ARTISAN

Pickin’ up pawpaws, put ’em in your recipe

Chef Sara Bir takes the elusive woodsy treat to new levels with her latest cookbook

By Wynne Everett

Sara Bir foraging (Photo by Melanie Tienter)

If you love pawpaws—as more and more people do—you probably have discovered the pleasure of enjoying Ohio’s native tropical fruit in its simplest form: fresh, raw and immediately after you’ve foraged one from the woods or trail.

Chef and cookbook author Sara Bir even begins the newly released second edition of her The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook with a passionate argument in favor of eating pawpaws in just this way.

“Work the flesh out of the skin. Raise it to your lips and slurp. It will be sweet and creamy and totally new—every pawpaw in the woods is like your fist pawpaw all over again,” Bir says.

So, as even Bir asks, if pawpaws are so good plain, why cook with them?

For many, including her, the urge to play with a new and exotic ingredient is hard to resist. What other flavors and textures would go well with this? What new dish can highlight the pawpaw’s charms?

But also, cooking pawpaws into recipes is one way to make the fruit last beyond its brief late-summer-to-early-fall season. The scarcity and seasonal limitations of pawpaws are part of what make them so magical.

We’ve gotten used to being able to shop for most other kinds of fruit all year round, and we’ve lost sight of the notion that they even have seasons. Pawpaws do not allow us this luxury.

“We can go to the grocery store and order things online and have whatever we want wherever we are,” Bir says. “That’s an artificial construct.”

PAWPAW LASSI

Makes about 2½ cups, to serve 2–4

You have worked hard for your pawpaws and deserve a refreshing reward. Here it is. This is thicker than an Indian lassi, like a lassi–smoothie hybrid. The simple harmony of pawpaw and dairy is employed to full effect here. Instead of yogurt, I prefer thick and rich full-fat buttermilk. I’ve seen this in the store labeled as “country style” or “Bulgarian style.” You can substitute plain yogurt (preferably full-fat).

Ingredients 1 cup full-fat buttermilk 1 cup pawpaw pulp ¼ cup cold water 2–3 teaspoons granulated sugar A pinch ground mace, nutmeg or cumin

Directions Combine the pawpaw pulp, buttermilk, water and 2 teaspoons of the sugar in a bowl or large glass measuring cup and whisk until combined (you can use a blender instead if you want the texture to be totally smooth).

Taste and add more sugar, if needed. You’re aiming for this to be very balanced: sweet, tart, creamy, fruity, all that. If it’s too thick to be pourable, thin it out with a few tablespoons of water at a time.

Garnish with a sprinkling of mace, nutmeg or (if you’re feeling edgy) cumin and serve immediately. Refrigerate leftovers up to 1 day.

Like many pawpaw fans, Bir was enchanted from the first time she encountered a pawpaw on a trail near her home in Marietta. An Ohio native, Bir traveled and then moved back to Ohio in 2014. She had heard of pawpaws but never seen one. Then one day on a hike she spotted something weird on the trail.

“I saw this squished thing,” she said. “It smelled like a fruit and it tasted like a fruit. I figured this must be a pawpaw. It was a little like seeing Bigfoot.”

Caution in the Kitchen

Like most of us, though, she had a hard time finding any recipes for pawpaws. “I decided the world really needed a resource for pawpaw recipes that make sense for that fruit.”

Developing recipes for pawpaws, though, is tricky. Along with having a fairly brief season, pawpaws generally must be foraged from pawpaw trees in wooded areas. They have a short shelf life and don’t travel well. And those are just the challenges for acquiring them.

Ohio University Professor Robert Brannan is a food scientist, pawpaw expert and president of the National Pawpaw Foundation. “The biggest thing with pawpaw is you start with this liquidy pulp,” Brannan says.

Unlike other fruits, cooking it down to reduce pawpaw is not a good idea. The fruit has a compound that, when concentrated, induces vomiting.

Scientists believe the compound is part of the pawpaw tree’s defense against predators. But the compound also collects in the fruit. Consuming small quantities usually doesn’t cause a problem. But eating large amounts of pawpaw, or eating dishes that contain concentrated amounts of pawpaw pulp, can bring on unpleasant, nauseating consequences.

“It’s a drawback,” Brannan says.

It’s one Bir encountered firsthand in developing recipes for her book. Using a tried-and-true banana granola recipe, Bir mashed pawpaws with granola and baked the combination for a long period at a low heat, only to discover that the process had concentrated the nausea-prompting compound. “There was a lot of trial and error,” she says. “And there are a finite amount of recipes for something like this.”

Bir left the granola recipe behind, but she went on to develop key lime pawpaw pie, pawpaw salsa, pawpaw banana ketchup and more for her book.

Pawpaws pair better with some things than with others, Bir discovered. They taste good with honey and they go well with dairy, particularly fermented dairy like yogurt, she says. “The way it behaves, the way it ripens, a pawpaw is very much its own thing.”

A Forager’s Treasure

Some good news about working with pawpaws is that they’re nutritious. Much like the fruits they most taste like—bananas and mangoes—pawpaws are a good source of antioxidants and fiber. The skin, which many North Americans discard, is not only also edible but just as nutritious as the pulp.

Also, the pulp does not lose its flavor or texture when it is frozen, though it may turn brown through oxidation, like avocadoes or apples. Many cooks work with frozen pawpaw pulp because freezing is a reliable way to preserve the fruit during the relatively brief season.

Though some people cultivate pawpaw trees, many cooks, including Bir, forage their fruit. And that foraging starts with scouting some of her favorite pawpaw trees early in the summer, looking to see which have blossoms and developing fruit. “I love spending time outside and that’s a really great pursuit,” she says.

In 2015 she self-published the first edition of The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook. “When I sold out of that first edition I had some new recipes,”

So she worked with Belt Publishing to produce a second edition, which was released in August, just in time for pawpaw season. As the pawpaw trees begin dropping their green potato-shaped delicacies, you will find Bir among the other pawpaw enthusiasts, out foraging for enough fruit to freeze and experiment with for another year.

Pawpaws force us to respect their timetable, to enjoy them when and where we can find them.

“They’re elusive,” Bir says.

In Ohio, the pawpaw is important enough to have its own festival. The 2021 Ohio Pawpaw Festival takes place Sept. 17–19 at Lake Snowden in Albany, about 10 miles south of Athens. Learn more at ohiopawpawfest.com.

Wynne Everett is a Columbus native who grew up eating fruits and vegetables from her grandparents’ farm and beef bought on the hoof at the county fair. She’s now a vegetarian and a veteran journalist whose career has taken her to Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Toledo. She has a passion for food stories and can be reached at wynneeverett@gmail.com.

EAT. DRINK. THINK.

On the following pages, we bring you the second in a series of thought leadership stories that span topics of sustainability, access to healthy foods and nutrition, restaurant revitalization and regenerative agriculture. ese are the values that Edible Communities, as an organization, has been devoted to for the past two decades. Our work lends itself to the singular notion that excellent storytelling has the power to change lives, and that by exploring and elevating important conversations like these, we can e ect everlasting change in our communities too.

Please join us in supporting the work of our featured subjects—Michel Nischan, sustainable food advocate and co-founder of Wholesome Wave; and native food historian and chef, Dr. Lois Ellen Frank—two heroes from our local communities who are tireless champions in the battle against nutrition insecurity and hunger.

Dr. Frank says “the power of one can be huge,” and we could not agree more. One person, one organization, one community—each purpose driven, can massively impact our food system. We believe that every person should have access to a high-quality diet that is lled with nutritious foods that are raised and grown using sustainable practices. As consumer advocates we all play a critical role in reshaping the demand for this, and we all must be diligent in advancing this agenda if we are to ensure that no one is left behind.

Tracey Ryder

Co-Founder, Edible Communities

Chef Michel Nischan Photo courtesy of Wholesome Wave

RETHINKING HUNGER

Why Feeding ose in Need Must Focus on Nourishment

STORY BY Joy Manning

When anyone in a community struggles with food insecurity, it’s everybody’s problem. In the United States alone, an estimated $90 billion in excess healthcare costs annually are associated with food insecurity, according to research from the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation’s study conducted by researchers a liated with Harvard’s School of Public Health, Brandeis University and Loyola University. e social and emotional toll hunger takes on communities is harder to quantify, but no less deeply felt.

But of course, for those personally experiencing food insecurity, the problems are impossible to ignore. For those receiving SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) bene ts, getting the most calories for their dollar is likely at the forefront of their mind, and sometimes that means families eat more processed foods than they’d like. Michel Nischan, a four-time James Beard Award-winning chef and sustainable food movement leader, is working to change that. And for Wholesome Wave, the nonpro t he founded in 2007, it is a primary goal.

Wholesome Wave recently reset its priorities, in fact, and will now squarely focus on nutrition—not food—insecurity. e goal is to change the way people think about hunger. e distinction between food security and nutrition security is a critical one, according to Nischan. Most North Americans have access to enough calories to avoid hunger thanks to government programs, food banks and hunger relief organizations. “ is makes them technically ‘food secure,’ but they’re still not getting the nutrition they need to be healthy,” says Nischan. “We aren’t solving the real problem.

“It’s about people having the kind of diet that promotes good health and prevents disease,” he says. It’s also about equality. Communities of color and those living in poverty in the U.S. got sick from COVID-19 at a rate two to three times higher than the rest of the country, according to the 2020 Wholesome Wave impact report. e underlying reasons why aren’t speci c to the pandemic. “Four of the Top 5 drivers of this disparity are obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease,” says Nischan. ese are all chronic conditions that can be prevented and often reversed by increasing access to nutritious food.

Yet, when the foremost experts in hunger talk about hunger in terms of food security, it drives a cultural conversation that leads food banks to be well-stocked, but often it’s with ultra-processed food. “It has to be about more than getting meals on the table,” Nischan says.

To that end, Nischan and Wholesome Wave co-founder Gus Schumacher worked on a SNAP “doubling” program that makes every $1 a participant spends worth $2 when they buy produce. What began as a nascent pilot program in Columbia, Md., in 2005 has since grown into a federally funded program started by Wholesome Wave that helps more than 40 million people eat more greens and less instant ramen.

As part of Nischan’s shift to nutrition security, Wholesome Wave is also ramping up its Produce Prescription Program. It’s an umbrella program that partners with local organizations, such as hospitals and health clinics, to empower doctors to write prescriptions for nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables, often local, that patients pick up weekly, free of charge.

“Many people visit the doctor and hear, ‘If you don’t eat better, the next time I see you you’ll have type 2 diabetes,” says Nischan. His next big goal is securing Medicaid and

Medicare funding for these programs so they become as common as prescriptions are for drugs. “Your insurance company will pay for a kidney transplant, but not the vegetables that can prevent the disease,” he says.

Piloted in 2010, the Produce Prescription Program is ambitious, but peer-reviewed research shows that it works. A 2017 study published in Preventive Medicine Reports showed that participation in the program helped bring down participants’ A1C (a number that indicates one’s average blood sugar level). A 2012 study in the journal Public Health Nutrition showed produce prescriptions improve overall well-being.

is is not to say that Nischan believes Wholesome Wave has all the answers. From the beginning, Wholesome Wave has partnered with local organizations to bring ideas and funding to a collaboration that ts the speci c needs of its community. “We don’t want to be the organization that rides into your town with our solution to your problem. Addressing nutrition insecurity is di erent in every community,” he says. And, as we know, paying attention to those di erences is critical to nding solutions.

Image courtesy of Wholesome Wave

Continued...

HUNGER BY THE NUMBERS

The problem of food and nutrition insecurity across North America is incalculable, but these sobering statistics show that work still must be done to ensure everyone gets the nourishment they need to live a full life and prevent disease.

IN THE UNITED STATES:

35 million Americans live in households that struggle with food and nutrition insecurity.

84 percent of households served by Feeding America, a network of food banks, say they buy cheap food instead of fresh food to ensure they’ll have enough to eat.

27.5 percent of households with kids are food and nutrition insecure.

19.1 percent of Black households and 15.6% of Hispanic households experience food and nutrition insecurity.

1 in 19 Americans relies on SNAP bene ts.

IN CANADA:

1 in 8 Canadian households faces food and nutrition insecurity.

1 in 6 Canadian children experiences food and nutrition insecurity.

In Ontario, 3,282,514 visits were made to food banks in 2019-2020.

Black and Indigenous people are 3 times more likely to be food and nutrition insecure than white people.

Dr. Lois Ellen Frank | Photo by Daphne Hougard

Indigenous communities, for example, live with some of the highest rates of food and nutrition insecurity in North America. A study published in 2017 in the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition found that from 2000 to 2010, 25% of American Indians and Alaska Natives were consistently food insecure. It’s a daunting statistic.

Dr. Lois Ellen Frank is a Santa Fe, N.M.-based chef and native food historian. She believes that the health and nutrition security of Indigenous communities (and all communities for that matter) can best be served by putting attention and energy into solutions and not focusing on the problems. Frank would rather focus on concrete tasks she can do to help. “I’m a big advocate of the power of one person,” she says. She provides culinary training to those who cook in community centers and schools to help people reconnect with traditional foodways through native plants and recipes.

Recently, she taught cooks in one school to make refried bean enchiladas with corn and zucchini in a red chili sauce. “ ese are ancestral foods that promote wellness,” she says. After the training, 32 families received the prepared dish, plus the recipe and the ingredients they’d need to make it themselves. “You think you aren’t teaching that many people, but it’s a ripple e ect,” she says. One family passes the information to another. is passing of knowledge from one person to the next can help keep food traditions alive. “It takes only one generation for a recipe or a method of agriculture to disappear.”

And preserving these recipes and traditions matters when it comes to solving the problem of food insecurity. A 2019 study published in the journal Food Security suggests that tribal communities can achieve increased food security and better health outcomes if they have greater access to their traditional foods and the ability to hunt, sh and preserve native foods.

For some, starting a nonpro t organization is a great way to make a di erence. But, as Dr. Frank also reminds us, helping just one person can have an impact too. e