Tag Archives: Blå Kongo

December omelette

Last night’s simple winter omelette with ingredients I had on hand:
Wapato tubers (Sagittaria latifolia)
Potato “Blue Congo”
Swiss chard (mangold)
Shallots “Finland” (an old Finnish / Norwegian variety of sjalott)
Barberry (vill berberis) fruits – see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=27761
Tomatoes / tomat (some of the last fruits)
Salt, pepper and chili



Xmas day Rhizofantastigora dinner 2021

Xmas dinner in Malvik has been nut roast and roasted roots every year since 1984! This year there were 27 different roots: parsnip, 15 different varieties of potato, bulb onions, Tigridia (cacomitl), wapato (Sagittaria), carrot, beetroot, oca (red and yellow), Madeira vine (Anredera cordifolia), yacon (Polymnia), garlic (Allium sativum), Dioscorea polystachya (Chinese yam) and chicory root (at the top).
The nut roast was made from ground walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds with grated carrots, onion and beetroot with garlic, golpar (Heracleum seed spice), egg, salt, pepper and chili, bedecked with buckwheat groats (home grown by a friend in Czechoslovakia), Himalayan balsam seed,  caraway, dill and alpine bistort bulbils (Polygonum viviparum).


Perennial veggie saag and stuffed blue congo paratha

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:

From top left: Ground elder / skvallerkål; two types of dandelion / løvetann; hedge garlic / løkurt; Ulleung giant celery (Dystaenia takesimana) (top right); (Bottom left) Allium hymenorrhizum; Welsh onion / pipeløk (Allium fistulosum); daylily / daglilje shoots; Siberian hogweed / sibirbjørnekjeks (Heracleum sibiricum); stinging nettle / brennesle; ramsons / ramsløk; common sorrel / engsyre (Rumex acetosa); Allium nutans; Catawissa onion / etasjeløk (Allium x proliferum); Victory onion / seiersløk (Allium victorialis); Mertensia ciliata; 2 Perennial kales / flerårige kål; Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde (Hablitzia tamnoides); Urtica kioviensis and Patience dock / Hagemelde (Rumex patientia) (Bottom right).

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:



 

Potato harvest at Væres Venner

The first small potato harvest in KVANN’s (Norwegian Seed Savers) vegetable sanctuary at Væres Venner Community garden.
I planted 10 varieties of potatoes in the spring…these were virus-free mini-seed potatoes offered to members. They were planted close at about 15 cm apart to produce full size seed potatoes for the 2019 season!
The varieties were a mixture of old Norwegian heirlooms and modern day varieties. The following Norwegian page gives the background for all the varieties seen here: http://www.norwegianseedsavers.no/potet-bestilling/

An album of potato diversity in my garden

Below are a series of pictures of my favourite potatoes which I grew until 2012-2013 when blight made it difficult to grow varieties with little resistence: