The favourite food of an average Englishman of my generation is Indian and I’m no exception. Yesterday I was inspired to make perennial veggie aloo saag and stuffed blue congo whole grain paratha. It’s fun realising that it’s highly improbable that anyone has made this before! First, here are the vegetables:
Next, potatoes were steamed on the wood stove and sliced into small pieces. The onions were fried with several cloves of garlic and then all the finely sliced greens were added and cooked gently adding the potatoes and assorted Indian spices (coriander, cumin, home grown golpar – ground seed of Heracleum – chili, salt and pepper with a piece of cinnamon stick and a few cloves). The greens release water so that no water is needed. This is the perennial veggie saag (there are many different saags made with different vegetables in India; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saag I chose to make the parathas using a 100% coarse wholegrain spelt flour which are difficult to make perfectly as they tend to fall apart, but I don’t care as they are tastier in my opinion! For the filling I used cooked and mashed blue congo potato with various spices and chili mixed in. Put a blob of the filling on the rolled out paratha, fold the dough over the filling and roll out carefully trying not to let the filling show through (it did). You then dry fry both sides on medium heat, then melt ghee on the top, turn over and fry in the ghee for a minute and one more minute on the other side again and dinner’s served (Hope there are no Indians watching as I’ve probably broken all the rules, but the important thing it tasted fantastic:
We are now rapidly approaching maximum Habby (Hablitzia tamnoides) harvest, so most meals now have masses of shoots of this amazing perennial vegetable. We make sourdough bread every two or three weeks (it stores well) and usually make pizza with some of the same dough. 100% whole grain with zero refined flour of course. Yesterday, I collected a large bowl of Hablitzia shoots and also used Allium scorodoprasum and a few dandelion leaves for the year’s first Habbizza!
The pizza was served with delicious raw urui (Hosta sieboldiana) with a roasted sesame seed / soya sauce dipping sauce:
Yesterday was the first day above 10C this year and my Hablitzia (Caucasian spinach) plants are really growing fast. We used those in the picture together with thinned Allium scorodoprasum bulbs and shoots in a delicious home grown pea soup.
Most of the greens are now finished in the cellar, so time for the first harvest in the garden despite for the fact that it’s been snowing off and on over the last week and air temperatures haven’t risen much over +5C so far this year: 30 different greens plus two varieties of oca made into a diversity green pasta sauce! SO GOOD! Lucky us being able to harvest the best nutrition straight from the garden with little effort. Perennials are best! As usual, the Giant Ulleung Celery (Dystaenia takesimana) has come on furthest of my perennial vegetables! See the list of species used below the pictures.
Almost exactly 5 years ago this week I was on a study tour to Japan to look at Sansai production. I’m doing a webinar talk about the trip for Norwegian Seed Savers (KVANN) on 18th April. Although it’s open for all it will be in Norwegian. If there is interest for it I could repeat in English at some stage, but probably not before next winter. If anyone would like to organise it, please let me know. Otherwise, I may just organise it as the first Edimentals talk! See https://www.facebook.com/events/1333421547030675 Sansai (meaning mountain vegetables, mostly perennials) are what are essentially previously wild foraged vegetables which are now produced on farms in the lowlands around the cities in Japan, often in greenhouses for all year production – roots are often frozen until they are needed). With a little planning one can extend the season for some of the best sansai vegetables by digging up roots in the autumn and planting them in soil in buckets which are stored in my cold cellar (just above 0C this winter), and ready to be brought up into the living room for forcing in winter / spring (they could also be left outside, protected by piling leaves or similar around them – the roots are more exposed to cold in a bucket). For blanching I use a second upturned bucket on top. I’ve now harvested three important sansai veggies which were forced (it took a couple of weeks); Udo (Aralia cordata): peeled and sliced and eaten as a salad in a sesame oil and soy sauce with roasted sesame seed dressing Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris): steamed for 10 minutes Urui (Hosta sieboldiana): The blanched shoots are deliciously crispy and mild tasting, perfect with a dipping sauce (sesame oil, roasted sesame seeds and soy sauce) The sansai were served with fried veggie beetroot burgers (aka blood burgers) which are cooked and grated beetroot mixed with egg and wholegrain emmer flour (with grated onion, garlic, chili, salt and pepper).
Blanched udo (Aralia cordata)
Blanched udo (Aralia cordata)
Blanched udo (Aralia cordata)
Japanese udo salad
Japanese udo salad (with forced lime – Tilia – leaves)
Forced ostrich fern (the roots were infested with lesser celandine (vårkål). These are also edible.
Ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris)
Beetburgers and sansai dinner)
Hosta sieboldiana shoots (Urui) are crispy and mild tasting
Hosta sieboldiana shoots (Urui) are crispy and mild tasting, perfect with a dipping sauce (sesame oil, roasted sesame seeds and soy sauce)
People are always asking me for recipes. I rarely follow recipes as my ingredients vary so much and I just use what I have available. However, I do follow a number of basic, mostly lacto-vegetarian recipes which I’ve evolved to my liking over the years. For instance, last night I used a) Pea shoots (erteskudd), harvested about 25cm high (before they get too coarse to use; I don’t cut them right down to the soil as they will then resprout once or twice before giving up; to do this, they must be grown in a bucket or similar in deep soil); the peas were a mixture of about twenty home grown varieties, including several heirlooms such as Norwegian Jærert and Ringeriksert). b) Swiss chard / mangold (it’s been too cold for this to regrow in the cellar where it’s planted in soil) c) Chicory “Catalogna gigante di Chioggia” (sikkori) (this had resprouted in the cellar from the roots) d) Leeks / purre (also stored in soil in the cellar) e) Yacon (sliced tubers) f) Scorzonera / scorsonnerot (sliced tubers) g) Oca (oka) (Oxalis tuberosa) h) Garlic / hvitløk i) Chili / chili j) Bulb onions / kepaløk k) golpar (ground seed of various Heracleum species; bjørnekjeks / Tromsøpalme) The roots are stir-fried first (in olive oil), then the onions are added and at the end the greens for 5-10 minutes, finally mixing in chili, salt and pepper. Served either over whole grain spelt pasta or mixed as a risotto (I use barley normally for a barlotto) with strong cheese or parmesan.
Pea shoots
Pea shoots
From bottom: swiss chard, chicory, leeks, pea shoots
Stir-fry
The roots are stir-fried first (in olive oil), then the onions are added and at the end the greens for 5-10 minutes, finally mixing in chili, salt and pepper. Served either over whole grain spelt pasta or mixed as a risotto with strong cheese or parmesan.
Nettle-leaved bellflower (Campanula trachelium) has a more southwesterly distribution in Europe than my favourite giant bellflower C. latifolia and replaces the latter species in the south of England, France, Italy, Spain and North Africa and eastwards into West Asia. It has also widely naturalised in northeast North America. Like C. latifolia, it has edible sweetish tasting roots that contain the carbohydrate inulin like Jerusalem artichoke, good for diabetics, but can give flatulence. I suspect, however, that it takes several years to get to a usable size. I’ve been digging over an area of the garden into which Polygonum alpinum (Alpine knotweed) had invaded this week and there were also many self-seeded bellflowers with good sized roots, so I put them to one side to use in a delicious zucchini-bellflower curry which we ate last night! Nettle-leaved bellflower has similar habitat requirements to the giant bellflower, inhabiting open woodlands and hedgerows and grows well in complete shade on the north side of my house amongst the Hostas. It has a preference for alkaline soils and grows well on clay. It is therefore an excellent plant for the forest garden, although given the choice I would prefer the giant bellflower as the spring leaves of trachelium are coarser and hairier and therefore less good in salads, but nevertheless fine finely chopped in mixed salads. It has been used traditionally in Italy in mixed species spring soups such as minestrella (see page 59) and is one of the ingredients in pistic (boiled and fried, see page 59 of my book Around the World in 80 plants).
Campanula trachelium in the Jardin de Botanique, Paris at the best stage for harvesting tops and leavesWhite flowered Campanula trachelium “Alba” has yellower spring leaves.Campanula trachelium subsp aloha (in Kew Gardens)Nettle-leaved bellflower thrives in shade together with Hostas
There are a number of ornamental forms available in the trade which you might like to try, including a single-flowered white form (var. alba), which has naturalized in my garden. The double white (‘Alba Flore Pleno’) form and “Snowball” (https://dorsetperennials.co.uk/product/campanula-trachelium-snowball) haven’t come true from seed for me. ‘Bernice’ is another deep purple-blue flowered cultivar.
Campanula trachelium in the background of emerging Allium wallichii flowersCampanula trachelium flowers are edible and can be used to decorate saladsNaturalised blue and white forms in my gardenNettle-leaved bellflower produces masses of seed
As I wrote earlier, it looks like we may have a glut of runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) this year, the first time for many years. Runner beans are borderline here and last year we only managed to get a few beans before the first frosts. This year, we could have made a first harvest a week ago, but I wanted to keep the first beans for seed for the next couple of years. Yesterday we had bread dough ready and therefore made a pizza with runner beans and a mix of fungi picked in the woods (separate post). The dough was 100% coarse whole grain rye, spelt and emmer (sourdough)! Delicious as always!
Slicing the beans with a runner bean slicer, commonly found in kitchens in the UK where this could well qualify as the national vegetable!
After many years trying, I finally had a taste of home grown myoga or Japanese ginger (Zingiber mioga) this week! I think it was in the garden of my friend Frank van Keirsbilck (of http://www.thevegetablegarden.be) in Belgium that I first saw this plant. I bought a plant from Edulis nursery in the UK in 2010 and planted it in my garden, hoping it would be hardy enough. It survived for 3 years, but grew weakly and emerged in the spring later and later every year, before disappearing for good. Determined to have a taste, Frank sent me a starter in 2016 and, now, 4 years on my pot grown plant kept indoors in a cold bedroom all year finally produced a flower bud, the main part eaten. We made a Japanese style soba (buckwheat pasta) dish to which the shredded myoga was added! A very pleasant mild ginger taste, making it all worthwhile. I will now move it to a larger pot.
Pot grown myoga flower shoot!
Sliced in two
Tofu, Johannes shallot, myoga and winter chantarelles (traktkantarell)
…and my second best mallow is the hollyhock mallow or greater musk mallow / rosekattost (Malva alcea), hardy and reliably perennial, here with perennial kale “Daubenton”, flower buds and stems of Scorzonera hispanica, Johannes’ shallot (Allium x cornutum; see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=22601) and annual chopsuey greens or shungiku (Glebionis coronaria, formerly Chrysanthemum coronarium).
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
The pizza was served with delicious raw urui (Hosta sieboldiana) with a roasted sesame seed / soya sauce dipping sauce:
