 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. Welcome to another edition of Vegetables in Great Abundance, or VEGA. Hi, I'm Carrie Bachman. I work with New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service, and I work in the area of nutrition. Now I've had an interest in a long time in healthy fruits and vegetables, and one of my favorite places to buy those is at the Farmers Market. That's why we created this special television series. Now most of us in New Mexico know of vegas as the large beams that support the roofs of our Adobe houses. Well, I also like to use the analogy that vegetables are the vegas of our diet. They provide a really strong foundation to keep us healthy and strong. And so what we're doing with this series of shows is visiting different farmers markets around the Albuquerque area in particular. We go to a farmers market one day, and then the next day I come back here to the studio and prepare the items that I've bought there into a very simple, fresh, delicious, and healthy dish. Now if don't worry if you live outside the Albuquerque area, you can call the number on your screen and they can tell you exactly where your closest farmers market is. We've got farmers markets all over the state in New Mexico, and they're across the nation as well. It's really becoming a popular way for people to get out into their communities, meet the people that grow food, and have a personal connection with that food. I really encourage you to use this opportunity during this time of year to visit your farmers markets. Now today what we're going to be featuring is a special dish that we actually don't eat much of in New Mexico. It's called Raita, and it features a starring role for one of our favorite and most abundant summer vegetables. We'll visit a person who grows that vegetable, but first let's take a few moments to talk with Mike Sophia. He is the market manager for the Albuquerque growers market, which is located on Central. That's the market that we visited yesterday. Let's go and visit with him just for a few minutes and you'll get a sense of what the early market for the season looks like. Later in the season, there'll be lots more vendors and lots of different types of items. Let's go see. Well, today I'm glad to introduce you to Mike Sophia. He is the manager of the Albuquerque growers market. And Mike has a very interesting story to tell us about how he personally became involved in vegetables. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad you guys came. I was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and raised in Buffalo. My grandfather, Sam Bonacorso, and that's as Italian as you can get, was an old produce huckster. And when I was about seven or eight years old, he used to take me to the farmers market downtown Niagara Falls. And he taught me the produce business and I've been at it just about all my life. You had mentioned to me earlier that some of your best clients are WIC participants. Can you tell me a bit about that program? That program is WIC, is three letters, W-I-C. It's Women, Infants, and Children of all the markets in New Mexico. We command the most WIC checks between $75,000 and $80,000 worth each and every year. Now that's an incredible amount when you think that that money is going straight into the pockets of growers and producers who are your neighbors and friends in your local communities. The WIC program, as Mike says, is a really important piece of the success of farmers markets and also a great way for people to be introduced to fresh vegetables and fruits that they might not normally purchase. Mike, do you find that some of the people who come by with the vouchers for produce continue to shop at the farmers market? All the time. All the time. And another thing is the state as well as the federal government wants to help the people who are in need of this. There's a certain people need help financially, and this is one way to do it. And I really appreciate the diligence of the vendors in working with the WIC program and making this a success. It's something that we're hoping to replicate in the future with senior citizens. Other states have done that and have distributed vouchers that they can use in the same way at their farmers markets. Now the nice thing is anybody can come to a farmers market. You'll see people here young and old, wealthy and not so wealthy. It's a place that is really a meeting place for everybody in our society. I really encourage you to get out to your local market. The next one that comes up, take a look in your paper or give the New Mexico Farmers Market Association a call and find out about the market that's in your area. Mike, thanks again for visiting with us. Well, here we are again at the market. I'm speaking with Judy and Amanda Marcus and we're looking at some beautiful squash that they're selling here today. What types of squash do you have, Judy? We have a wide variety of squash ranging from zucchini to gray Mexican eight ball, yellow crook neck, yellow straight neck. We have a large variety of tomatoes also. Well, the squash and the tomatoes go really well together, especially this time of year. But I'm particularly interested in this squash right here. Now you said this is called an eight ball squash? Yes, this is an eight ball zucchini. Okay. Yes, and it varies in size. It depends like when you want to pick it, either the smaller, for the tender size. So is that something that maybe is good for stuffing? Yeah, you can stuff these and you can also bake them in the oven. You can put hamburger meat with grated cheese on top or things like that. That's a wonderful idea. You know, sometimes in the summertime we get so much zucchini and we're not sure what to do with it. This is another idea for something to do with a zucchini squash. You can also freeze this and you can cut it up and freeze it and take it out and it comes out just as fresh when you take it out, when you want to use it at a later time. Well, that's a good tip for some of the home gardeners that we have. And Amanda, would you like to share an idea with us today? I have a brother, Marcos, and Marcos has a friend, Malcolm. Okay, well thank you so much. Do you enjoy eating squash, Amanda? Yeah. Do you? Squash is a wonderful vegetable for children. It's got kind of a milder flavor and you can prepare it so many different ways. It's a great way to get kids excited about vegetables. Yeah, this is really good for the WIC program. The ladies on WIC that they have WIC checks that they buy their fruits and vegetables for their young kids. Okay. Yeah. And so do you see a lot of people from WIC come by your stand? Yes, we do have a lot of people from all over that are on the WIC program and it's a good thing for them and a good thing for us. We get to meet them and it's a good thing for their kids. It's an outstanding program and I encourage those of you who are participants of WIC or who maybe aren't but would like to learn more to contact your local WIC office and these vouchers are given throughout the summer and you can come to the farmers market and exchange them for fresh fruits and vegetables for your family. Well, thank you so much, Judy. Thank you. You can see that I purchased three of the varieties of summer squash that Judy just showed us. We've got the eight ball squash here which is just a delightful version of a zucchini right here. And then we've got a yellow squash as well. Now these are really nice small specimens. They can be steamed up very nicely and be really delicate in flavor and texture. But what we're going to do today is something a little bit different. Let's go ahead and start with the zucchini. You can use one, as I mentioned, that's larger. Even sometimes they get to be like this big. What we're going to be doing with our zucchinis is just chopping off the stem end here and then taking a grater, we're going to be using the large holes on the grater, the small ones. Go ahead and use the large holes and we're just going to be grating. You can see how it comes out the back here. Grate that zucchini down. Be careful you don't get your fingers. Now this is a really fun thing for kids to do. I don't know what it is about grating things, but I always used to enjoy doing it as a child. Now you'll see that there's a fair amount of liquid coming off of this zucchini, which is okay for this recipe. A lot of times when we grate raw zucchini, they'll call for a step where you actually put some salt on it, let it sit for a little while and then you squeeze out the liquid. In this case it doesn't really matter, and that's one of the things that's so nice about this recipe. It's foolproof. You don't have to go to a lot of extra work. You don't have to seed the vegetables. You can just grate them raw just like this. Now you're going to ask, how much do I use? Well, it doesn't really matter. That's one of the other good things about this recipe. You can use as much squash as you have or as you want to use. Go ahead and just continue grating up this green zucchini here. The nice thing about using zucchini raw is it keeps its crunch. Sometimes we steam it maybe for calabacitas or for other dishes, and it's really easy to overcook zucchini. I'm going to use one of these nice little yellow squashes, and you'll see that adds a nice bit of colored difference here to our grating. See that yellow texture just shows right through. And of course, since it's a summer squash, we don't have to worry about peeling it like we would a winter squash. This is a totally edible soft skin. Look how gorgeous that is. Now we could even use the eight ball squash for this, but I would like to save that for another use. I'll show you here in a second. Go ahead and dump this into a big bowl. Again, this is actually, you could use about twice this much squash, and in fact, I may put in some more before our next break just to show you how you can go about using all of your squash that you might have coming out of your garden or that you pick up at the farmer's market. Now here we have the eight ball squash, such a beautiful little squash. Something that you might like to try doing with it is kind of cutting it out as if it were a pumpkin. You can kind of basically cut the top off like this, and then you can just hollow it out inside. Use a knife. Be careful that you don't get out to the edges because unlike a pumpkin, this is really soft. And in fact, at this point, a spoon might really even work better. You can see what I'm doing is just making a hollow space here and then fill it with any types of meat or vegetables and bake it with the top on. Very simple and delicious. Often you come to the farmer's market and you think you're going to find fresh vegetables and fruits. Well, you'll find those in abundance, but in New Mexico you're also going to find a lot of dried vegetables, particularly chilies. And we're here with Pat Luna today to visit a little bit with him about a particular variety of chili and how they process it into the dried form. Pat, tell us what type of chili do you have here? Well, I got chili-picky here. It's a green plant. We pick it up for it. We dry it, it's on dry. Instead of machine dry, it's on dry. That's the best. The sun dried really does make a difference, doesn't it? Yeah, it sure does. And so you dry your chili in the sun and then what do you do with it? Actually, we bag it and then we grind some of it. And let's show you the viewers here some of this. This is what you call a crushed piquin, right? So this is a little coarser grind than if you were looking at a very sort of a powder, right? We got the powder. Yes. We got the powder too, so. And you see this is a chimayot chili, so this is a slightly different variety. I'm really excited to see the piquin here because this is something I don't often find at the farmer's markets, at least down in Las Cruces. And what do you like to use piquin with? I mix it with my red chili. I want to blend. Or you could sprinkle eggs, breakfast eggs. Because they're real good. Not very much, it's very little. It's really hot. Well, it's something that I really appreciate being here in New Mexico. It's such a great variety of chilies and they're all grown right here in the state. And as you can see, these are dried in the sun. They're hand ground with a hand grinder. You can't get anything more homemade and more delicious than this type of chili. Thank you so much, Pat, for sharing your expertise with us. You're welcome. Well, you can see I've purchased some of the crushed piquin from the vendors that we visited with just yesterday. And I've also got some other varieties here of chilies to just talk with you all a little bit about. Those of us in New Mexico are more familiar with chilies probably than anybody else in this country. But even sometimes we get used to eating the same types of chilies. And so I'd like to kind of expand our repertoire just a little bit. Now I know you all are familiar with this chili right here. This is the Anaheim or New Mexico style green chili. And this is what of course goes into our famous green chili sauces and stews and that type of thing. Now once this is dried, it ends up looking a bit like this. This is a slightly smaller version, but you end up with the red chili. So green and red both come off of the same plant. Now the piquin that we saw yesterday that Pat was showing us and I unfortunately forgot to get a little hole pepper to remind us what it looked like. It's a much smaller pepper of about the same shape but really about like this long in the red dried version is how we saw it. Now when it's crushed, it comes out looking a bit like this and you can see this is obviously something that was crushed by hand through a hand crusher. Look at the different textures you've got here and that's one of the things I like about home grown chili. It's not something that's extremely uniform that comes out of a jar that you might buy at the supermarket. This is the real thing and he even has left the seeds in so this is going to be a little bit on the spicy side. Now the nice thing though about some yogurt without any flavorings, without any sugar, what I like to do is basically whip it up just a little bit in the container. Add it to heal your palate as you're eating the hot and spicy Indian food and so that's why I think it would be really nice to actually serve with our New Mexico dishes as well. You're asking well why did we put in some of the piquin powder? Well it gives a little bit of bite but the cooling yogurt actually dairy deactivates some of the heat in hot spicy chili and so that's why we're adding that here today. Well here we are at the farm stand once again. I'm visiting this time with Pat Luna and he's going to tell us a bit about some of their dried products. Pat what do we have here? We have oregano here. We plant it and raise it and dry it and grind it. Now is that a pretty intensive process it sounds like? It is, yeah. It's a lot of work but it's really good for great chili. You blend your chili, put some of this, you can put caminos, cilantro, oregano. Any spice you want you like you put in there. It'll come out real good. Now I hear from your daughter that you're actually a real expert in terms of making salsas and that type of thing. Tell us, do you have a secret you'd like to share with our audience? What makes a good salsa? It makes you add your spices, you know, blend your salsas and I added a can of tomato juice on it. I put a lot of garlic, fresh garlic, fresh onions, a little bit of celery and your yellow hot jalapenos and tomatoes. You blend them, a little bit of pepper and salt. Well that sounds like a wonderful recipe and I hear that a little bit later in the season you'll actually have some of the yellow hot jalapenos here at the market stand, that's right. But for now we can actually come and enjoy some of this wonderful oregano. Now how should I store this in my house? You can freeze it or put it in your refrigerator. It won't get spoiled. Well and it's really nice to have some home New Mexico grown oregano. This has such a wonderful flavor and it will really add a lot of taste to your dishes like your pozole, your menudo. Some of the dishes that we tend to eat a lot in New Mexico, a good home grown oregano makes all the difference. So I encourage you to go to your farmers market and see if you can find some today. Thank you so much. Thank you. So here we have our ingredients for our raita. The yogurt here on top, you can see the chile pequine and then the cucumber, I mean the zucchini underneath. Actually cucumber is a very common vegetable that you would use in a raita. Now we've just visited with Pat at the farmers market about our final ingredient. This is some of their delicious oregano and I can tell you the whole entire studio smells like oregano at the moment. You can see, looking at this close up, that this is a different type of oregano than what you'd normally find in the grocery store bottled as oregano. Look right here, these are the little tiny flower pods and this is actually Mexican oregano which has a very distinct flavor. And that's why I was so excited to see it at the market yesterday. This is not something you can easily buy at the grocery store usually. Now the regular oregano that you buy is Greek oregano and it has kind of a mintier flavor. Both types are actually related to mint. They're in the mint family. And this has, the Mexican oregano has sort of an earthier flavor. It's much more typical of what you would see sprinkled on top of your menudo or your pozole. It's a very different taste than the Greek oregano. Now it's not traditional that we would actually put oregano into a raita. This is more of a new world kind of spice. And in raita normally what we would see is maybe some mustard seeds that have been heated until they started popping. Maybe some cumin. But we're going to kind of make a New Mexico version today. Now I like to kind of crumble this up even more because it distributes the flavor a bit. Oh it smells so good. And then you can go ahead and just toss it in. You can use as much or as little as you like but a little bit of this goes a long way since it's so fresh. And then what we're going to do is just basically mix this together. It's going to look a little strange probably if you're not used to what a raita is. It's going to be almost like a soup texture. And that's what it's supposed to be. You would actually serve this alongside a hot dish, perhaps something spicy like red enchiladas. This would be delicious. And you can see that the actual green and yellow color from the summer squash shines right through. You can see the chilepiquine. You could serve this in small dishes or as a garnish perhaps and instead of sour cream. Very healthy, very tasty. And again vary the heat of the spices according to what your family likes to do. It's best to serve this right away but if you have to refrigerate it just stir it up again before you serve it and it'll be just fine. Now let's go back to the market and visit with one of the market regulars. He's going to show us a very traditional New Mexico dish. My name is Joe Valencia. I live here in Albuquerque. I've been here for over 40 years. I came here from Santa Fe and prior to that I was from a gloria in New Mexico. We lived on a ranch. I was raised there. Me and 11 children, brothers and sisters. But we had a lot of fun. We raised a lot of beans. Well and we have some beans here to show everybody. What is it that makes beans such an important thing in your diet and to the diets of people in New Mexico? Well it's survival. It's survival believe it or not. Without these things there would have been people who couldn't have survived I don't think. We depended on planting beans. We've had several acres of them. And we raised beans. My father was very persistent about that. Well what is it that makes dry land beans so much better than the irrigated variety? Well I wouldn't say that they're better. I just like them better. You know I'm used to them. It's such a healthy food. It's fairly inexpensive and again it carries so much culture and tradition with it. To see them here at the farmers market is really quite exciting. Now tell me Joe why do you come to the farmers market? I come here to shop a little bit and then to visit with the people. I love people. I have a business close by and I enjoy visiting with the people here. They're kind, they're beautiful, they're hard workers. I can just imagine by the product they bring to this market how much work it's taken to produce it. And I don't mind paying for it. Of course my wife's the one that does the shopping for it. Well it's nice to hear that you and others here in Albuquerque appreciate the growers and the fact that they take their time and energy to come to the market and share these foods directly with their consumers. You go to a grocery store, you don't really have that connection do you? Well grocery stores are a little different lot. They say they're fresh product but by the time they market them out of California, Arizona, Texas, and Mexico and other parts of the country, it's not the fresh stuff like they have here. Early in the season, mid-season, late-season you're going to find a variety of different things. You never know exactly what you'll find and that's part of the excitement of the market. And as Joe said, it's a place to get to know people, become friends with people who you know that you'll see week after week. It's really a social event as well. Well thank you so much for visiting with us. Thank you for having me and enjoy the market. It's always very great and the food is great, buy it. It was really fun to meet Joe Valencia yesterday at the market. He is one of those people who is such a proponent of New Mexico farmers markets. And that's one thing that I think you'll find if you start visiting them as I have over the past couple of months. Each market has its own distinct character and flavor. Some of the vendors will visit one or more markets, but oftentimes a vendor actually goes to just one market. So that might be the only place that you can get a very specific type of lettuce or dark green for cooking. You'll just have to experiment and visit and see what you can find. Now today, as you've remembered, we've made an interesting recipe, not traditional to New Mexico, but with kind of a New Mexico twist. This Indian raita is delicious served next to very hot and spicy foods like enchiladas or carne adobada. It'll make a kind of a difference in your New Mexico food and you can add any types of ingredients and fresh vegetables that you'd like to. Cucumber works really well instead of zucchini. You can also add fruits to make the raita slightly sweet. It's basically open to your interpretation. Now I hope that you will also continue to visit your farmers markets until our next episode of The Vega Show. They're markets located throughout the state and so please call the number on your screen if you'd like to find out where your local market is located. Now another thing I encourage you to do is to call us at the extension office. That's the number that you see on your screen right now. We can do a variety of things for you. If you're interested in some of the recipes that we've prepared on The Vega Show, give us a call and we can send you out a booklet. We can also let you know about how to enroll in free and exciting nutrition classes where you'll learn to prepare foods just like this with other people. And finally, if you want to find out more about the WIC farmers market nutrition program, you can also give us a call and we can help direct you in that way as well. Well, I do hope you'll visit your farmers market. Take the kids with you. Don't take a list. Just go with an open mind and an open heart. See what kinds of things you might be able to find and invent a delicious dish or two in your kitchen. Who knows, you might find a new favorite vegetable. The preceding was a production of New Mexico State University. The views and opinions in this program are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the NMSU Board of Regents.