Adapted from Fire and Ice: Classic Nordic Cooking by Darra Goldstein Serves 4 This ancient culinary technique still resonates today. When you smear celery root, or celeriac, with a paste of salt and ash, the interior turns out creamy, with smoky undertones. Cracking it open at the table will add a touch of drama and expose the perfectly seasoned and tender flesh. You can use ash from a regular fireplace or grill if it comes from untreated hardwood. I used juniper ash sourced from Shimá of Navajoland. You can make your own ash as well. Lois Ellen Frank of Red Mesa Cuisine details the proces ..read more

Makes 1 mocktail Using ash salt and ash syrup, you have lots of options to smoke up your next mocktail. Ash salt is used to garnish the rim of the glass, and ash syrup and grapefruit mimic the citrus and smokiness of a mezcal paloma. Print Ashy Grapefruit Mocktail Servings 1 cocktail Ingredients 3 ounces grapefruit juice (about 1 small grapefruit) 2 ounces lime juice (about 1 large lime) 1 ounce ash simple syrup 1/2 ounce maple syrup 2 dashes grapefruit bitters (or orange bitters) 3 ounces soda water Vegetable ash salt, for rim Lime wedge, for rim Instructions Juice grapefruit a ..read more

Serves 8 Level: Intermediate | Prep time: 15 minutes; Cook time: 55 minutes; Cooling time: 10 minutes; Total time: 1 hour, 20 minutes This savory tart is layered with caramelized onions and is the perfect appetizer for parties or serving as a main course for Sunday brunch. Sourcing note: La Montañita Co-op carries Tucumcari Mountain Cheese Factory cheeses and Dufour Classic Puff Pastry at all their locations. Print Savory Cheese Tart with Onion and Mushroom Prep Time 15 minutes minutes Cook Time 55 minutes minutes Cooling Time 10 minutes minutes Total Time 1 hour hour 20 minutes minute ..read more

In our Mountains and Creeks issue, we follow Ellen Zachos up Holy Ghost Creek, where she guides us in foraging for early spring greens. Zachos offers pointers for identifying plants ranging from winter cress and dandelion to cow parsnip and common mallow. Here she shares a recipe for “Spring Greens Fritters” that you can adapt to whatever greens you have on hand. Print SPRING GREENS FRITTERS Servings 2 Ingredients 1/2 cup evening primrose root puree 1/4 cup chopped alliums of choice (foraged, store bought, garden grown—whatever you have on hand) 1 cup chopped spring greens 1 egg Salt ..read more

Single wool fleece roving from Cactus Hill Farm. Photo by Elena Miller-ter Kuile. “Friends. Sisters. Mothers. Professors. When women affirm women, it unlocks our power. It gives us permission to shine brighter.” In this conversation between sheep farmer Elena Miller-ter Kuile and writer and weaver leticia gonzales, both invested in healing the world from the ground up, the truth in this quote by journalist Elaine Welteroth becomes reality. In a land traumatized by the brutality of history, healing begins with the soil, travels up into blades of grass, vanishing into the atmosphere and ret ..read more

Dining with CJ Bernal at Dawn Butterfly Cafe By Susanna Space CJ Bernal, owner and chef at Dawn Butterfly. Photo by Stephanie Cameron. It was July 2020, the height of the pandemic, when the call came from New Mexico. Carpio J. I. (CJ) Bernal’s sister, Coral Dawn Bernal, had been found dead. CJ, who had grown up on Taos Pueblo, was with his mother’s family in Chilliwack, British Columbia. The US border was closed to all but essential travel, but he had to get home. As he made his way to his family, CJ learned more about Coral’s death. The cause was a heart arrhythmia, but the family suspe ..read more

​The two-hundred-year-old Cañoncito acequia near Mora flowing again after being clogged by debris following recent wildfires. In New Mexico, our landscapes and communities are being transformed by climate change. The Pyrocene has arrived, where a warming and drying climate leads to repeated larger and hotter fires. The Jemez Mountains were once known as the asbestos forest—the place that rarely burned. Then at the turn of the century, the system appeared to pass a tipping point with the 1996 Dome and 2000 Cerro Grande Fires, followed by a series of larger conflagrations. Much of the Jemez ..read more

Vegetable Ash You might expect vegetables reduced to ash to taste like carbon, but the ash retains a remarkable amount of the vegetables’ original character. Vegetable ash can be a finishing sprinkle on soups, cooked veggies, cheeses, or meats. It’s also great in sauces, where it adds flavor. There are manifold possibilities, both for the vegetable matter used to create the ash and the applications. For this recipe, we are sticking with onion skins and the pale and dark green parts from leeks, but you can use almost any vegetable scrap to create different nuances. Corn husks and silk, fenne ..read more

Makes 12 servings Level: Easy | Prep time: 5 minutes, plus 30 minutes chill time Batched cocktails always make entertaining easy. Although milk punch is sinfully creamy, this version is also refreshing, with a fullness of flavor from the bourbon and brandy. Start or end your game night with this New Orleans classic. Print Milk Punch Prep Time 5 minutes minutes Chill Time 30 minutes minutes Total Time 35 minutes minutes Servings 12 servings Author Adapted from Ivy Odom Ingredients 3 cups whole milk 1 1/2 cups bourbon, chilled (we used Left Turn Distilling Blue Corn Whiskey) 1 1/2 cup ..read more

New Liquor Laws Provide Opportunity but Leave Some Restaurateurs Underserved By Candolin Cook Hibiscus Margarita at Ardovino’s Desert Crossing, photo by Stephanie Cameron. Odds are, if you’d asked David Gaspar de Alba how he envisioned the grand opening of his Albuquerque restaurant Oni in May 2020, he wouldn’t have said, “With a take-out window.” Unfortunately, with COVID raging and health guidelines ever changing, Oni spent most of its first year in business as a to-go establishment, with some limited patio dining. In addition to the many other hardships the restaurant industry suffere ..read more