Filed under: Gardening, How-To, Experts
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Pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus). Photo: Marie Viljoen
Eating weeds has become chic.
In tough economic times, isn't it comforting to know that instead of tossing those tenacious garden invaders -- the denizens of ditches, intruders in lawns, lurkers in the woods -- you can pull them up and swallow them for dinner? Not only will you be happily surprised and well fed, but you may rest easy knowing that what you are doing is at the height of foodie fashion.
Clearly, when it comes to gathering wild foods, or plants that are less familiar to you than say, broccoli or beans (and remember that they were new foods, too, once upon a time), some common sense is required. If you do not know what the plant is,
do not eat it. Identify it carefully by comparing leaves and flowers with good resources, and preferably with the help of a person who has eaten them before (and lived to tell). If the plant is growing near a polluting highway, think twice. If it grows on a dog-populated sidewalk, walk on by.
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Lamb's quarters lurking in the flower beds. Photo: Marie Viljoen
Lamb's quarters (
Chenopodium album), also called Goose foot and Fat hen (
NOT to be confused with Hen bane, which is poisonous -- a notorious error recently made by British food personality
Anthony Worral Thompson) is a delicious leafy vegetable. 'It's a weed!' you cry. Well, weeds are in the eye of the beholder, and on the plate of this weed eater. In India, it is cultivated as a food crop, and perhaps the day is coming when we here will do the same. Lamb's quarters are every bit as adaptable and nutritious as chard and spinach, with a milder flavor and soft mouthfeel.
The easiest preparation of lamb's quarters is to steam the leaves and young stems, and add a smidgen of olive oil and lemon once cooked, with a little salt and pepper. Like spinach, the leaves lose a lot of volume through water, and you need many to make yourself a nice sidedish. Once cooked, I sometimes squeeze excess moisture from them, saute some garlic in butter, return the leaves to the pan, stir, and then eat at once. The cooked, cooled leaves can also be added to frittatas; light, broth-based soups with an egg yolk whisked in at the last moment; or as a nutritious, leafy bed for a poached egg.
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Pigweed. Photo: Marie Viljoen
Pigweed is a common name given to several unwanted plants, but it usually refers to
Amaranthus retroflexus, also called Red root pigweed
. Amaranthus is a genus famous for its edible leaves, flowers and seeds, and this pigweed is one of the less glamorous members of the family. It is the bane of many farmers' lives and has been treated with tons of herbicides over many decades. The result: it is quite
resistant to our bio warfare. If only the profit potential of this weed would be exploited, we'd sooner see it at the market, rather than as a hazardous weed causing herbicide-related side effects amongst people via the crops we eat. Quite shockingly, this vegetable is described as poisonous to stock. Why? Because of the high levels of nitrates it absorbs from herbicides. The irony is deafening.
Needless to say, do not harvest pigweed from fields of crops, as the likelihood that it has been treated with a herbicide is high. Eat it from your garden, or far from cultivated lands.
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Sauteed pigweed and crostini. Photo: Marie Viljoen
I am a recent and very happy convert to this green vegetable: For a tapas-type dish or light main course, fry some finely chopped onion in olive oil until golden. Add the leaves and tender stems of pigweed. Saute until wilted. Add salt and pepper to taste, and pour over some good extra virgin olive oil just before eating. Serve with lemon wedges. It is also delicious as crostini -- on a piece of toasted bread rubbed with a clove of garlic. I have one tenacious pigweed plant in one of my rose containers that regenerates often enough after snipping to provide this healthy snack once a week.
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Field garlic in the woods. Photo: Marie Viljoen
I was introduced to
Field garlic (Allium vineale) on a
fall foraging expedition to Brooklyn's Prospect Park under the guidance of
Steve 'Wildman' Brill. The following spring I found it growing in abundance in the woods of Inwood in Manhattan, and realized that April was the best time to gather this succulent member of the onion family, as the bulbs are nice and plump. Do not yank out whole clumps, as I did in the beginning, but select the fattest leaves and pull gently. This way you leave small bulbs for another year and also save yourself a lot of unnecessary cleaning and prep work in the kitchen. Field garlic loves lawns. So hold back on the
Roundup week killer and eat those weeds.
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Clockwise from top left: cleaned field garlic, picked field garlic, pancetta with sauteed field garlic, baby back ribs with roasted field garlic. Photo: Marie Viljoen
This lovely bulb rivals
ramps for flavor and can be eaten raw, thinly sliced in salad; for raw preparations I leave the green parts and favor the white. Or pickle them, using your favorite pickle recipe. I put my pickled field garlic in Gibson cocktails. They are at their best roasted and sauteed as any other slender onion would be, turning sweet with heat. I roast baby back ribs on a bed of field garlic, or fry slices of pancetta, adding the garlic to its fat and cooking till soft. Added to the
stuffing for a roast chicken they are delicious. This is a divine vegetable.
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Edible milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). Photo: Marie Viljoen
Milkweed is beloved by butterflies but recently I was taught by friend and forager
Ellen Zachos that the common, tall milkweed,
Asclepia syriaca, with scented, pale burgundy-pink flowers, is a to rival my favourite broccolini. The parts you pick and eat are either the unopened cluster of flower buds in early to mid-summer, or
the seedpods, post-flowering. Rinse them off and blanch them in boiling water -- they cook very fast. After that, it is the old oil-and-lemon treatment for me. I was blown away by how tender and fresh they tasted.
Note: The orange-flowered milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa is poisonous.
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Milkweed buds, the raw and the cooked. Photo: Marie Viljoen
And finally, we come to an herb that is making its way more frequently into farmers' markets, but which remains an irritant in well-mulched garden beds:
Purslane,
Portulaca oleracea. Purslane has many healthy attributes, all of which are preserved in its raw state. It is exceptionally high in Omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin A. In the Middle East, it is added raw to thick yogurt or labneh and eaten with bread. I add the raw leaves to a warm potato salad, where they provide a slightly acidic crunch. Over at my blog,
66 Square Feet, you will find more recipes, including a slow-cooked South African lamb stew and an Asian stir fry. For a cool vegan soup, visit
Last Night's Dinner.
Purslane seed is now easily available, including more upright varieties, if you would like to give it proper vegetable status in the kitchen garden.
There are many weeds we have not touched on: young thistles, dandelions, nettles, garlic mustard, chickweed, pokeweed. But I hope these five serve as a good starting point for your culinary curiosity.
if you want to know more about wild and unlikely foods consult
The Forager's Harvest, by Sam Thayer and
Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants, by Steve Brill.
Now go forth and graze, my friends.
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