Sorrel and other Spring Goodies this Saturday!
Date: March 30th 2012
Evanston Indoor Market, this Saturday, March 31st, at the Evanston Ecology Center
Val will be at the Evanston Indoor Market this Saturday, March31st! The market runs from 9 to 12 and is located at the Evanston Ecology Center.
Food Notes
Val will be bringing lots of sorrel and three kinds of chives (regular, Asian flat leaf and Mongolian leek chives). This morning we are going to forage for wild garlic mustard. You may have heard of garlic mustard as a pernicious weed, which it is, but it was brought to this country from Europe about a century and a half ago as a culinary herb. In Europe, it has a long history of use as a medicinal herb as well as a kitchen herb.
It is a nasty weed, because it colonizes are native forests and outcompetes many of our native wildflowers and other plants. Part of the reason it is so competitive is that it, like all members of the broccoli/mustard family, contains flavonoids and glucosinolates. These phytochemicals provide garlic mustard with a defense from pathogens and insect herbivores, but you might also recognize these classes of chemicals from the news, because they both provide us mammalian predators with many health benefits, particularly anti-cancer benefits.
Surprisingly enough, garlic mustard has a garlicky, mustardy flavor. The genus name Alliaria means “resembling Allium,” Allium being the genus name for garlic and the onion family. You can tear it into salads for a little arugula/watercress-like punch. It can also be cooked up just like regular mustards. One spring we made it into a frittata and I’ve heard of people making a garlic mustard pesto, which sounds quite good.
Val will also have more burdock root, chicory root and sunchokes that were dug earlier this spring and have been stored in the root cellar.
Farm Notes
It is 6:30 and getting light out, so I’ve got to get down to the field to start harvesting those greens and herbs. Went to bed after planting for most of the day yesterday with the weatherman proclaiming an 80% chance of rain overnight and a 70% chance this morning. Woke up to no rain and a revised forecast of just a 40% chance this morning.
This is not only the warmest (should I say hottest?) spring I can remember (nothing has ever even been close), but one of the driest. Warm and dry means I have been able to plant tons of stuff already, but each seed I put in the ground goes in with apprehension, because the ground is not supposed to be warm and dry in March. It just doesn’t feel right.
We shall see what this spring bodes for the rest of the season as the rest of the season develops.
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Food and Farm Notes: A weekly peek at what's happening on Henry's Farm and Teresa's Fruit and Herbs. For more information: http://www.terrabrockman.com/
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