Wild Enoki, Oca, Hablitzia, wild buckwheat sprouts, Allium nutans with dandelion, garlic chilis mixed with scrambled eggs for a delicious home grown and foraged lunch!
Enoki is one of the hardiest fungi appearing often midwinter in mild winters. Also known as velvet shank (vintersopp in Norwegian, meaning winter fungus; Flammulina velutipes). Many had been reporting finding this species recently, and I too found some when I visited the botanical garden the other day! It’s difficult to believe that this is the same fungi as Enokitake or Enoki, sometimes offered in supermarkets and one of the most popular cultivated fungi in the Far East. The cultivated fungi are long and white as they are grown in the dark in an enriched CO2 environment which gives longer stalks.
Tag Archives: Garlic
February salad
Lunch salad had the following ingredients;
From the garden:
Allium scorodoprasum / sand leek / bendelløk (shoots)
Allium cernuum / nodding onion / prærieløk (bulbs and leaves)
Hablitzia tamnoides / Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde (shoots)
From the cellar:
Brassica oleracea / perennial kale / flerårig kål (new leaves)
Cichorium intybus “Witloof” / chicory / sikori (shoots)
Taraxacum spp. /dandelion /løvetann (blanched cellar shoots)
Apium graveolens / celery / selleri (new and old leaves from stored celery plants)
Brassica rapa / turnip / nepe (roots)
Brassica rapa / turnip / nepe (leaf shoots)
Daucus carota / carrot / gulrot
From the living room:
Allium nutans (forced shoots)
Allium sativum / garlic / hvitløk (forced bulbils)
Taraxacum spp. / dandelion / løvetann (forced green leaves)
(served with feta cheese, olive oil, olives, salt and pepper)
Sochan tops Mediterranean style
Thanks to Alan Bergo (@foragerchef) for reminding me to try sochan tops. This is Rudbeckia laciniata (cut-leafed coneflower) which in the double form is one of the most popular garden ornamentals here in Norway over the last 100 years and a plant that has been commercialised as a farm vegetable over recent years in Korea. I’d previously only eaten the spring shoots, but I was equally impressed by the tops which I used simply cooked with onion, garlic and yellow zucchini from the garden, various fungi picked in the woods (saffron milkcap/matriske; hedgehog fungus / piggsopp and chantarelles / kantarell) and scrambled with eggs with a little chilim added (a classic way for preparing wild edibles in the Mediterranean countries. See the pictures below.
See other posts on this great vegetable which was introduced to me in one of Samuel Thayer’s books:
Appalachian Greens
Cherokee Pizza 
March soba greens
Today it reached an unusually warm 16C here which encouraged the first bumble bees and honey bees out! The picture shows the greens (and whites) used in tonight’s soba (buckwheat noodle) stir-fry:
Hogweed (Heracleum spp.) shoots (far left, from the cellar); top row: Dystaenia takesimana (outside), chicons (chicory shoots; cellar), horseradish shoots (cellar), garlic and Allium scorodoprasum shoots (outside), Allium cernuum shoots (outside); Below from L to R: Dandelion (Taraxacum) shoots from the cellar, ground elder (Aegopodium podograria) shoots (outside), lesser celandine (Ficaria verna), wild buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum) seed sprouts (living room), nettle shoots (Urtica dioica), hedge mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and (bottom right) Hablitzia tamnoides shoots.
Record warmth and record early shoots
With record temperatures recorded in this area at the moment after a mild winter when all the cold spells coincided with good snow cover means that the soil was hardly frozen all winter and garlic shoots had appeared a few days ago at least two weeks earlier than I’ve recorded before and I also found the first ground elder (skvallerkål) shoots – welcome back my friend and, be warned, I will be eating you until the autumn!
It’s the marbled purple stripe garlic varieties that I grow that appear first: Aleksandra, Estonian Red, German Hardneck and Valdres!
Winter stir-fry
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.
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.
Dandelion shoots in the living room
This bucket was planted in the autumn and stored until now in the cellar. Within a few days of bringing it up into my living room there are usable shoots. Garlic bulbil shoots are seen behind.
Nowadays, I LOVE the taste of dandelion although in my youth I found it so bitter that I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to eat it. I think the reason is a combination of giving up eating sugar and getting accustomed to eating bitter plants. In addition, nobody ate a dandelion salad alone. The following box from my book describes various methods og de-bitterizing dandelions if you want to benefit from one of the most nutritious and valuable plants on the planet but find the taste too bitter:
Early emerging garlic
I planted garlic late (early January) this year as it froze early, but they are emerging 2-3 weeks early! The second picture is from an area with closely planted bulbils which I harvest for the shoots.
Self-produce from the garden
Here’s yesterday’s fresh produce* from the garden….the joy of perennial vegetables! However, snow overnight will make harvest more difficult the next few days! Here’s today’s list:
Aegopodium podograria (ground elder / skvallerkål)
Allium hymennorhizum
Allium sativum (garlic / hvitløk)
Allium cernuum (noddding onion/ prærieløk)
Allium victorialis (victory onion / seiersløk)
Rumex acetosa “Arkhangelsk” (sorrel / engsyre)
Hemerocallis middendorfii (day lily / daglije)
Brassica oleracea (various perennial kales / flerårige kål)
Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde)
Myrrhis odorata (sweet cicely / spansk kjørvel)
Ficaria verna (lesser celandine / vårkål)
Taraxacum officinale ” Moss-leaved” (dandelion / løvetann)
Angelica archangelica “Vossakvann Markusteigen” (kvann)
Used in a green pasta sauce.
* “Produce” they aren’t as most produce themselves without little input from me: Self-produce is a better word! 
Latest ever garlic planting
It seemed that it was going to be spring before I could plant my garlic this year after the soil froze solid at the end of October, taking me by surprise! Then a long mild period starting at Xmas, the soil finally became workable the day before leaving for England and I got all my varieties planted, although I was unable to mix in compost as the compost heap was still frozen! About 10 varieties this year! This is the latest I’ve planted garlic since I planted my first shop bought garlic in 1984!
