Dandelion Greens with Bacon

 

When I was fourteen, we moved to the States. My mother was offered a job in Washington, DC, and so we decamped from suburban Melbourne to Arlington, Virginia. We very quickly learned that we lived in the South; and as such we were duly introduced to barbecue, sweet potato, and chitlins (aka chitterlings). (As a sidenote, chitlins are pig intestines. What more can I say? Well, they stink. They made even my extremely dignified and polite mother gag at the table. Every recipe includes stringent cleaning instructions and warnings about bacteria. And even afficionados describe their flavour as ‘interesting’. Surprisingly, the Brunswick IGA has started stocking fried chitlins – a high protein on-the-run snack food, apparently – so if you live in the northern suburbs of Melbourne and you need some protein, now you know where to go.)

What else did we learn? We discovered that fruit salad was not a dessert. When we brought it to potlucks, we were gently chided for failing to bring something sweet, as requested, and our ‘salad’ was placed on the salad table, to be eaten with the meat. As mind-boggling as that seemed to us – who eats fruit salad with their main course? –, next to the other ‘vegetable’ offerings – a congealed salad, perhaps, of sweet Jell-O, in which grated carrot, dried coconut and mini-marshmallows were suspended, or sweet potatoes baked with marshmallows and brown sugar – our modest offering of chopped bananas and grapes looked positively savoury.

Yet there was good food, too, even if it was hard to come by. I remember spicy Cajun catfish; pulled pork and beans; apples ciders hard and soft; deep fried sweet Georgia onions; and the mountains of greens in traditional African American cooking. But these foods were never cooked in our milieu; we had to seek them out. Now I wonder why. Was the food disdained – in favour of Jell-O salads, I might add – because it had been the food of poor blacks, and lingering racism made such food unpalatable? Or was it simply that processed food had won out in a frantically busy society? After all, down home cooking does require someone to actually be home and puttering around the kitchen.

Leaving the mysteries of American food unresolved, let me tell you about this dish. One of my favourite southern foods is bitter greens (edible weeds) cooked down with a little pork: full of flavour, vitamins, and minerals. And at this time of year, when rains are heavy after a long hot summer and the dandelions are shooting up everywhere, bitter greens are in plentiful supply. Now, I have a lovely book of African-American cooking, chock full of family stories and photographs, which includes a recipe for a wilted dandelion leaf salad. But in this chilly weather I want to eat something a bit warmer, so I have turned it into a dish of lightly cooked greens, and serve it alongside hunks of sweet potato cornbread. ‘This,’ I announce to my sceptical children, ‘is part of my personal heritage!’. I am sorry to say they eat only a few greens and then go fishing for the bacon; but more mature people find it delicious. Eaten with cornpone, it forms a balanced meal with complex flavours – sweet, salt, sharp, mellow – which deeply satisfy.

Dandelion Greens with Bacon - 200g fresh dandelion greens, picked either from your garden or from a local park; if the latter, wash especially well. The inside leaves are more tender in both flavour and texture, but you can also eat unblemished fresh (lighter green) outside leaves if you like a bit of a kick to your greens. - 5 rashers of happy free range compassionately killed nitrate free bacon, well, good bacon - 1 tbs olive oil - 1 red onion - 1 tbs brown sugar - 1 tbs apple cider vinegar Wash the dandelion leaves very well, dislodging any dirt or small insects. Chop roughly but do not spin dry, as you need a little moisture clinging to the leaves when they cook. Warm the olive oil in a wide frying pan, then lay the bacon rashers in the pan. Cook them over medium heat, pushing and turning them from time to time, until they have passed from flaccid to crispy. Remove the bacon to a board (and drain on a scrumpled paper bag if you’re squeamish about eating too much pig fat). Peel the onion, halve from stem to stern, and slice into thin half-moons. Throw the onion into the pan and cook over a brisk heat until shiny and just starting to soften; you want your onions juicy here. While the onion is cooking, break, tear or chop the bacon into little pieces about half a centimetre square. Think bacon bits, but big, rough and homemade, and with no artificial colours or flavours. When the onion has softened, throw the dandelion greens into the pan. Clap on the lid, and cook for a few minutes or until the greens are wilted. Remove the greens with a slotted spoon and combine them with the bacon. Turn up the heat, and add the brown sugar and apple cider vinegar to the pan. Bubble away for a minute or two, scraping madly at all the delicious little brown bits stuck to the bottom, then pour this thick syrup over the greens. Mix gently, and serve. Adapted from a recipe in the currently out-of-print The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking by Jessica B Harris. A recipe for a delicious, pudding-y gluten free sweet potato corn bread (cornpone) can be found in Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook's Companion; click here for the recipe. (Backyard: dandelion greens. Gippsland: some reasonably happy pig. Grampians: olive oil. Local veggie box: red onion. NSW: apple cider vinegar. Queensland: brown sugar.)

Bracken Fiddleheads with Butter and Truffle Salt

 

Life was a little dull, and I wanted a thrill. So I went to a friend’s country block to pick young bracken, a food I have never sampled and have read about only on the internet. As you can see, I get my thrills quite easily these days.

The day was magnificent. We sat at the top of the hill and watched the weather sweep in hour after hour: sun, rain, hail, sleet, wet snow, dry powder – we got the lot. Great bands of clouds rushed across the sky; snow fell through a rainbow; and every form of precipitation dumped down on us.

 

Between showers, we picked juvenile bracken. We chose firm fresh looking stems, some still bent like a horseshoe, others upright but not yet unfurled. And when the next bout of weather swept in, we dashed back to the partial shelter of the tumbledown shack, warmed our tootsies by the roaring fire, and admired the show through the broken windows.

 

A day or so later, in a house with a complete roof and intact glazing, I prepared the bracken. I was slightly nervous, as bracken contains a known carcinogen; then again, so does red meat. So I washed it, blanched it, dumped it in an ice bath, soaked it, sautéd it, and served it up with a hint of truffles, as instructed. And then I discovered that none of us like it much. It was strong, nutty, but really not that great. Unusually for our family, we didn’t even finish the plateful. Meh.

As we have never eaten bracken before, I have no idea where the problem lies. Is Australian bracken unsavoury? Did I cook it badly? Or do we, quite simply, not like bracken? One day, I will travel overseas and sample bracken abroad. Until then, I will ponder these mysteries, and get my thrills via the weather instead.

If you want to try bracken yourself, click here. The link has a balanced discussion regarding bracken’s carcinogenic properties, and describes how to prepare it to minimise them. I followed the instructions and recipe in the link, but in place of truffle butter I used unsalted butter and truffle salt (a birthday present). I didn’t like it much, but perhaps you’ll fare better. If you have tried Australian bracken, please let me know how you cooked it, and what you think!

 

Nettle Soup

 

Once in a moment of supreme confidence, the sun warming my back and a light breeze whispering in my ear, I grasped a nettle firmly with my bare hand. As the old English rhyme goes,

Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains

'Tis the same with common natures:
Use 'em kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.

• Aaron Hill (1685-1750)
  

Perhaps this rhyme holds true for soft, often rained-upon English nettles; or perhaps I, quite simply, lacked mettle. Either way, I'm sorry to report that I yelped, and spent the next half hour picking practically invisible stinging hairs out of my palm. So much for English folklore.

Another piece of folklore is that dock leaves will calm a nettle's sting; and where nettles grow, so will you find dock. I'm not sure, however, that English dock grows in Australia, and indigenous dock is rarely to be seen near a nettle patch; - and I don't think it works anyway.

Thus I advise you to pick your nettles carefully, with rubber gloves. At this time of year, when I'm going near my favourite nettle patch (that is, at kinder drop off), I have been known to slip my gardening gloves into my bag ready to glean. I may look eccentric, but picking nettles in a public place has certainly led to many interesting conversations; most recently, such a chat led someone to refer me to a prolific prickly pear cactus leaning over a nearby laneway, which I will check out this summer with gratitude.

As I was preparing this, I left a bowl of dusty nettles soaking in the sink. My cousin wandered in and plucked some out for a nibble, unaware. I gasped but, lucky her, she picked out young shoots and felt the sting only as a little heat in her mouth. The stings dissolve with cooking, but if you are making this soup, you would do well to advise any visiting cousins to keep their hands to themselves until all is cooked.

As for why you would make it, let me list the reasons: local, sustainable, economical, useful; also, nutritional. Nettles are so full of vitamins and minerals that several saints – Celtic Christian and Tibetan Buddhist – survived on nothing but nettle soup for many years; you might as well get some of that goodness for yourself.

Nettles do have a very strong green flavour, which I and my cousin rather like, but others may find it a little challenging. I have discovered, however, that if there is a fresh banana coconut cake cooling on the bench, young children will demolish their bowl of soup with scarcely a demurral, so desperate are they for some cakey goodness. A word to the wise...

Nettle Soup - at least 500g stinging nettles - 3 fist-sized potatoes (I used Dutch cream) - 2 tbs butter (or use all olive oil if you prefer) - 2 tbs olive oil - 1 onion - 3 sticks celery - 3 cloves garlic - 750ml stock (chicken or vegetable) - extra virgin olive oil or yogurt, to serve - salt Don a pair of rubber gloves, and strip the nettle leaves from the stalks. Wash well in several changes of water. Peel and chop the potatoes. Place them into a bowl containing a cup of water so that (a) they don't brown and (b) you get a starchy water to thicken the soup. Warm the olive oil in a soup pot. Add the onion, and cook gently until it is translucent. Add the celery and garlic, and cook until soft. Throw in the potatoes and their starchy water, and the stock. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are very soft. Add the nettles and cook for a few more minutes. Remove the soup from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Blend in batches until it is velvety. Check for salt. Serve with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, or a dollop of yogurt, or just as is. Most recipes for nettle and potato soup follow similar lines. I adapted this from a recipe in Tobie Puttock's Italian Local, which includes the excellent suggestion of using the potato water to thicken the soup. (Melbourne region: nettles, potatoes, celery. Geelong: onion. Grampians: olive oil. Gippsland: yogurt. No more specific than Victoria: garlic, butter, salt. Mixed sources: chicken stock.)

Nettles

No one
but me in a quiet

Nowhere
that empty square
between fence and curb and

Nothing
grows just weeds and dirt but

Know-how
whispers, Dinner.

Stinging Nettle and Borage Tart

 

One of our most memorable meals came about spontaneously. We were at the Vic Markets with a friend when we saw big bunches of borage. ‘I once saw a recipe for borage and stinging nettle ravioli,’ I said. 'Oh?' said my friend, 'There are lots of stinging nettles at the property...' - his country block about an hour's drive out of Melbourne. There was a moment’s pause, then we looked at each other and grinned.

It was time for a day trip. We bought the borage and some ricotta; we bought provisions for a picnic; and then we headed up to North Blackwood, sat ourselves atop our favourite ridge, and ate lunch. After a necessary snooze, we wandered down the hill with rubber gloves and shopping bags and picked stinging nettles.

 

Much, much later, we drove back to Melbourne. There, we whipped up our ravioli in a matter of hours, and sat down to a spectacular and quite possibly very drunken dinner some time close to midnight.

The things you do when you have no kids.

And yet last week, as I was walking between kinder and school, I found a patch of stinging nettles growing on a verge in a quiet street. The shoots were vibrantly green, bursting with health, and I remembered our long-ago dinner with a smile.

Despite having no gloves I grasped the nettle, so to speak. I always carry a bag for spontaneous gleaning, and so I carefully wrapped the young tips of the nettles in the fabric of the bag and pinched them off, clump by clump. One or two stings were enough to remind me I was alive; bag full, I headed off to school with the makings of dinner, a happy memory and a whistle.

Stinging Nettle and Borage Tart For the pastry - 120g plain flour (I used spelt; I’ve also used White Wings GF flour which has turned out good enough for ordinary mortals, if not for a French pastry chef.) - 60g unsalted butter - 3 tbs cold water - pinch salt For the filling - 200g stinging nettle tops (before they have gone to seed) - 200g borage leaves - a handful of sweet marjoram, if it grows in your garden - 150g cheddar cheese - 6 eggs - 1 ½ cups milk (low fat is fine) - a sprinkling of pine nuts (optional, but good) - 100g sea salt, pepper Make the pastry: (This is exactly the same base as Onion Tart.) Place the flour, a pinch of salt and the butter in a food processor. Process for 30 seconds, or until the butter and flour are incorporated; there will be no loose flour flying around. Add the water a tablespoon at a time, and process for another 30 seconds to a minute or until the mixture resembles tiny soft pebbles. Flour the bench and a rolling pin. Tip the pastry onto the bench, and gently form into a flat disc with your hands. Roll it out, rolling from the centre to the edge and turning 90 degrees between each roll, until it fits your dish. (Mine is 25cm in diameter.) Drape the pastry over the rolling pin and lift it carefully into the dish. Pat into place. Trim the edges. Place the dish into the freezer, and leave it there until you need it. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Use kitchen scissors to snip the nettle leaves from their stems. Cut the thick stems from the borage. Boil a pot of water. Wash your greens well, and chop coarsely. Blanch the greens in several batches, cooking each batch for a minute then scooping it out to drain in a colander. Leave to cool. Grate the cheese. Beat the eggs lightly, then whisk in the milk and marjoram. Season. Remove the tart shell from the freezer. Spread the grated cheese over the base. Spoon the greens over the cheese, then gently pour in the egg mixture. Strew pine nuts over the top, if you wish, then slip the tart into the oven for 45 minutes or until the top is puffy and there is just a very slight wobble in the centre. Leave to cool for at least ten minutes, during which time it will set further. Serve with a crunchy sort of salad on the side. I am indebted to Jamie Oliver for the particular combination of stinging nettles, borage leaves and marjoram, which features in a ravioli recipe in The Naked Chef. (Backyard: borage, eggs, marjoram. Gleaned locally: stinging nettles. Locally sourced: milk. Not particularly local: flour, butter, cheese, pine nuts, salt, pepper.)

Notes on Mallow / Green Salad

 

I first moved to Brunswick almost twenty years ago. I was a student, living with friends; and we moved here because it was close to the university and, at that time, affordable. After a childhood in the more affluent leafy suburbs and an adolescence in the tree lined suburbs of Virginia, I was shocked by my new neighbourhood. There were no trees. There were no nature strips. There was no shade, and that first long hot summer I saw mirages everywhere. Each long wide road shimmered with heat; and cool blue pools, tricks of the eye, rippled and beckoned. I remember sitting on the end of my bed and sobbing, sure that I had landed in hell.

Since then, of course, I have fallen in love. For one, the suburb has changed: trees have been planted; parks have been tended; cafes and bars and interesting little shops have proliferated. But for the most part, I have acculturated. I have learned to drink my coffee thick and black; I buy my groceries at the Lebanese and Middle Eastern and Mediterranean wholesalers; I have turned my yard into a food garden. And, between grabbing milk thistles for my chooks and herbs for my family while I'm out and about, I am beginning to resemble one of those Greek grandmothers who wander our streets carrying bunches of leaves.

I keep a plastic shopping bag in my pocket to grab choice weeds, and more and more shun the floppy flaccid foliage that is for sale at most greengrocers. I've been aided by a little book which I recently picked up, Edible Weeds and Garden Plants of Melbourne. It is a photographic guide to the most common edible weeds, along with notes on their nutritional value, growth habit, and the best ways to eat them. I had already eaten many of the weeds in the book, but I was delighted to discover some new ones.

 

In particular, I am now eating mallow. It's a ubiquitous weed, one of the first colonisers of bulldozed blocks and something often found growing in dry dirt; it doesn't seem to need good soil. The chooks avoid it; and I've pulled it out of our garden a thousand times on the assumption it was useless. But now I discover that it's edible, and not in the way dandelion greens are edible but so bitter that you know they must be Good For You, but edible in the sense of mild, soft and delicious. It has been eaten since Greek and Roman times, and is packed with vitamin C, calcium, iron and other nutrients. It often grows in the company of fat hen, another tasty edible weed.

Mallow is everywhere you look. It has a flat, wide growth habit, and the leaves are very distinctive, whether they are an inch across or the size of the palm of your hand. We always have small plants in the garden; but now I also whisk it out of roadside plantings, people's front yards, and wherever else seems a reasonably safe place to pick it. I've been eating it Indian style; I've cooked it up with and without borage leaves in horta; and I've been tossing the smaller soft leaves into salad.

When I'm not wandering the neighbourhood looking for mallow and other goodies, I'm in the garden assembling a salad of soft leaves. You can mix baby mallow leaves into any salad; the photograph shows mallow with salad burnet, two types of rocket, and land cress for a bit of a kick. Salad burnet has a light soft cucumber-y sort of flavour; and land cress, for all its heat, is also reminiscent of cucumber; they go very well together, two themes on a motif.

Such a salad doesn't have a recipe, of course; instead, it's just a gentle reminder that there is a world of good things to eat growing just outside the door – and, if you spend a weekend planting edible herbs, you'll have even more choice. There is little you can eat that is more sustainable than a handful of weeds and herbs dressed with a squeeze of lemon from the tree; and little else that tastes so clean, fresh and good. And it's all growing right here, in the concrete jungle that is Brunswick.

Green Salad - 1 handful baby mallow leaves - 1 handful salad burnet - 1 handful rocket (any type) - 1 handful cress (land or water) - a good pinch salt - a nice drizzle extra virgin olive oil - the juice of half a lemon, or to taste Wash the leaves carefully, and spin or pat dry. Do not refrigerate. Cold leaves lose their softness and delicate flavour; thus a leaf salad should always be served at room temperature. Of course, if you must wait hours between picking and eating, refrigerate, but allow enough time beforehand for the greens to come to room temperature before you serve them. Sprinkle a good pinch of salt into your salad bowl or platter. Add the lemon juice and a nice drizzle of olive oil. Taste for sharpness, and adjust as necessary. Throw in the dry leaves and, using your fingertips, toss gently but thoroughly until each leaf is glistening. Serve immediately. Best eaten with fingers (nyuck nyuck), or a local organic traceable rump steak, bloody juices drizzled over the salad. Yes, I do eat a steak from time to time. Shocking, isn't it? I bought my copy of Edible Weeds from Bee Sustainable, a fantastic shop which sells all sorts of tools to make your own stuff (bee hives, olive presses, Fowler's preserving kits and parts etc); local honey, jams, panforte, candles and soap; open pollinated seeds; and lots of good books. You can also order Edible Weeds direct from www.hellolittleweed.com. The author hosts weed walks all over Melbourne, for which you can book on the website. If you're not sure what exactly is edible, you may wish to do a weed walk before you go out foraging. If you do decide to forage on the basis of this blog, use your common sense. Eat only what you know to be edible, avoid areas which have been sprayed, and don't eat anything that is near a steaming pile of doggy doo! All care but no responsibility is taken for the information on this blog. (Backyard / gleaned: all salad leaves, lemon. Wimmera: olive oil, salt.)

Lentil and Leaf Amaranth Soup

 

Once upon a time there was a family with three little girls who spent their days running and jumping and climbing and skipping and swinging and riding and arguing and telling jokes; and so they were always hungry.

Their chickens laid four eggs a day, but it wasn't enough. Their father brought home bread from the market, but still it wasn't enough. Their mother went for long walks and came home with armfuls of greens, but even still it wasn't enough.

So their mother scratched her head and had a think; then she built a garden. She heaped it up with compost and mulched it heavily; and in that garden she planted every leafy green she could think of: rocket and kale, Swiss chard and rainbow chard, lettuces freckled and plain, land cress and watercress, fat hen, leaf amaranth, warrigal greens and lovage. In a sunny patch she planted herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme; summer savory and winter savory; coriander and chervil and chives; perilla and purslane; basil and borage and salad burnet. And the sun shone down and the rain fell and those leaves grew and grew.

Every evening just before the sun went down, out went the mother with a sharp knife and a basket, and brought in greens for dinner.

 

One afternoon, as she stood at the kitchen sink, the leaf amaranth caught her eye. Green leaves edged in pink, it was a delirious sight. Bright arches of seeds swayed in the gentle breeze, beckoning to her. Ah, thought the mother, it's time.

So she gathered up her knife and basket and out she went. On her way through the garden she pulled up an onion and popped it in her basket. She pulled a couple of carrots and threw them in, too. Finally, she came to the amaranth. She cut the stems and trimmed off the seeds, which she threw to the chooks. She laid the stems gently in her basket, and carried everything inside.

There she warmed the onion in a swirl of olive oil, then added the carrots, some celery, a handful of lentils and stock; and she left it bubbling on the stove. Just before dinner, she threw in the amaranth leaves and let them wilt.

She brought the soup to the table where the three girls were waiting, spoons in hands, hungry eyes burning. The smallest girl ate two bowls full; the middle sized girl ate one bowlful; but the biggest girl ate six bowls full, then asked for some more!

Lentil and Leaf Amaranth Soup - a bunch of leaf amaranth (or spinach or fat hen or turnip tops or silverbeet or rainbow chard or any other tasty edible green), washed and stems removed - 1 onion, chopped small - 2 carrots, chopped small - 2 sticks of celery, chopped small - 2 tbs or so olive oil - 150g brown lentils (I used Spanish brown lentils, grown in the Wimmera.) - 1 litre chicken stock or vegetable stock - a pinch of salt - extra peppery green olive oil, to serve Warm the olive oil in a small soup pot. Add the onions, the carrot and the celery and cook gently until they have softened, ten minutes or so. Add the lentils and stir, then add the stock. Bring to a simmer, and cook for fifteen minutes. Add salt to taste, then cook until the lentils are quite soft. Add the greens, and let wilt. Serve as is, or pulse-chop in the food processor until it is a rough consistency. Serve with a drizzle of peppery extra virgin olive oil and a bit of black pepper. Photograph shows soup with unleavened bread, made with buckwheat and two tablespoons of olive oil. (Victoria: leaf amaranth, carrots, onions, olive oil, lentils. Mixed sources: homemade stock. Mystery location: celery.)

Fat Hen, Indian Style

 

To keep a marriage fresh, I recommend spending a weekend without children every once in a while. We have just had our second such weekend since our oldest daughter was born eight and a half years ago, so clearly I am no great practitioner of what I preach; but a weekend spent eating, drinking and lolling around with one’s husband has done wonders for my attitude to marriage.

I am, however, not just a newly rediscovered sex goddess but also and always a cook and mother of three, and so I couldn’t resist heading out on the Saturday morning to a local organic market. When their parents go away for the weekend, some kids get souvenir t-shirts; ours got goats cheese dusted with ash, raspberry jam, a bag of tiny nectarines, some local bacon, and an enormous bunch of fat hen.

 

Fat hen, which is also known as lamb’s quarters or goosefoot, is a mild and slightly sweet green. The leaves contain vitamin A and C, and have been eaten since prehistoric times. Use the leaves wherever you would spinach, either raw or cooked. Many people also recommend eating the nutritious seeds, which are packed with protein, calcium, potassium and other goodies, but I haven’t tried them, myself.

You often see fat hen growing on wasteland, which tells you it’s a weedy plant. If you grow it in your garden and want to control it, cut off all flowering spikes before they set seed and throw them to the chooks; if you let it set seed, you will have fat hen in your garden forever. Pull up any unwanted descendents and eat them, or give them to your feathered friends.

Weedy it may be, but with a name like fat hen, who could resist? The bush forms a lovely soft grey-green mound which grows to one and a half metres or even taller. It has large arrow shaped leaves, and one or two bushes provide plenty of leaves for humans and poultry alike.

As for fat hen Indian style, it is not, alas, a large chicken in a sari, but leafy greens simply dressed with a few Indian flavourings. This is an easy dish to serve alongside rice, dahl and perhaps some pappadams.

Fat Hen, Indian Style - a bunch of fat hen (or spinach or leaf amaranth or baby passionfruit leaves or turnip tops or any other tasty edible green) - a small onion - ½ tsp turmeric - flavourless vegetable oil (I used non-GMO canola) - ¼ cup flaked or desecrated sorry dessicated coconut (Don't use the standard dusty brand; look for good thick threads.) - the juice of a lemon - a pinch of salt Wash the fat hen well. Warm a tablespoon or so of vegetable oil in a wide frypan with a lid. Add the onions and a good pinch of salt, and fry gently until the onions begin to soften. Add the turmeric and stir for a few seconds; then throw in the fat hen. Squawk! Clap on the lid and leave for three or four minutes or until the fat hen has wilted. Add the coconut and the lemon juice, and toss and stir until the liquid has been absorbed into the coconut. Serve! Adapted from a recipe in Charmaine Solomon’s Vegetarian Food, a slender volume now well and truly out of print. One of these days I plan to check out her acclaimed Complete Vegetarian Cookbook; perhaps the recipe is in there too. (Victoria: fat hen, onion, lemon, salt, and, I hope, the canola oil. From many miles away: turmeric. And also from many miles away, but fair trade and organic: coconut.)

Horta, or Cooked Green Salad

 

Three kids. One at school, one at kinder, one at childcare. I've come to think of their educational experience as three breeding grounds, since for months now we've been continually sick with colds, gastro, strep throat and other minor but annoying illnesses. As a result, I'm on the lookout for food that is simple to cook and bursting with vitamins; and a few weeks back, in the newspaper's gardening page, I stumbled across horta.

I learned that horta is Greek for wild greens. While horta may be used in pies and salads, the word most usually refers to greens stewed and served with olive oil and lemon juice. A flick round the internet suggests that many people primarily use spinach, but it was traditionally made with whatever was available: beet leaves, dandelion, chicory, sorrel, radicchio, rocket, endive and other greens both wild and cultivated. The gardeners in the article make horta out of amaranth, wild thistles and stinging nettles.

The concept is simple – just stew and dress the greens – but, while I already did this with beet leaves and rainbow chard, it never quite occurred to me to broaden the net. Now I've made horta using spinach, dandelion and warrigal greens, and I love it. Mature dandelion leaves are quite bitter, but young inner leaves stewed with beet leaves make a tasty lunch.

On one occasion I used coarser greens: a few leaves of black kale combined with rainbow chard and large turnip tops. Because the turnip leaves were very bitter I added a slosh of red wine from the open bottle on the bench and stewed it until the wine had been completely absorbed and all was tender. The final mix was still strong, but the wine had softened the flavours very pleasingly.

Taking my inspiration from the gardeners in the article, I've eaten horta alongside bread and olives, using the bread to soak up the juices at the bottom of the bowl; other times, I've made it more substantial with a bowl of cooked and dressed chickpeas on the side, or a couple of poached eggs.

Not only does it taste good; each bowl feels like a vitamin pill. Sad to say, for all the horta I've eaten I'm still pouring snot – but it could be worse! In any case, I feel healthier every time I eat it. What follows is not a precise recipe, nor do I claim authenticity; think of it, like the gardening article, as nothing more than a pointer in the right direction. A-tishoo!

Horta, or Cooked Green Salad - greens (spinach, beet leaves, warrigal greens*, turnip tops, radish tops, stinging nettles, amaranth, sorrel, dandelion leaves, fat hen or whatever else grows in your garden. Use one type or a combination – experiment!**) - herbs such as mint and parsley, if you wish, chopped - olive oil - lemon juice - salt, pepper Wash the greens well and remove any tough stalks. Warm a wide skillet, add a drizzle of olive oil, and drop the greens, water still clinging to the leaves, into the skillet. Cover, and allow to wilt. Spinach will take a few minutes; large beet leaves, ten minutes; tough kale, about half an hour. Keep an eye on things, and add extra water if necessary to prevent the horta from drying out and sticking. (For a completely inauthentic approach, add a slosh of red wine to coarse bitter greens to soften the flavours.) When the greens are soft, tip them and any remaining cooking liquid into a bowl. Add chopped herbs, if you're using them, a squeeze of lemon juice, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil to finish. Season if required. Serve with olives and sourdough for a light meal; or serve as a side dish to a larger meal. *Warrigal greens (aka New Zealand spinach and tetragon) MUST BE BLANCHED before use. Drop them into a pot of boiling water, cook for a minute with the lid off, then drain well before adding to the horta. The leaves contain high levels of oxalates which can cause a tightening of the throat, nausea and worse when consumed in large quantities. Blanching breaks down the soluble oxalates and also some of the salts; leaving the lid off the saucepan prevents condensation from falling back into the saucepan. Discard the blanching liquid. **If you're experimenting with combinations of leaves, think about flavours, textures and cooking times. For example, mustard greens will obliterate most other flavours, so are best kept separate. Kale will need far longer in the pot than soft baby spinach – either combine leaves of similar textures only, or cook the greens in stages, beginning with coarser leaves and adding more delicate greens near the end. One final note: To point out the obvious, if you don't know it's edible, don't eat it. And if you're gleaning horta from a public space, be certain that the area hasn't been sprayed and wash it well. There are many dogs in Melbourne. The recent Age article (by Denise Gadd, in the A2 on 27 November 2010) doesn't appear to be online, but you can read more about horta in Melbourne here. This all reminds me of an interview on Gardening Australia with Lolo Houbein, author of One Magic Square, about her experience as a famine survivor, organic vegetable gardener and voracious eater of leafy greens. The presenter asked her what happened if the leaves were attacked by insects. Lolo said, 'Then you get holes. And you can eat holes.' Terrific advice for a home gardener! Sadly the transcript doesn't do justice to her delightful gentle manner. (Local: greens, herbs, olive oil, lemon juice.)