Midsummer means a lot of things, but heat and garden weeds are probably two that many of us are familiar with right now. A few weeks ago, there was a dinner on the farm I was going to contribute a dish too, and, as my partner’s family is proud of their Greek heritage, I thought…
Salad
Lamb’s Quarter Dip (Borani Esfenaj)
Here in the Midwest we just went through a brutal heatwave pushing triple digits, so cold food has been on regular rotation. This dip made from Lamb’s Quarters has been on repeat for a while. Back in the Spring when I shared my now absolute favorite way to cook nettles, a commenter mentioned that the…
Fiddlehead Salad
This simple salad is my go-to recipe for eating ostrich fiddleheads. There’s all sorts of advice out there on how to cook them: blanch five minutes, blanch ten minutes, saute afterwords and cook them to death in oil, put them in lasagna and bake them to oblivion, then pull out long, soft and stringy noodles…
Wild Greens with Walnut Sauce
As I was cooking with my Virginia Bluebells this year, I started looking around in my library for recipes specifically calling for borage greens, since Virginia Bluebells are in the Boraginaceae. Borage has been cooked in the Mediterranean for a very long time, but I also found different recipes from Eastern Europe like Georgia, as…
Japanese-Style Violet Greens Salad (Gomae)
Violet flowers are pretty, but I enjoy violet greens much more than the flowers. Here and there you might see some people saying they put a few violet leaves in a salad, and that can be ok, but just ok. Violet greens, unless harvested very young, are often pretty tough, which is why most of…
Turkish Nettles (Isirgan Buğulaması)
Today, I have for you one of the best recipes for nettles I’ve tasted to date. Turkish nettles? Oh yes. I’m unsure of the exact species of nettle that might be cooked in the Middle East, as there’s a number of nettle genera eaten around the world, like the giant Nepali nettle (Girardinia diversifolia which,…
Grouse Scaloppini with Watercress and Bacon Vinaigrette
Here’s one of the most perfect dishes I know of for a warm summer evening: a scaloppini of grouse (or any other light-colored poultry like pheasant, partridge, etc) grilled quick over a hot fire and tossed onto an extra large salad of watercress (or whatever greens you like) with a warm vinaigrette and fresh herbs. …
Marinated Hosta Shoots
It’s hosta shoot season, and marinated hosta shoots make a great spring appetizer or side dish to help you enjoy your edimentals (edible ornamentals). Here’s the jist: go get the plumpest, fattest hosta shoots you can find, get a pan or grill really, really hot, char them on one side only, add a splash of…
Fennel-Celery Root Salad with Acorn Oil
This is such a good salad. Such. A. Good. Salad. Working in Italian kitchens most of my life, shaved fennel salad was basically an afterthought—I honestly didn’t know why we put it on the menu sometimes, since it just didn’t excite me. By the time service came around, it would often be a clumpy oily…
Purslane, Avocado, and Cucumber Salad
It’s summer: high purslane season here, and that means I’m eating it every day, sometimes for two meals a day, mostly in cold salads like this one. I like purslane cooked, but most of the time in the summer when I eat it, I just want to wash it, chop it, and call it a…
Purslane and Sweet Corn Salad
Purslane and sweetcorn salad isn’t a traditional Mexican salad, but it might as well be. An homage to Mexico, and it’s love of quelites, a sort of catch-all term for edible wild plants, it’s a generous dose of the famous edible garden weed mixed with roasted sweet corn, charred tomatoes, and simple Mexican seasonings and…
Cattail and Milkweed Shoot Salad
Cattail and milkweed shoot salad has been on my list of things to make for a while. Both are two edible wild plants I like eating during the season, but neither of them is something I’m probably going to make a meal out of all by themselves. Milkweed is a great vegetable, but most of…
Lamb’s Quarters Salad
I’ve written about making salads from foraged greens before, but, more often than not, in the height of summer salad green season, I’m not making salads out of 15 different plants–it’s probably more like 3 or 4. Some of the plants will change here and there as the summer goes on, but one thing stays…