three sisters part I: three sisters tarts

with the harvest coming up, we decided to make the theme of this month's intergenerational dinner "the three sisters": squash, corn and beans.  the crops are often planted together, and would benefit from each other as they grew: the beans fertilize the soil for her other sisters, the corn provides a stalk for the beans to climb up, and the squash's leaves shield the ground from sunlight to keep moisture in.  the symbiotic relationship between the three sisters demonstrates how we as humans may live our lives, with each individual sharing of itself for the betterment of the entire community (or, err, in this case, crop mound).

we cooked a variety of nomilicious food today, and i'll post the others when I take pictures of the leftovers.  edit: all the leftovers were eaten today.  never mind...

 

i attempted to make a chinese-filipino dessert called "hopia" (or moon cake in english) with all three sisters (traditionally, hopia is stuffed with bean, ground vegetables, pork, or winter melon).  i failed, mostly because i misjudged time to make the complicated hopia dough.  instead, we made "three sisters tarts."  i unfortunately didn't make enough dough, so i made a cake-like thing with the remaining filling.  i upped the dough for the recipe below.

three sisters tarts (yields ~40 mini tarts)
dough: 
3 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup cold water
1 tsp salt


filling:
1 15 oz can pumpkin puree
1 15 oz can red beans, drained
1/4 cup cooked corn kernels
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp powdered ginger
 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg


-mash red beans in a medium-size pot
-cook mashed beans and pumpkin puree on medium heat for ~10 minutes
-add spices; set aside
-preheat oven to 400 degrees F
-mix the dough ingredients together and roll out to ~1/4 inch thickness
-cut dough into circles of ~1.5 inches in diameter and slightly flatten
-put ~1 tsp of filling in the center and pinch to an "x" shape
-bake tarts for 30 minutes