Nettles again

I wrote briefly about nettle last year (after my great excitement at finding a single plant in our local neighbourhood). I had been inspired to forage for nettles by a woman I met online through Transition Towns and also the Wild Foragers email list - Maryanne.

It was a great pleasure on this month's foraging show on This Way Up, to actually go and meet Maryanne, and we had a fantastic morning sampling lots of her amazing nettle recipes. Simon Morton took these pics at the This Way Up page.

I really enjoyed meeting Maryanne and talking with her, and after Simon had to dash away to record his next bit of the show, I stayed for a bit. Maryanne showed me some nettle fibre, dried, spun, and woven into a bag. I'm not sure what variety of nettle is best for this, but apparently it's the stalks that are used, giving a rough, strong fibre.

Who knows which bits of our long and fascinating conversation with Maryanne will appear in the show today, and which will need to be edited out to fit into the 10 minute time slot ... but after I listen I'll blog any extra details that I remember!

Brassicaceae X - please help me ID it!

Here's a plant that looks a lot like wild turnip - and for the longest time I thought it WAS wild turnip ... until a visit to a helpful botanist and forager put me right. (Thanks Julia!)

You can read about the real wild turnip below. But what's this one? It's clearly a close relative in the Brassicaceae family. (Also commonly called the mustard family or the cabbage family.)

It's in flower all round Wellington at the moment. The flowers are slightly paler than wild turnip flowers, but are otherwise very similar. Like wild turnip, the flowers open above the bud, rather than below it. (Some Brassicaceae do the opposite.)

The leaves have quite a different shape to wild turnip leaves, with more rounded, curvy edges, and a smoother feel. They also don't grow so large as wild turnip, and when they go to seed, the seedpods are noticeably smaller.

What is this mystery Brassicaceae? If anyone can help, I'll be grateful.

Wild turnip (Brassica rapa ssp sylvestris)

A member of the Brassicaceae family - which gives us many of our cultivated veges and condiments - broccoli, cabbage, kale, bok choi, radishes, turnips, cress, horseradish, wasabi, mustard,  and on the list goes!

Recognise this family (also called the mustard family or the cabbage family) by its four-petalled leaves with six stamens. They have flower heads that look like little broccoli heads when budding.

Most wild Brassicaceae are edible - but avoid gathering them from places that may have been heavily fertilised or be subject to run-off, as the plant absorbs and retains nitrates - toxic in high doses.

Family relationships
Wild turnip is just one variety - or subspecies- of Brassica rapa. Cultivated turnips are of this same species - and so is bok choy.

Ways to eat wild turnip
(The information here is the same as for wild radish, as they are so similar.) 


Edible parts of wild turnip include the leaves (especially the younger, less bitter ones), the flowers, the flower buds, the roots, and the seeds.

Use the leaves just like bok choy leaves.  They lose volume very quickly when cooked though, so you only need to fry or steam them for a few seconds. They lose a lot of their distinctive taste and hotness as they cook too, so that's another reason to keep it to the minimum.

Some young, small roots may be tender enough to cook and eat - give it a go. The larger ones will almost certainly be quite fibrous. They go well in stock though - just like their cultivated counterparts.

You can cook the flower buds like broccoli - but again only for the briefest time.

The flowers are decorative in salad.

To harvest the seeds, gather the seed pods after flowering and spead them out on a plate to dry in the sun. (It should be sunny by the time the pods appear!) As the pods dry, they'll split and release the seeds, which you can then easily separate from the pods and pour into a bowl or jar to store. Use them just like mustard seeds.

(To make mustard paste pound them up with a little liquid. Use vinegar if you want the paste to keep.)

(Thanks to Julia Stace Brooke-White for clearing up some of my confusion over what is and isn't wild turnip.)


Wild turnip links:
Plants for a Future database
Google Images

Wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum ssp.)

A member of the Brassicaceae family - which gives us many of our cultivated veges and condiments - broccoli, cabbage, kale, bok choi, radishes, turnips, cress, horseradish, wasabi, mustard, and on the list goes!

Recognise this family by its four-petalled leaves with six stamens. They generally have flower heads that look like little broccoli heads when budding.

Most wild Brassicaceae are edible - but avoid gathering them from places that may have been heavily fertilised or be subject to run-off, as the leaves may be full of nitrates - toxic in high doses.

Family relationships
Wild radish is a different species from that which our cultivated radishes come from (Raphanus sativus), but it is in the same genus, and you can see the similarities in the leaves. (As well as taste them!)


Ways to eat wild radish
 (The information here is the same as for wild turnip, as they are so similar.) 

Edible parts of wild turnip include the leaves (especially the younger, less bitter ones), the flowers, the flower buds, the roots, and the seeds.

Use the leaves just like bok choy leaves.  They lose volume very quickly when cooked though, so you only need to fry or steam them for a few seconds. They lose a lot of their distinctive taste and hotness as they cook too, so that's another reason to keep it to the minimum.

Some young, small roots may be tender enough to cook and eat - give it a go. The larger ones will almost certainly be quite fibrous. They go well in stock though - just like their cultivated counterparts.

You can cook the flower buds like broccoli - but again only for the briefest time.

The flowers are decorative in salad.

To harvest the seeds, gather the seed pods after flowering and spead them out on a plate to dry in the sun. (It should be sunny by the time the pods appear!) As the pods dry, they'll split and release the seeds, which you can then easily separate from the pods and pour into a bowl or jar to store. Use them just like mustard seeds.

(To make mustard paste pound them up with a little liquid. Use vinegar if you want the paste to keep.)
Edible parts of this plant's family are generally the younger leaves, the flower buds, and the roots. Some have seeds that can be made into mustard.


Wild radish links:
Plants for a Future database
Google Images

Onionweed (Allium triquetrum)

Onionweed is bursting up from the ground at the moment in Wellington, and some onionweed plants are starting to flower. As we move into spring, more and more will do so.

Wild onion (Allium) species the world over are edible. Allium triquetrum, a native of Europe, and also common in the wilds of Britain, is the wild onion that has taken off in NZ.

(The first mention of it being naturalised here that I can find is from the 1930s. In this 1936 article it's referred to as being 'a very frequent garden escape' so - contrary to what I previously thought - it seems it may have been brought deliberately by settlers.)

You can eat all parts of the plant.

Onionweed as a substitute for other oniony things
Use onionweed just as you'd use spring onions from the store. Two simple, yummy things to do with them are:

1. Chop them up finely and mix into butter to make a garlic butter substitute. It's delicious spread on French bread and baked like garlic bread, or over fish.

2. Make a spread (especially nice on rice crackers) by mashing together chopped onionweed, soft tofu, ginger juice (from the gratings squeezed), soy sauce, and a splash of peanut oil.

I love anything that combines onionweed with ginger! This Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe has gone down a treat with onionweed used instead of spring onions. And if you don't eat pork or any meat, it's really nice with whole mushrooms and firm tofu instead.

Note that the green bits of onionweed get stringier as they get older, so chopping them fine is important if you're actually eating them, rather than just using them to flavour something and removing them after cooking.

Using onionweed flowers
Throw the pretty onionweed flowers into salads, or batter them and fry them.

If you're frying them, cut the stalk about half a centimetre down from the flowers. That's just enough to hold the flower cluster together, but isn't enough of the stalk to be stringy. Everyone in my family seems to like this onionweed tempura.

In summer, after the onionweed plants die back, you can often find the bulbs in the soil. These can be pickled to make mini pickled onions. It's best to soak them in water first and rub off the papery skins.

You can also steam a handful of bulbs as a vegetable, and someone recently told me he liked them chopped up in salads.

Onionweed medicinally?
Two of onionweed's cultivated rellies - onion and garlic - are known for their anti-microbial properties, as well as being useful when blood pressure is high ...

I'd love to know if onionweed has similar benefits, and if so, to what degree? And are the onion greens useful medicinally, or are most of the medicinal properties concentrated in the roots? All info gratefully received!

Onion weed links:
Onion flower tempura recipe
Blog post about flower fritters
Plants for a Future database
Google Images

Wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella)

Wood sorrel grows around borders and up against rises and mounds.

Raw, the leaves and stalks have a bright, sour taste. You can use them in both sweet and savoury dishes.

Wood sorrel - savoury uses
The leaves and flowers are nice tossed in a green salad, and the flowers make a good edible garnish.

Wood sorrel goes well with root veges, fish, and chicken. It's yummy with cream. I love chopping up a big handful of leaves, stalks, and flowers and having it in a potato salad with a cream dressing.

We also had a delicious wood sorrel, kumara and potato gratin last week: two handfuls of chopped wood sorrel layered with pre-boiled, sliced potato and kumara, and cream poured over the top ... baked at 180 degrees C, until it was starting to brown.

Wood sorrel is tasty on its own, but also delicious with two other herbs that you can forage for at the moment - onionweed and wild parsley.


Wood sorrel - sweet uses
For desserts, try adding wood sorrel to apple, peach or pear pie. I'm keen to make a wood sorrel jelly, and will post the results when I do.

If you want to experiment with wood sorrel, a good starting point is to find a way to use it in a recipe in place of lemon.


Wood sorrel as medicine
I don't think wood sorrel is used heavily as a medicinal herb these days, but it does have some traditional uses: to cool and lower fevers, to restore appetite, and as a gargle for mouth ulcers.

For more on its traditional uses, try the historical classic - now online - Mrs Grieve's Modern Herbal. I'm keen to try making that conserve with orange peel!


Wood sorrel as a curdling agent
Because of wood sorrel's high acid content, you can use it in some simple cheese recipes in place of lemon, adding it to milk to separate the curds and whey. I haven't managed to find the right technique to do this properly yet. If anyone has - I'd love to hear!


Wood sorrel's place in the world
Wood sorrel is an oxalis. Other small oxalis plants are eaten around the world, too. In his native edible plants book Andrew Crowe has an entry on the Bermuda buttercup, which is an oxalis about the same size as wood sorrel, and similar looking, but with slightly narrower, darker heart-shaped leaves, and a yellow flower. I've seen a wee bit of it round Wellington but not as much as wood sorrel.

Sorrel just means 'sour' or 'sour plant'. The two main plant groups referred to as sorrels are those in the Oxalis genus (like wood sorrel and Bermuda buttercups), and those in the Rumex genus.

Garden sorrel and French sorrel (which look large and lettucey, and are cultivated as garden plants) are both species of Rumex.

The Oxalis and Rumex genuses are not really related to each other.


Cautions:
Because of wood sorrel's high oxalic acid levels you don't want to eat too much, but general consensus seems to be that in small amounts, it's fine. (Unless you have gout, kidney troubles or rheumatoid arthritis and are avoiding all high-oxalic-acid foods - which also include spinach, rhubarb and more ...)


Wood sorrel links:
Wood sorrel/onion weed butter with fish

Wood sorrel in Gwen Skinner's NZ foraging classic on googlebooks

Plants for a Future database

Google Images

Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Leaves, stems and flowers are all edible.

Finding and harvesting
Chickweed likes to grow wild in gardens (often on a bed of soil you’ve cleared), as well as in the unmowed areas of parks and reserves. It starts life as a mat of tangly, sprawling stems with small teardrop-shaped leaves. The leaves get bigger and the stems more upright as it grows.

Its tiny, white flowers look like they have ten petals, but if you peer closely you’ll see they’re five petals with splits down their middles.

It’s hard to pull a handful of chickweed up without bringing unwanted bits of grass and other weeds with it. The easiest way to harvest it is to find the tips, pull them upwards, and snip off the best-looking bits.

Chickweed as food
Chickweed contains B vitamins, as well as vitamins C and D. It’s also a respectable source of iron, copper, calcium and sodium.

Raw chickweed snipped up into little pieces (1 or 2 cm long) is a healthy and yummy salad ingredient. It reminds me of alfalfa sprouts.

You can also cook it in a stirfry, a soup, a casserole or a sauce. Add it at the last minute, and preferably cut it up quite small so it doesn’t feel stringy when you eat it. (Or even puree it.)

Cuisine-wise, chickweed really comes into its own in pesto. It’s one of a number of plants that contain saponins – compounds that lather up like soap. (Chickweed's rellie Soapwort contains especially high levels of saponins and is used as as natural soap substitute.) The saponins in chickweed give your pesto an especially creamy quality.

Plus - here's a recipe for chickweed chimichurri, which has been doing the rounds on the internet lately. There's another variation on the the theme here - at Fat of the Land - one of the best US foraging blogs.

Throw chickweed into a smoothie to add nutritional value and make the smoothie extra frothy!

Chickweed as medicine or cosmetic
It’s partly the saponins that make chickweed valuable as a soothing and healing skin treatment. Chickweed poultices or compresses can be good for eczema, insect bites, and other itchy skin conditions.

To make a chickweed compress first make juice from a few handfuls of chickweed. You can do this in a juicer if you have one. Alternatively, whiz up the chickweed in a blender or food processor with a little water, then strain the mix through muslin.

If you prefer to take the unplugged route, pound the chickweed very well in a mortar and pestle, add a bit of water, and strain through muslin to obtain the juice.

Finally, lay a piece of clean cotton on a clean towel, and pour the chickweed juice over it. Place the juice-soaked cotton on the affected area of skin, or wrap it around it.

I've just started experimenting with making chickweed lotion, adding chickweed juice to olive oil and emulsifier from the fantastic Go Native soapmaking supplies. (Friendly and rapid service and good prices. Plus very helpful recipes on their site ... and no, I'm not on their payroll! :) )


Chickweed links:
Google Images
Plants for a Future database
Pesto recipe

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Dandelions are highly nutritious - and often described as a wild superfood.

They contain vitamins A and C, plus B vitamins, and they're rich in minerals - notably potassium. They also contain many other useful phytochemicals.

If you don't have any dandelions growing in your garden or wild around you, you could always buy a packet of seeds and cultivate them yourself!

Use dandelions differently depending on the time of year ...

Autumn and winter
Most people say the colder months are best for digging up and using the roots - it's when they're biggest and sweetest. (An exception is legendary US forager Euell Gibbons, who wrote that he preferred to dig them in spring.)

After some disgusting-tasting attempts many years ago, I've finally managed to make delicious dandelion root coffee. The secret is to oven-roast the roots on a low temperature for a long time - try about 4 hours at 100 degrees C.

They shrink a lot, so start with a decent-sized bowlful. Give the roots a good wash and scrub first, and if they're big ones, chop them up small. They're ready to take out of the oven when the insides are a darker brown than the outsides, and they snap easily between your fingers.

They give off a slightly chocolatey smell as they roast, which has really grown on me.

Next time I roast them I'll do it at the same time as making meringues or something though, so that I feel having the oven on for that long is more justified!

Dandelion leaves are at their most bitter in autumn and winter, but are still perfectly edible, as long as you boil some of the bitterness away first. (I'd boil them for 10 minutes at least.) Or you could just chuck them in a slow-cooking casserole.

Spring and summer
Dandelion leaves are best in spring before the flower comes up, and can be ...
- cooked quickly (wilted in hot oil or steamed)
- eaten raw as a bitter salad green
or
- infused dried or fresh to make dandelion tea.

A recipe I've seen several variations of is wilted dandelion leaf salad with hard-boiled egg and/or bacon bits (free range of course!)

Throughout the year, the new flowers and the flower buds of dandelions are edible, but are most abundant in summer.

Dandelion flower wine is a particularly popular wildflower wine - and there are nearly as many methods for making it as makers. Try this website for starters. Gwen Skinner's now out-of-print book Simply Living contains several recipes too. You can find it in libraries and second-hand bookstores.

The trouble with dandelions
Dandelions are notoriously tricky to identify at first, because of the many look-alikes also growing wild. This is such an accepted phenomenon it even has its own entry on Wikipedia - see damned yellow composites (DYCs)!

Dandelions are distinguishable from other DYCs by their unbranching, hollow flower stems and smooth, usually highly toothed leaves.

Common dandelion imposters in NZ include catsear, hawkbit, and hawkweed. The Massey University Weed Database gives a good rundown on the differences.

Don't worry if you end up with one of those others though - they're all edible.


Dandelions in medicine:
Dandelions are a diuretic, and in western herbal medicine the leaves and roots are used to cleanse the kidneys and liver.

Dandelion links
Flower fritters
Eating dandelion buds
Wild green pakoras recipe
Plants for a Future database
Google Images

Puwha / Puha (Sonchus species)

Young, small puwha leaves and stalks make a delicious and highly nutritious bitter salad green.

Older, bigger puwha leaves can be stripped from the stalks and eaten raw - or cooked along with their stalks. Bruise the stalks first to let out the bitter white sap (latex).

National treasure Andrew Crowe has written that he eats puwha almost daily.

Use puwha just like spinach, and allow for it to lose volume when cooked. You can cook the buds and flowers as well.

Here are some puwha recipes from one of my favourite occasional bloggers, including one for boil-up.

And some more from other kind contributors:

Anna Wilde from the wonderful Wild Health Food has sent this yummy recipe ...

Puwha and Sesame Salad
1 large bunch of leafy greens such as puwha
¼ cup ground sesame seeds
1-2 Tbs shoyu (good quality soy sauce)

Put a pot about 2/3 full of water on the stove. Bring to boil.
Meanwhile, wash and drain greens. Cut into 2-3 cm lengths.
Drop greens into boiling water and blanch briefly (less than a minute).
Drain immediately. Leave for several minutes to allow excess water to drain, but do not squeeze dry.
In a large bowl mix greens, ground sesame seeds and shoyu. Check seasoning and adjust if necessary.


A young foraging enthusiast, Dirk Skagen, has sent this ...

Puwha pizza
Spread pizza sauce evenly on pizza base, add puha, ham bits, chopped tomato, kalamata olives, and basil. Then sprinkle with cheese. By adding the cheese last it insulates the tender vegetables from overcooking and keeps them from overflowing when cut. Bake at 200 degrees celsius.


Dirk and his mother Cynthia also suggest using puwha for a green smoothie. They do it like this ...

Puwha Energy Smoothie
1/2 c. Strawberries
1 Nectarine (optional)
1 Banana
Handful of puwha
1/4 c. blanched or soaked almonds
Pinch of stevia for extra sweetness (optional)
Nut or soy milk (or water, the almonds will become the milk when blended)

Blend until smooth and creamy.

Puwha in medicine
In rongoa and western medicine puwha has many uses, both internal and external.


Puwha links:
Maori medicinal uses of puwha
Puwha pakoras recipe
Plants for a Future Database
Google Images

Purslane (Portulaca oleracea)

Purslane grows in summer. It's rich in omega-3, iron, and vitamin C.

You can eat it raw, cooked, or pickled.

It's highly mucilaginous, so should thicken soups and casseroles. Its mucilaginousness also makes it a useful soothing medicinal herb.

It belongs to the same family as miner's lettuce.

Purslane links
Plants for a Future database
Google images

Harakeke/NZ Flax (Phormium tenax)

Harakeke is of course one of those all round super-useful plants. I'm no weaver though, so for me the two most exciting discoveries (both shown to me by other people) have been the seeds in the pods and the gel at the base of the plants.

Seeds

The seeds are highly edible. When white or green they are sweet and meaty. When black and shiny they are bitter. The sweet ones are nice on their own or sprinkled on a salad.

What I have noticed is that the plants with short, fat pods seem more likely to contain sweet white seeds - and after a while you can predict which pods will contain the sweetest seeds, because they have a slightly more yellow-brown tinge to them than the other pods.

It seems that the easiest way to extract the seeds from the pod is to snap it in the middle and squeeze the seeds out from each end.

(Note that Phormium tenax is not the kind of flax that flaxseed oil comes from. That other kind of flax is from a whole different plant family.)

Other edible parts
Apparently you can get quite a lot of sweet nectar out of the flowers.

And Jane, who introduced me to flax seeds, says she has a friend who collects the pollen from flax flowers as a nutritional supplement. Flax produces a LOT of pollen, as I found when I looked down at my clothes after brushing up against flax flowers!

Soothing, healing gel
As for the plant's gel, that can be found by pulling apart the leaves at the base. It has antiseptic qualities and apparently makes a good substitute for aloe vera gel. I've used it to make a skin lotion.

Flax links
Plants for a Future database
Google images
My blog post on flax seeds

Elderberry (Sambucus nigra)

Elderflowers are blooming, so get them while you can, but leave lots to turn into berries! :)

Moore Wilson is selling elderflower cordial for about $14 per 500 mls. You can make your own for the cost of about 250g of sugar.

As well as cordial, the flowers can be made into wine and tea. They can also be used in flower fritters and more.

They have strong cooling properties, so whatever you make from them now, you might want to save plenty for midsummer.

Medicinally, Sambucus nigra flowers are used for (among other things) colds and fevers. They promote sweating and act as an expectorant.

Elderberry links:
Plants for a Future database
Google images
Elderflower recipes
My elderflower blog post

Pine (Pinus species)

Recently some friends went on an organised 'weed walk' and enjoyed cups of pine needle tea. Nikki describes it as a 'very pleasantly fragranced tea - very high in vitamin C'.

I'm keen to try this. I'm not sure how long my friends infused the tea for, but perhaps you would just want to do it to taste ... Actually, imagining the toughness of pine needles I think you would want to chop the needles up finely and leave them for as long as possible to release the taste and the healthful constituents?

Many pine species have medicinal properties, and are perhaps most notably used in cough remedies and as antiseptics. Both the needles and the bark are used.

A NZ company has recently started marketing a medicinal extract from Pinus radiata bark - Enzogenol.

Pine links
Google Images

Gorse (Ulex europaeus)

Gorse flowers are generally considered to be edible, but I've become a little wary of them.

They are very mild and slightly sweet. I've eaten them scattered thinly on pizza or added to salad or stir-fry for colour. In Living Simply (1981), NZ author Gwen Skinner gives two recipes for gorse flower wine.

However, the people at Plants for a Future urge some caution when eating gorse flowers, saying, 'It is quite possible that they are a wholesome food, but it is also possible that the flowers contain small quantities of alkaloids or other potentially harmful substances (many members of this genus do) ...'

They suggest that if you are going to eat them, do so sparingly.

Care should probably also be taken over the flowers of gorse's fellow family member Broom.

Gorse links:
Plants for a future database
Google images

Wild parsley (Petroselinum neapolitanum)

Flat leaf parsley has escaped from gardens and is growing wild all around the place - in Wellington anyway.

A couple of notable patches are at Island Bay park, and near the bottom of the drive up to the Brooklyn wind turbine.

Although you don't find them in local shops (well, I've never seen them anyway) - parsley roots are edible too. If you find a big patch of wild parsley it's a good opportunity to dig a few up and try them.

Wild parsley links:
Google Images
Plants for a Future database
(it only has an entry for curly leaf parsley, but I'm assuming many of the properties are similar.)