Fast Slow Food: From garden to table in 20 minutes or less…
As related in my book and my talks over the years, some of the best food is in this category and one common way of using wild and garden veggies in the Mediterranean countries is simply to gather a selection of greens, boil and fry in olive oil with garlic and chili, mix with scrambled eggs. Two of the wild foraged species mentioned at the beginning of the Mediterranean chapter are
a) Clematis vitalba (Old man’s beard / Tyskklematis)….must be boiled to detoxify as it’s related to buttercups (smørblomst)
b) Anchusa azurea (large blue alkanet): quote from the book “Anchusa azurea is a perfect perennial edimental with superb azure-blue flowers in summer. Young leaves and flowering shoots of this species and others in the same family have been gathered from the wild in most Mediterranean countries. In Cyprus, for example, they were boiled alone, boiled with beans or fried. Like its annual cousin borage, Borago officinalis, the flowers are an attractive addition to salads or just freeze them in ice-cubes.”
Clematis vitalba (left) and Anchusa azurea
First boiled, then fried with garlic and chili in olive oil
20 minutes after harvest
…and the gourmet version with pink flowered dandelion and Allium humile from China
…and the gourmet version with pink flowered dandelion and Allium humile from China
…..and adding a few other things to the one species udo and American spikenard salads (Aralia cordata and Aralia racemosa) and this was the result, the summer’s first extreme salad, on the anniversary of the filming of the extreme salad youtube videos (“B” in the following link!) http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=16712
The centrepiece was Allium humile with tulip, Primula denticulata, Trillium grandiflorum, Trillium erectum, Arabis alpina and Primula veris
The centrepiece was Allium humile
It was commented “as if you were cradling a lover”…spot on!
I call Allium humile (syn A. nivale) the snowy onion, and is my favourite spring flowering Allium! I saw it flowering first in the Tromsø Botanical Garden and was bowled over by this view:
It is found in the wild on slopes at high elevations (4000-4500m) in China, India; Nepal and Pakistan. Now flowering in my garden! Definitely not suffering from (low) altitude sickness ;)
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
