Continuing my series of veggies harvested from the garden. this time used in a baccalao with parsnip (pastinakk), potato (potet), bulb onions .(kepaløk), Jerusalem artichokes (jordskokk), (bought) organic tomatoes and chili. Greens used from the garden: Urtcia dioica (nettles/brennesle) Aegopodium podograria (ground elder/skvallerkål) Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach/stjernemelde) Rumex patientia (patience dock/hagesyre) Taraxacum officinale dandichokes (dandelion /løvetann) Ficaria verna (lesser celandine/vårkål) Allium sativum shoots (garlic/hvitløk)
Tonight’s pizza ingredients found on a random forage in the garden: 3 different day lily species flower buds, including the first yellow Hemerocallis altissima, H. citrina (in the middle) with Malva moschata and M. alcea, second flush nettles, Campanula trachelium (new leaves after cutting down), Sonchus oleraceus (common sow thistle) and broad beans, with shallots, garlic, chili, oregano and topped with the year’s first poppy seed!
After 3-4 weeks of snow cover, the weather this week changed dramatically and we had the second warmest February day over the last 100 years with over 10C! Together with rain and wind, almost all of what was close to 50 cm of snow has disappeared. For plants, this has been a very mild winter and the ground has hardly been frozen. As soon as the snow had disappeared I could dig the soil. Some edibles such as nettles and chickweed haven’t been killed by frost. Here are some pictures of (apart from the snowdrops) edibles in the garden today.
Nettles (nesle)
Dandelion (løvetann)
Chickweed (vassarve)
Allium cernuum (Chicago onion / Prærieløk)
It looks like it would be a good year for overwintering of my perennial kales (flerårige kål/ staudekål)
A perennial leek (Allium ampeloprasum) will not normally overwinter here
Lesser celandine (vårkål)
Allium scorodoprasum (bendelløk)
Rumex patientia
Sideritis syriaca (Greek mountain tea /Gresk fjellte emerging from one of the last snow patches
Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde); my oldest 17 year old plant
Alliaria petiolata (hedge garlic / løkurt)
Alliaria petiolata (hedge garlic / løkurt)
Norwegian accession of Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde) from Hadsel vicarage
Toasted diverse Alliums, Hablitzia and dandelion for lunch
Toasted diverse Alliums, Hablitzia and dandelion for lunch
Snowdrops should be open in the open garden in a few days!
This album was first published on FB in June 2012, now “regurgitated” here:
“What for dinner? “Burdock flower stalk, nettle and the onion that nods curry” sounds interesting, so why not. So it was to be… I had completely missed this amazing vegetable and this experiment was prompted by foraging author Leda Meredith waxing eloquent about it a few days ago, so thanks to her. How did I miss it? Well, Cornucopia II doesn’t mention this part being eaten, just the leaf stalks – I’d tried them and they were fiddly to peel and bitter. The flower stalks were easy to prepare and once peeled had an excellent sweet crunchy taste with no bitterness.”
(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151007155680860.476401.655215859&type=1&l=b287a87f09)
A pile of nettles (brennesle) and Burdock (borre) flower stalks
Burdock (borre) flower stalks
Peeled burdock (borre) flower stalks – the outside layer is fibrous and bitter, but the inside has a pleasant sweet crunchy taste that could be used in salads.
Peeled burdock (borre) flower stalks with Allium cernuum (Nodding Onion/Praerie-løk), easy to grow and excellent cooked and in salads at this time of year with flower buds.
Peeled and chopped burdock (borre) flower stalks are delicious raw – this really must be one of the best vegetables ever!
Stir fried Nodding Onion with Indian spices
…add the burdock which maintains an excellent flavour after cooking with spices…
Discarded burdock (borre) leaves are great slug traps – I’d noticed that slugs are very keen on the leaves and they hide underneath the large leaves
100% coarse organic rye and emmer pie crust (flour and butter) kneeded into the pie dish (not rolled out), then a layer of blue cheese, then mixed vegetables and the rest of yesterday’s chantarelles, hedgehog fungi and Russula….and then filled with egg/milk/oregano mix and finished off with Mallow flowers which retain some of their colour at the end!
Greens: Allium fistulosum (spring onions), swiss chard, ground elder, nettle
Tonight’s dinner was a Hablitzia-Ramsons-Nettle quiche with oregano, poppy and celery seeds on top with cowslip-violet-Allium zebdanense-Arctic bramble flowers….wholegrain barley-oat-rye pastry…. not at all bad :) Anyone else have this tonight? …no, I didn’t think so somehow ;)
Last night’s dinner: risotto made with rye and barley grain instead of rice with wild and cultivated vegetables and wild fungi:
Parsley, coriander, golpar (Heracleum maximum seed spice), 3 types of pea, baby carrots and broad beans, red mitsuba, 3 types of chicory, common sow thistle (Sonchus), saffron milk caps (matriske), hedgehog fungus (piggsopp), chanterelle (kantarell), Russula spp. , garlic, chili, nettle (variegated), swiss chard (mangold) and Allium nutans…
To sign up for dinner for two at my place, please sign up below ;)
Scorzonera (scorsonnerot) tops are also delicious and sweet tasting
Allium senescens hybrid
Sweet cicely (spansk kjørvel) flowering tops (the flower stems need to be removed as they are woody) are also sweet.
Giant bellflower (storklokke) tops are also sweetish
Sorrel (surblad) leaves from my patch of 6 Russian cultivars
Somebody once said that solstice greens are the best…I’d add that solstice perennial greens are even better :) Here’s what I used in tonight’s soup: Sea kale(strandkål), Scorzonera (scorsonnerot), Allium senescens, Sweet cicely (spansk kjørvel), Giant bellflower (storklokke), Sorrel / surblad, Nettle (nesle), Dandelion (løvetann) (all are in my book)…and I almost forgot that there’s chickweed (vassarve) in there too, perennial in that it’s there every year!
As usual, the highlight of these weekends is the incredible walk along the river Homla just 20 minutes from home with large quantities of Ostrich Fern along the way, truly one of Norway’s most beautiful plants and also most delicious!!
Storfossen (literally large waterfall!), the second highest waterfall at 40m in our region (Trøndelag). There’s a total fall of 80m in 3 waterfalls. If you’re lucky you can see salmon trying to climb the lowest of the 3!
Participants showering in the drizzle from the waterfall stood in awe of this wonderfull sight, so close to Trondheim, but hardly known! We saw only a handful of other people on the trail in 4 hours!
We found a few fungi. This is Fomitopsis pinicola / rødrandkjuke
Basidioradulum radula (Tannsopp), earlier classified with the Hedgehog fungi!
Christian thinking about going for a swim?
Happy participants, HIGH on nature and wild food!
Happy participants, HIGH on nature and wild food!
This dandelion was collected as it had a good mild taste!
Ostrich fern / Strutseving
Ostrich fern / Strutseving
One of the confusion species that shouldn’t be eaten! With Anemone nemerosa (wood anemone / hvitveis) and Chrysosplenium alternifolium (Golden saxifrage/maigull)
Roof garden!
There’s a lot of up and downs along the 4 hour walk (with stops) from Storfossen to Hommelvik!
Everyone stopped in awe again at this beautiful rich stand of ostrich ferns which had come much further than in the cold air by the river
We found this Swede communing with the ferns
…Berit had a go too…next year we will have a group ostrich fern hug I think!
Hidden among the ferns are other edibles like nettle / nesle and giant bellflower (Campanula latifolia)
Fomitopsis pinicola / rødrandkjuke
The field horsetail/ common horsetail / kjerringrokk / (Equisetum arvense) is another sign of spring. The plant is known as sugina (杉菜) in Japanese, literally “cryptomeria vegetable”, possibly from the appearance of the green stems. The fertile stems at the stage shown are known as tsukushi (土筆). The ideograms literally mean “soil brush”, based on their shape. A common foraged vegetable in spring!! DON’T plant it in your garden, it is one of the most invasive plants on open land! BUT, one shouldn’t use large amounts…this is a spring vegetable used in a short period in spring!!
Knuskkjuke (Fomes fomentarius) is the tinder fungus used to start a fire!
Upon returning home we made a green pasta sauce with ostrich ferns (cooked for 15 minutes), Hablitzia shoots, Norrlands onion (see my book) for all 3), soaked dried chantarelles, organic tomatoes, garlic, chili, seasoned with cuban oregano, bay leaves and served over a choice of hemp pasta and emmer wheat pasta from Etikken in Trondheim!
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden