By this time of year, foraging is thin for Israelis. All the tender, juicy wild edibles of late winter and spring have disappeared. Chickweed, nettles, mallows…the wild greens I foraged in March and April are just dried-up skeletons that rustle when the afternoon breeze makes them move.  I think of  dormant seeds dropped on the ground,  roots conserving their strength till the winter rains come again to revive and green the land. And take another big shlook of water, because it’s hot and dry now.

Still, there’s purslane. Purslane loves the heat.  Plenty of purslane in my window boxes every summer. That’s no surprise, because it’s a stubborn weed that’s determined to take over the world. Give it enough water and it’ll grow so big and strong you’ll have to wrestle it out of the ground.

It’s  a low-growing, sprawling succulent with many reddish branches. The fleshy, dark-green leaves show a reddish underside. They’re small, flat, and oblong, growing alternately on the stem and topped by a yellow flower at the end of the stem. The flowers open only in the hottest part of the day. They produce lots of black, sand-sized seeds that are nutritious too.

But I allow purslane to  grow in my window boxes because I like its lemony, salty taste.

It’s amazingly high in vitamins and minerals. A portion of 100 grams will provide you with 2,500 IU of vitamin A raw (2,100 cooked); yet it has only 21 calories. More nutritional goodies in purslane are calcium, iron, thiamin, Vitamin C (raw), and Omega-3 fatty acids.

Traditionally, native peoples eat it to treat arthritis, anemia, Vitamin C deficiency and inflammations. Drinking tea from the leaves is said to bring down fever. Crushed and applied externally, folk medicine uses it to relieve all kinds of inflamed conditions of eyes, gums, even gout.

But let’s get back to purslane as food.

“I have made a satisfactory dinner off a dish of Purslane which I gathered and boiled…” said Henry David Thoreau, adding: “Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not from want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”

How to eat Purslane.

My own favorite way is to add well-washed, raw leaves  to the salad.

But try purslane one (or more) of these ways:

• Chuck a handful of leaves or two into any soup or stew.
• Steam leaves and tender stems briefly and drizzle a little olive oil over them; serve hot.
• Stir fry them with other vegetables.
• Pickle the thick, mature stems.
• A well-known Mexican dish, Verdolaga con Queso, calls for steaming Purslane then adding garlic, onion, a chopped tomato and  one chile. To the hot pan, add minced salty white cheese; stir a couple of eggs into the mixture and scramble them loosely. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. Verdolaga con Queso can be served in a folded tortilla (or warm pitta).
• Batter and fry the tender tips.
• Substitute young, raw Purslane for lettuce in sandwiches.
• Add the leaves to chicken, pasta or tuna salads.

The whole above-ground portion of the plant may be eaten, as long as it’s tender. The tough, mature stems are best pickled or made into relish. Always wash Purslane carefully; as it grows right on the ground, it will have dirt on it. And don’t cook it more than 2-5 minutes unless it goes into soup; it will release its beneficial mucilage and get slippery, which is not as pleasant to eat as it is healthy.

Enjoy!

]]> http://www.israelikitchen.com/edible-weeds/purslane-summers-edible-weed/feed/ 11 http://www.israelikitchen.com/everyday-cooking/risotto-with-nettles-and-carrots/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=risotto-with-nettles-and-carrots http://www.israelikitchen.com/everyday-cooking/risotto-with-nettles-and-carrots/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:39:15 +0000 Mimi http://www.israelikitchen.com/?p=2034 Rice and nettles taste good together. This risotto hit the spot for lunch one cold afternoon. ]]>

Rice goes well with the unique, dark flavor of nettles. I was thinking of that this morning when putting away a bunch of dried nettles into glass jars. So I made this risotto. With the melting flavors of vegetables and cheese and the slight chewiness of arborio rice, it’s one of the most delicious things I’ve cooked this week. The nettles warm the body and give you energy, too.

Any of the edible weeds can substitute for nettles, or you can use chard, kale, or spinach. But try nettles, if you’ve gathered some.

Now I know that classical risotto starts with dry white wine – well, I didn’t have any. So I substituted a couple of tablespoons of vodka in a quarter-cup measure, and filled it up with vegetable stock. Risotto calls for Parmesan cheese – I made do with the standard Israeli “yellow cheese,” grated. I would have been divine with Parmesan, but was still very good.

Start with a vegetable stock. Below you see mine.

Vegetable Stock

printable version here

yield: 3 cups

Ingredients:

1 medium onion, thickly sliced

3 garlic cloves

1 stalk of celery, with leaves, chopped

1 carrot, thickly sliced

a handful of cherry tomatoes (or one medium-sized regular tomato), halved

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon  salt

3 cups of water

A tiny pinch of saffron

Method:

1. Bring the above ingredients to a boil, then lower the flame to simmer the broth. Cook, covered, for 15 minutes.

2. Remove the carrot slices from the stock. Allow to cool a little, then chop them into chunks. Set aside.

Risotto classically starts with a good cup of white wine, but I didn’t have any. So I put about 3 tablespoons of vodka in a 1/2-cup measure and filled it up with vegetable stock.  I could have simply used stock, but I felt like vodka. If you have white wine, though, use it.

Risotto With Nettles and Carrots

printable version here

serves 4

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion

1 cup risotto rice

1/2 cup white wine

3/4 cup fresh nettles, or 1/2 cup dried

the carrot slices out of the stock

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 cup grated cheese, preferably Parmesan

salt

more butter and Parmesan

Method:

1. Chop the nettles. Mine were dry and crisp, so I found it easier to cut them up with scissors.

2. Put the olive oil into a medium-sized pot. Add the chopped onion, and start to cook it over medium heat. The onion should cook till translucent, not at all brown.

3. Add the rice and stir, allowing it to absorb the oil as much as possible but not allowing it to brown.

4. Add the wine (or substitute), and stir. Watch the rice – the liquid should be absorbed before the next steps. The rice will be only partly cooked.

Below you see the texture of the rice at this stage. If you peer into your monitor, you can make out the pocks indicating that the liquid is almost absorbed. Over there, to the left.

5. Add a cupful of vegetable stock; stir. Let it almost become absorbed.

6. Add another cupful of stock; stir and do the same. The rice will be somewhat soupy at this point. Taste, and adjust the salt if you need to.

7. Add the chopped nettles and the carrot chunks; stir, of course.

8. Add the last of the stock. Stir and let the rice cook another 5 minutes.

9. Add the tablespoon of butter and the cheese. Stir well and serve as soon as the cheese has melted.

Add more butter and cheese at the table, if desired.

So comforting, so good! We ate it down to the last grain.

Sarah Melamed of Foodbridge and I will be leading a nature walk through the rocky hillsides close to Kfar Uriyah and the forest near Tarum – on Friday morning, January 8th.  Sarah is a plant biologist with a lifelong passion for nature and I have studied edible and medicinal plants for the past 15 years.

We will meet at 9:300 AM at Nachshon Junction, the intersection of road 44 and 3, about 10 minutes south of Ramla Please bring sensible walking shoes, a field guide if you own one, and plenty of water. The walk will take 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

We hope to show you where the wild things grow. Things like

za’atar

cyclamens

and

flowering almond trees.

Most of these wild edibles and medicinals are protected by law, so it won’t be a foraging expedition but rather an Exploration. Like Winnie the Pooh’s Expedition to the North Pole, only here in Israel.

If you’d like to join us (and you don’t have to be a blogger for this, just a nature lover), email me – my green contact tag floats along the side of the blog on the left. Or email Sarah at Sarah.Melamedatgmaildotcom.

Edible weeds are popping up all over Israel now. Nettles, young plantain leaves, sow thistle, milk thistle, chickweed, and mallows are just a few of them. Earlier this week I explored an empty lot close by, and found a huge quantity of mallows among the wild foods. Some of the leaves were big enough to stuff, like vine leaves.

Before I go on to the recipe, let me tell you about mallows. They grow all over the Mediterranean, North Africa, Europe, and parts of the U.S and Central America. I don’t know if they grow in South America, Australia/New Zealand or the Far East – but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do. I can tell you though, that once they take hold, they will cover an area.

Mallows are related to okra, hollyhocks, and hibiscus – all edible and medicinal plants. I like to harvest the small young leaves to eat raw in salads, and the big leaves for stuffing. Sometimes I’ll just chop up a big bunch and make soup from them, or stir them into a stew, or into rice, as I do with nettles. I wrote an article about mallows for Henriette Kress’s Herbal Homepage, which you can see here. It includes a recipe for mallows soup.

And every year, I hang bunches of them upside down by their stalks, to dry for cooking when they’re out of season. If you store them in a glass jar, away from light, the leaves will last a year. If I need a soup in a hurry and don’t have much in the fridge, I just reach into my jar of dried mallows (or nettles) and crumble some into the pot, adding instant flavor and nutrition to the food.

I love the striped pink flowers of our native variety, Malva Sylvestris. If I find myself in a field of flowering mallows during one of my foraging walks, I pick as many blooms as I can, to dry for a medicinal tea. This tea soothes the respiratory system and helps to control cough.

You can read much more about the edible and medicinal properties of mallows in the awesome Plants for a Future site. That page doesn’t mention that the mallow roots are edible and medicinal too – so if you happen to uproot a few when you’re out gathering, just scrub them clean, cut the stalk away, and chuck them into soup too.

For stuffing, pick big leaves, at least as big as your outstretched hand. Small leaves are too fiddly to work with.

Check each leaf carefully. Discard any that have lots of little holes in them, or orange spots indicating insect activity. Or other  mallow eaters, like this little guy:

See the rusty orange spots around the Fuzzy One? Discard any leaves with that.

The recipe assumes that you have about 20 large, washed mallow leaves. It’s better to have a few extra because they are tender and some will inevitably rip. Snip off any stalk bits to make rolling them up easy. Keep the leaves shiny side down.

Now for the recipe itself.

Stuffed Mallow Leaves

yield: 20 stuffed leaves

printed version here

Ingredients:

20 large, clean mallow leaves

1 cup of  rice cooked in salted water

1/2  cup pine nuts

1 large tomato, peeled and chopped

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 small onion, chopped fine

2 Tablespoons diced fresh mint or crumbled dried mint

juice and zest of one lemon

2 Tablespoons chopped parsley or celery leaves

1 tsp. salt

pepper

2 large tomatoes, sliced

4 cloves of garlic, peeled and whole

1 teaspoon sugar

2/3 cup olive oil

2/3 cup water

Method:

1. Mix together the rice, pine nuts, chopped tomato, crushed garlic, chopped onion, mint, lemon zest, parsley, salt, and pepper to taste.

2. Line the pot with the sliced tomatoes. This adds flavor and keeps the stuffed leaves from scorching.

3. Mix the olive oil, water, sugar, and  lemon juice in a bowl. Set aside.

4. Fill and roll the leaves.

Keep the shiny sides down, stem part towards you.

Just where you snipped the stem off, there is a long, horizontal wrinkle in the leaf (see 2 photos up, the one with the scissors). Put a teaspoon of filling, in a long strip, just above that wrinkle.

Roll the filled edge up once. Fold the sides of the leave over it.

Roll again, making a neat little package. Secure the edge with a toothpick.

I wish I had more and better photos to show the filling process, but I would have needed three hands to do it.

5. Place the stuffed leaves on top of the sliced tomatoes in the pan, stem sides down. Place the whole garlic cloves here and there among them. The following photo shows  a bell pepper in the pot with the mallow – because I wanted to use up leftover stuffing. The flavor of the pepper didn’t hurt the stuffed leaves at all.

6. Pour the oil/water mix over the the contents of the pot. Place a small plate, or a pot lid that fits,  inside the pot to prevent the leaves from unrolling as they cook. Cover the pot with its own lid. Simmer over low flame for 45 minutes. Mallow leaves are tender and release a beneficial mucilage (goopy liquid), so there will be plenty of liquid in the pot. They don’t need to cook as long as vine leaves, which need an hour or more.

7. Allow the leaves to cool down entirely before you remove them from the pan. Serve them cold.