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…
Leafy Greens | Recipes
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…
Spring Nettle Crepes
Spring nettle crepes are a good example of the sort of seasonal cuisine I used to serve at Lucias restaurant for brunch during spring. The basic idea is this: make some green crepes with common stinging nettles in the batter, fill them with more cooked nettles, a few ramp leaves, goat cheese or ricotta, fold…
Nettle Soup with Ham from Extramadura
I’ve been in love with researching traditional uses of nettles around the world, and soup is one of the standbys that seem to be omnipresent wherever nettles are eaten. This delicious Spanish nettle soup scented with Jamon Serrano and thickened with cornmeal is a bit different than others I’ve come across, and can make for…
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,…
Italian Nettle Breadcrumb Gnocchi
Deep green nettle gnocchi are a great way to celebrate spring. Unlike typical gnocchi you’re probably familiar with, these are a rustic, peasant gnocchi that (gasp!) include no potato, or flour in the dough. There’s a number of different specific pasta names that you could use to refer to them, malfatti could work, although sometimes…
Lebanese Dandelions with Caramelized Onions (Hindbeh)
If you were to order them on a menu, Hindbeh, Hindiba, or Hindbeh b’Zeit will all probably arrive at your table looking like the same thing: a bowl of cooked dandelions with caramelized onions. Or maybe it’s wild chicory with fried onions? Whatever you call it, you’re in for a treat. If you crave the…
Hedgehog Mushroom Soup with Beans, Watercress and Tomato
I love hedgehog mushrooms (especially the giant ones) but during the off-season here in Minnesota I sometimes cook with the smaller Hydnum umbillicatum that are sold commercially out of the PNW during our winter when I have a craving for fresh mushrooms. Hedgehogs are great in just about anything you’d add them to, but I love…
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…
Fermented Grape Leaves
Have you ever had commercially pickled grape leaves? If you haven’t, don’t bother, I’m pretty sure they’re the reason some people claim not to like grape leaves, or things made with them like dolmades. Like plenty of commercial pickled things, I usually find grape leaves from a store shelf overly acidic, like the processor is…
Stuffed Grape Leaves with Wild Fruit and Nuts
There’s dolmas, dolmades, dolmasi dolmathakia, dolmathes, sarma, sarmasi, and probably a few other names I haven’t seen them travel under. Whatever you call them, if you put some in front me I’m going in for more than my share, because I love a good stuffed grape leaf. They may be small nibbles, but they’re rich…
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…
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…