cooking with dandelions

we live out in the country on 17 acres. and most of those acres are currently abloom with dandelions. after a long, dark winter, the bright sunshine yellow of those flowers is as welcome as the seldom sight of sunshine in the danish sky. i actually often joke that there's no word for "sun" in danish because it fell from use and everyone forgot it, but that's a slight exaggeration. there are a few elderly people who still remember it.

i'd never really tried eating dandelions before this year, aside from adding the odd leaf to a salad. i'll admit the bulk of the ones we pick actually go to our bunnies, as they're the bunnies' favorite food. they love the tender leaves and gobble up the golden yellow flowers like candy. bunnies are generally on a pretty healthy diet, so i decided they must be onto something and so i picked a colander full of the bright flowers and decided to give it a whirl.

the most time-consuming part is preparing the flowers. you have to cut off the stems and carefully peel away the little "eyelashes" of green that are stuck there - at least if you're going to make jelly or cordial. i like that amy left a bit of it on for her fritters and i'll definitely do that with the next batch. i think what's probably most important is to get rid of any of that bitter hollow stalk in the parts you're going to eat.

i've done my share of traveling the world and so i'm not afraid to mix flavors and cultures. the other night, i was making a stir-fry with black bean and garlic paste and i wanted a little snack to go with it. we love onion bhajis around here and tho' those are indian and i was making more of a chinese meal, i decided i'd give them a chinese twist by throwing in a bit of 5-spice powder. i had already decided to give them a nordic twist with the dandelion flowers, so what did another layer of culture matter?  i have to say it worked pretty well and i would repeat it.

chinese 5-spice dandelion & onion bhajis

3 medium onions, sliced

generous handful prepared dandelion flowers

2 eggs

120grams/4 oz. plain flour (or gram (chickpea) flour if you have it on hand - you can find it in indian markets)

1-2 teaspoons chinese 5-spice powder

oil for frying

slice the onions and separate them into rings. whisk together the eggs, flour and 5-spice powder in a bowl, then add the onions and dandelions and coat well.  if your egg and flour mixture seems too thick, you can add a another egg (our chickens lay rather small eggs, so i often use an extra one) or a little milk to thin it a bit. it should coat your onions and dandelion flowers nicely. heat up oil in a wok - i use sunflower oil, as it's lighter than olive oil and can tolerate high temperatures better than rapeseed oil. test with a little dollop of dough to see if the oil is hot enough. place spoonfuls of the mixture in the oil and fry in small batches.  serve it with chutney or chili sauce.

i've seen beautiful jellies made of dandelion flowers, but my family isn't into jelly, so the other thing i made with those dandelion flowers i slaved over was a cordial. i like to invent new cocktails and i used this as the basis for an early spring concoction involving vodka, fizzy water and a slice of lemon. it tasted just like a little ray of warm sunshine.

dandelion cordial

1 colander of prepared dandelion flowers

1.5 liters (6 cups) boiling water

1 kilo (4 cups) of sugar

juice of one lemon

place your prepared dandelion flowers in a glass or ceramic bowl and pour over the 6 cups of boiling water. cover with a plate and leave to set overnight. strain out the flowers using cheesecloth and a strainer and place the dandelion tea in a medium saucepan. add the sugar and lemon juice and slowly heat it to boiling. meanwhile, prepare your bottles - i generally run mine through a dishwasher cycle so they're clean and hot. then, for good measure, i rinse them with boiling water from the kettle. then i give them a little rinse with atamon, a preservative. pour in the hot liquid and seal immediately. i usually can fill one 750ml bottle and one smaller beer-bottle-sized bottle with a batch, but that actually varies - based on how much liquid you squeezed out of the flowers and how much evaporates. 

violet cordial and dandelion cordial

there's something about these foraged flower concoctions that is very satisfying. whether you're gathering violets or dandelions and preparing them, it simply takes time. there's no way around it - it takes the time it takes to pick and to prepare. and slowing down and just doing it, without trying to find an easier way or a shortcut is surely good for the soul.

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also posted on forage: east-west

cooking with nettles

i can't count the times i've sworn at the patches of stinging nettle around our property (and they are many) as they stung my hands or my legs. but i won't be doing it anymore. not now that i've learned how wonderful nettles are to eat! they're also really good for you - with one of the highest protein contents in the plant world and loads of medicinal uses (which i won't go into here, as i'm no expert and haven't yet tried them).

for each of the recipes below, i picked one colander full of nettle tops (not heaped, to the top is just fine). i wear gloves and snip the tender top sets of leaves with a little herb scissors. i can recommend that you do not let some temporary insanity come over you and poke your nose into your colander full of nettles and smell them. that can be rather painful and cause quite an interruption in your process.

to remove the stingy part of the nettles, get a pan of water with a pinch of salt in it on the boil and dunk your fresh nettles into the pot for 2-3 minutes (they should remain bright green). these early spring nettles have been clean and pretty bug-free, so i didn't do much rinsing before the boiling water bath. i might as the summer progresses. if you fish them out of your hot water bath with a strainer, the sand and dirt will sink to the bottom of your water anyway, so you'll be ok. after removing them from the hot water bath, transfer them back to your colander, it's ok to squeeze out the excess liquid with your bare hands now, as the sting has been taken out of your brilliant green nettles.

nettle pesto

100 grams toasted pine nuts

1 colander of blanched nettles, excess liquid squeezed out

2 cloves of garlic

a generous grating of fresh parmesan

salt and pepper to taste

olive oil to the desired consistency

toast your pine nuts (taking care not to wander away while you're doing this or they will burn). place them in the food processor with the blanched nettles, garlic, salt and pepper and several tablespoons of good olive oil. blitz it up. if it's not liquid-y enough, add more olive oil until it's how you like it. serve with fresh bread, over pasta, or as a healthy alternative to sauce on a pork chop or steak. i even coated a chicken in it recently before roasting it in the oven. it's very versatile. you may even want to just stand in front of the refrigerator and furtively eat a few spoonfuls when no one is looking.

nettle pesto

nettle hummus

250 grams chickpeas (canned or soaked dry ones)

1 generous tablespoon tahini

2 cloves garlic

1 colander of blanched nettles

olive oil to the desired consistency

put it all in the food processor and blitz it together. drizzle olive oil until it's a smooth, creamy consistency. great with freshly-baked bread or as a dip for veggies.

nettle hummus

homemade pasta always seems posh and as if you went to an extraordinary amount of work, but it's much easier than it looks. even if you start by making your own ricotta. i did so, because ricotta can be hard to find in our grocery stores, so i was missing this key ingredient when i wanted to make gnocchi with my nettles.  all it takes is milk, cream and a little bit of vinegar.

homemade ricotta

1 liter of whole milk

1/2 liter of cream

2 generous tablespoons of vinegar (use white if you want the ricotta to be creamy white, use apple cider vinegar if you don't mind it a bit more yellow)

pour the milk and cream into a heavy saucepan and heat gently until it just begins to bubble*. remove from the heat, add the vinegar and stir. it will curdle immediately. pour it through a strainer that's lined with cheesecloth or a tea towel and allow it to drain well. the longer you leave it to drain, the firmer it will be. i found that for the gnocchi, i didn't want it to be too firm, as it was harder to work with that way.  save the whey (the liquid you drain off the cheese curds) and use it the next time you bake bread instead of the usual liquid. it's delicious and nutritious! i just keep the whey in a jar in the fridge 'til i'm ready to use it.

*i read a lot of recipes for homemade ricotta and made multiple batches before arriving at this one - many of them are very fussy about the precise temperature of the milk, but i've found that didn't much matter, so i don't bother to use a thermometer. i'm all for keeping it simple.

ricotta and a jar of whey

nettle gnocchi

1 batch of homemade ricotta (it yields approx 250-300 grams/1 generous cup)

1 egg

1/2 C flour (i adore italian tipo 00 flour)

generous half cup of blanched nettles, finely chopped

salt & pepper

mix well. if the consistency is too liquidy, add a bit more flour. if it's too dry, add another egg. it all depends on how much you drain your ricotta and how much liquid you squeeze out of the nettles. if you buy commercial ricotta, you'll likely need a bit more flour. it should be firm enough to work with by hand. you roll it into a thick rope and slice it into small bite-size gnocchi. turn the gnocchi in flour to coat. put them into salted boiling water, in small batches, a handful at a time. they initially sink to the bottom and then rise when they're nearly done. i serve them very simply with a bit of butter and salt, or a spoonful of the pesto. simple and delicious. we've not yet had leftovers.

there are many other uses for nettles. i have yet to try tea.  i intend to dry some and make a seasoning salt.  sabin made nettle soup when she was in kindergarten, so we'll try that, cooking outdoors at some point this summer. when the stalks are larger and a bit more tough, it's possible to cut them, let them dry a few days and give them to your horse as a treat with their hay. they love it! i'm starting to feel downright lucky my yard is positively full of them!

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also posted on forage: east & west

found flowers: cordially speaking

rhubarb + vanilla, violet and elderflower cordials
a few elderflower blossoms, which we were using in our pancakes.
and some freshly-harvested honey from today (not ours yet, but soon)
oh, and those strawberries? from our garden.

i've been going a little bit mad around here on the cordial front. it started for me earlier this spring with violets. they were the first flower around here that came in something like abundant quantities. as you can see from the post over on the sustainable life blog, i started with jelly, but soon switched to cordial. my family likes it better - they're not jelly people, it seems (perhaps because the actual violet flowers i put in the violet jelly looked a little bit like flies, but just leave those out). but the violet cordial has been brilliant. i mused a little bit about the actual picking of violets here - it takes an eternity to pick enough, but it's a bit like meditation, and i definitely need that, so i've made 5 batches. you can see that there's not much left in the bottle above, so i suppose i'll be out in the field, meditating again soon.

violet cordial

2 cups of violets (the flowers only)

2 cups of boiling water

4 cups of sugar

juice of one organic lemon

place your violets in a glass or ceramic bowl (don't rinse them, you'll be straining, so it doesn't matter if there are small bugs in with them) and pour two cups of boiling water over them. cover the bowl with a plate and place it somewhere to steep overnight. it will turn a lovely shade of teal, but don't worry, the lemon will fix that. strain the violets - i use a metal strainer lined with a clean tea towel. then add the sugar. stir and place on the stove and begin to slowly heat to boiling. pour in the juice of one lemon and watch the liquid magically turn from teal to brilliant purple. my batches have actually varied in shades of purple as my violets have varied - some days there were more white ones and variegated shades of purple, so some batches have been more purple than others. once it boils, let it boil only for a few minutes and then pour into prepared bottles. 

i prepare mine by running them through the dishwasher on a hot cycle, pouring boiling water over (for good measure), rinsing with a preservative product called atamon (which i then completely pour out). for several of these batches, i've skipped the atamon because i knew we would use the sirup right away.

it would be excellent over ice cream (if one had a freezer - don't ask and don't mention the smeg) or even pancakes. but we use it almost exclusively as a soda. about an inch and a half in the bottom of a glass and the rest filled up with sparkling water (and ice if you have it) and you'll never want to buy regular commercial sodas again. 

like bee, i've also been making elderflower cordial. yesterday, i counted no less than 21 elderflower trees (they are not bushes around here, no siree) on our property and then husband saw five more down in our forest, which is a couple of kilometers away from our main property. i could practically go into making commercial quantities if i had enough large pots.

i make mine the same way i make the violet cordial, by making a "tea" using about 30 of the flowers and hot water first. i used to add the sugar to that water, like bee's recipe suggests, but i had several batches begin to mold on me before i thought they had steeped long enough (the sugar speeds this along, especially if the weather is warm and humid). with the elderflowers, i let them steep for 48 hours, rather than only 24, to get all of the perfumed goodness out of the blossoms. then, i strain them and add sugar in the same quantities recommended by bee. i use 3 teaspoons of citric acid (available in both pharmacies and the grocery stores here) and the juice of four organic lemons as well. i used to use slices of lemons, but now i just juice them and add them to the elderflower "tea" when i boil it with the sugar. these are the best batches i've ever made (and i've been trying now for ten years).

i have made batches both with organic sugar and regular white sugar this year and there is a big color difference. regular white sugar gives a gorgeous yellow that will make you think of liquid sunshine. the organic sugar results in a darker, more brownish, honey-colored elixir.  i'm not sure which i like best, tho' i lean towards organic on principle. i know tho', that next winter when we break into the golden ones, we'll feel a much-needed direct connection to those long, golden danish summer nights.

our elderflowers are still in full bloom and i've got batches 6 and 7 brewing as we "speak." i want to lay in a good supply for the coming months.

chive flower vinegar and olive oil

and last, but not least and not at all a cordial, thanks to the inspiration from chris, one of my partners on sustainable living, i used all of the chive flowers i found around the garden (discovering a load of hidden chive plants i didn't know were there) to make an absolutely beautiful chive vinegar and olive oil.  all you do is pick the chive flowers, rinse them very well and pop them into clean bottles (at least half full, but preferably 2/3 if you have enough chives), then fill to the top with good quality white vinegar in one and a good extra virgin olive oil in the other. within a couple of days....instant salad dressing.  i have repurposed tomato sauce bottles and they work just great, so there's no need to go out and buy something fancy. 

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and as for the rhubarb + vanilla cordial? i'll do a rhubarb post in the coming days, so stay tuned for that.

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for more inspiration on what to do with found flowers, check here.