Where to buy edible weeds

...and some snow.

Brooklyn's blizzard is some snow with many ice pellets. I am dreaming of early spring foraging, even as we are blanketed in white. But thank goodness this gives me much-needed time to carry on the task of transcribing hundreds of recipes for the new book, before foraging season really hits and my time will be converted to gathering, photographing and more recipe testing.

Up on Edible Manhattan today is my article about farmers who are beginning to sell edible weeds, with a simple and fresh recipe for knotweed (plus a link to Sam Thayer's special wild hickory oil).

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Book a Spring Forage Walk

Central Park edible botanical walk

North Woods, 18 October

12pm - 2pm

Join me in Central Park's North Woods for an autumn ramble.

We will spot loads of indigenous and invasive plants with serious edible potential.

If you can't escape the city for some autumn colours, the North Woods are the next best place to be.

Come and learn to tell the good from the bad and the ugly, and practise identifying the edibles we've discussed, as we walk.

We will leave the woods briefly and cross open lawn areas...

...where quickweed and chickweed are making a fall appearance.

Which is which? Learn to tell your quick from your chick.

It is migration season for the birds that use the Atlantic Flyway, and we are likely to encounter songbirds and their friends en route south, too.

We meet at 12pm.

[This walk is FULLY BOOKED: sorry!]

Foraging, with a little help from my friends

Pokeweed shoots, field garlic, milk thistle, greenbriar, Japanese knotweed tips, garlic mustard flowers, violets and mugwort.

What a beautiful day. Yesterday. 

Spotless sky. Faraway blue. 

Birdsong and chipmunk whistles. This beauty is a hooded warbler. He hunted, like miniature death machine, I watched him for a long time. 

Whadyoummmeanomnngngishnardgnmnpolidemnntospeaghweethfuulllmsmndsjdtdmouth?

Spring is unwinding so fast it is hard to keep up.

To catch some of the spring edible action, see my post at Edible Manhattan.

Eating burdock stems

Burdock

On a sparkling day in Cape Town, with the sun appearing for the first time in several cloudtangled week, it's hard to remember that back in in my other home, the hamlet of New York City, a prematurely hot, sticky summer has descended like a sodden, steaming duvet.

(Comforter. Do you say duvet or comforter? Does anyone say eiderdown?)

But that reminds me about burdock, the weed with large furry leaves, whose flowering stalks are now perhaps attaining some serious elevation. But before they are six feet tall, though...you should eat them. Really.

Burdock root is usually known as gobo - and is cultivated as vegetable in Japan, and also Hawaii. But this is all about the easy-to-harvest-stem.

Here's my story about edible burdock - recognizing it and how to use it -  in the current edition of Edible Manhattan.

Autumn-olives

Autumn olive - Eleagnus umbellata

Autumn-olive is not Russian olive. There endeth the lesson.

At least there ended mine, a few years ago. Autumn-olive is Elaeagnus umbellata. And the autumn-olive (why the hyphen? No clue) fruit is perfectly round and red with silver flecks (occasionally yellow with silver flecks). It is beginning to ripen now, in these parts.

Russian olive - Eleagnus angustifolia

Photo: Great Swamp Watershed Association, NJ

Russian olive is Elaeagnus angustifolia, above. Called oleaster in Europe.

Many people confuse the two. I used to, too. But Russian olive is an elongated oval, and greeny-yellow. Mealy rather than juicy. The fruit of both are technically drupes, as the pit is on the inside, surrounded by flesh. They are mini stone fruit - like peaches, apricots, cherries.

Both are edible. Both are highly invasive. Neither is related to the olives we brine and cure in oil. That is Olea europea.

Autumn-olive jam

But the autumn-olive is dee-licious. If you like red currants.

Read more about autumn-olives and how to eat them in my article for Edible Manhattan. In print now or online.

Oh - and this didn't make it into the Edible piece because my editor didn't want to bore the pants off readers, BUT. There is an Elaeagnus from these American shores: Elaeagnus commutata, or silverberry. So there. I have never tasted it. Most reports say that is is dryish and mealy.

Day lilies for lunch?

Photo: Vincent Mounier, from Strange Brooklyn Shores

I saw my first day lily buds a couple of days ago. The season approaches.

For salads, pickles, and a steamed vegetable, head for your closest stand of Hemerocallis fulva: that's the naturalized, extra-long-stemmed, fulvous day lily (deep, rich orange, in plain English).

I would say more, but then you wouldn't be tempted to read my essay about eating day lilies for Edible Manhattan. 

(And see if you can spot the sentence I did not write...)

Knotweed...tick, tick, tick

Yee ha! I am getting excited. It's almost knotweed time.

I looked longingly towards The Ramble when I was in Central Park with my nephew-in-law Yann this morning (zoo- red pandas, lemurs, bright birds), but he is a young man who tolerates little in the way of digression. I'll be back, though I think it's still far too early for the first juicy stalks, despite our weird weather.

 

Knotweed custard

But - to brief yourselves on what my suppressed greed is all about, visit my story about edible Japanese knotweed in Edible Manhattan, now online. It's available in print, too, but that you have to find it in, well, Manhattan.

It's a brilliant, cold day in New York, and, despite being knotweedless, supper will be good. My mother-in--law and nephew's last night in town, and while they are paying their respects to the Don (Yann is one of his biggest fans) I'll make bagna cauda - the hot bath of garlic and anchovies - with crunchy vegetables, followed by eat-with-your-fingers, herby baby pork ribs. The nephew will eat pasta. He eats only white food. Mango and guavas salad for our desert. My local Key food manager has started stocking guavas. A miracle.

Tomorrow? Prospect Park Litter Mob No. 21. Sign up if you dare.

Foraged infusions

Here is my story about alcoholic and innocent infusions, for Edible Manhattan (also available in print):

Sipping through Winter

Mushrooms in Manhattan

Oyster mushrooms in the city? Yes, Sirree. Read about them in Edible Manhattan:

Meals that Grow on Trees

Apple Time

It is possible to forget how good an apple can taste. And smell. That's why their natural season is worth waiting for. Here's my Edible Manhattan story about them.

What's ahead? It's Apples.

Glut

For a tomatolicious orgy, visit  Edible Manhattan.

(And Frank, the Beach Farm is there too...)

The herb of summer

My post about cooking with summer savoury*, one of my most-used terrace herbs,  is up at Edible Manhattan. 

* I am at a crossroads. Summer savoury, summer savory. Favourite, favorite. What should I do? Up to now I have been sticking to the Commonwealth's "ou" on this blog. When I write for American publications however, obviously I lose the "u" and write "o". Is it time to change and write it all just one way? Am I confusing anyone?

Cooking with bayberry

Young bayberry leaves in June, Dead Horse Bay

It's all about bayberry at Edible Manhattan (and I'm not done with it yet...) but if you tire of leaves, go next door to 66 Square Feet (the Food) and look at some cool melon soup. You can whip it up in five minutes flat.

Edible Pokeweed

How about a delicate pokeweed scramble for breakfast? The recipe is next door at 66 Square Feet (the Food).

...the rest of the Dead Horse Bay pokeweed adventure is on Edible Manhattan's blog.

Anyone got an Airstream?

The last word on the American berry (maybe)

I know, I know, I've written an awful lot about Amelanchiers recently, viz. today's Edible Manhattan Amelanchier pictures and post...

Well, the city is dripping with them, and I can't help it. We walked from the southern tip of Manhattan late yesterday afternoon to the end of the Highline at 29th Street. Vince showed me an enourmous stash of the berries (above) beside the little cove in the Battery Park greenway that lines the Hudson River here, and again we were the only people paying attention to them. A flock of unwieldy pigeons was feasting on one the trees. Interestingly, these berries were very juicy but less intensely flavoured than the ones at Pier One, perhaps because in Battery Park they are shaded by tall locust trees, and not in full sun.

Then, on the newly opened part of the Highline, which was gorgeous and packed, more Amelanchiers, planted below a raised catwalk, so that the berries are at grazing height. How considerate.

We still have some pie left, and I say it is the true American pie. Nevermind apples. Red are the raw berries, white is the ice cream and blue is the cooked mass of fruit. Made in America.

Edible Manhattan May/June online

If you are not in Manhattan and would like to browse a copy to read my story about Juneberries, here it is!