at 4 feet tall and 5 feet wide, it’s not super simple to transport, so I’ll stash it in the garage with a grow light and a heat lamp over the winter, along with my cherimoya tree (started from seed during the pandemic) and my dwarf lime tree, covered in tiny, hard fruits.

Lately, in the “Superabundant” kitchen

✨ After harvesting an absolute unit of a hobak squash that’d hidden out a few days too long, I shredded the whole thing and turned some of it into zucchini bread sheet cake for breakfasts — using half whole wheat flour and adding sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, flax meal and chia seeds makes it nutritious enough to justify having that much sugar first thing in the morning. (The remaining shredded summer squash went into the freezer, divided into one-cup portions for easy use.)

✨ All eggs that my hens have been laying were being stockpiled in the garage fridge and/or shared with neighbors, but eventually I did have to deal with them so I made Japanese convenience store-style egg salad sandwiches on soft, white shokupan bread. I did, however, add curry powder and cayenne to the egg salad, because I like my tamago sando to be a little more al diablo.

✨ There were definitely a few days when only comfort food would do; those called for grilled cheese and tomato soup one day, tuna-noodle casserole another and giant chocolate chip cookies for dessert. (It’s not always #ethnochaos in my kitchen.)

Recipe: Autumn sopes

Not to brag, but I have a really bodacious potted hoja santa plant. I saw a little start for sale at Los Paniaguitas in Woodburn a couple years ago, liked how it looked and smelled and could afford the $5 or whatever it cost to bring it home. Its broad, aromatic leaves remind me of the wide perilla leaves used to usher bites of crispy Korean pork and spicy ssamjang into one’s mouth between bites of pickled radish. Though perilla is a mint and hoja santa is in the pepper family (the true pepper family, Piperaceae), they both contain some of the same volatile aromatic compounds, like the ones that provide scents of mint, anise, basil and hops. It’s not that chaotic an idea after all.

See, I think we can normalize a multicultural approach to cooking simply by visiting the produce aisle. (Omg, can I use hoja santa to make kkaenip kimchi?? Watch this space). There’s rarely any benefit to dogmatism in ingredients. Pomegranate and walnuts, for example, are key components of chiles en nogada — a Mexican national dish! — but neither are American crops; they were both introduced to the New World by Spaniards (not exactly a fair trade all things considered, but whatever).

By purchasing fruits, vegetables and herbs from markets that serve communities from outside our cultures of origin — or better yet, growing these crops in our own gardens — not only do we gain more culinary knowledge, but we get solid lessons in botany (to which plant families do these ingredients belong; where do they grow?) and organic chemistry (are the flavors and aromas familiar?). Depending on your curiosity, how flexible your schedule is and the strength of your wifi connection, maybe you’ll learn about the history of this ingredient — how long has it been in cultivation, and who’s cooked with it in the past? (Speaking of which, I found this 19th-century tamale pie recipe that looks promising.)

It’s not just ingredients that can provoke this type of deeper understanding — individual dishes, too, have their taxonomy and lineage. Because I research culinary history, naturally I think of sopes as a kind of Mexican trencher — essentially the corn version of the edible bread plate so common in medieval times. They’re delightfully rustic. Even though you’re using the same basic masa dough as you would for tortillas, you don’t need a tortilla press; instead, you form the little rimmed plate by hand, blessing the food with your fingerprints as you work. Sopes can be as straightforward as you like, with just beans, cheese and salsa, or you can use them as a foundation for experimentation. With so many New World ingredients like chiles, tomatillos, sunflower seeds and squash at their peak, it’s pretty hard to mess it up. Makes 12 sopes

Ingredients

2 cups masa harina

2 cups warm water

2 tablespoons bacon fat, lard or oil

2 or 3 fresh chiles, whatever type you prefer, diced

1 medium-sized calabacita or other summer squash, diced

2 fresh hoja santa leaves, finely sliced (optional)

½ small white onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups cooked pinto or mayocoba beans, drained and rinsed (canned is OK)

1 teaspoon chili powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Oil for frying

For serving:

Crumbled cotija cheese, roasted sunflower or pumpkin seeds (shelled), sliced avocados, shredded iceberg lettuce, diced tomato, salsa

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, mix together the masa harina and water until a dough forms. It should be as soft and pliable as play-doh, so add another teaspoon of water or masa harina as needed to achieve the right consistency. Knead until well combined, then roll the masa dough into a ball, place it back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and set aside.
2. While the dough is resting, heat the bacon fat in a medium skillet over medium heat. Saute the peppers and calabacitas in the oil until glossy and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Season with a few pinches of salt and pepper, stir in the hoja santa to warm up and become fragrant, then transfer the sauteed vegetable mixture to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Turn the heart down to medium low, add the onion and garlic to the skillet and saute until they begin to soften, about 5-8 minutes.
3. Add the beans and chili powder to the skillet and stir-fry until the beans are warmed through. Begin mashing them with a spoon or potato masher, adding water as needed to achieve the texture and thickness you prefer. You can make them smooth or chunky, but if you like them smoother try not to make them too runny or they’ll be a mess when you try to eat them. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed, then keep the beans warm over low heat while you cook the sopes, adding water as needed to keep them from drying out.
4. Divide the masa dough into 12 equal portions, rolling each into a ball. Place a ball of dough between two slips of wax paper or plastic wrap, then flatten with the bottom of a glass or the heel of your hand to make a disk roughly ½-inch thick. Repeat with the remaining dough.
5. Heat a flat top griddle or large skillet over medium high heat, then drizzle generously with oil. Working in batches, cook the sopes until golden brown and slightly crisped, about 1-2 minutes, then flip. Cook until the other side is golden, adding more oil to the pan as needed to keep it well lubricated until all the sopes are cooked. As soon as they’re cool enough to handle, pinch the sides to form a little ridge to hold the toppings in place.
6. To serve, spoon a layer of beans into the cooked sope, add a spoonful of the sauteed vegetables, then add whichever toppings you like.

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