Medieval inspiration desert.
// Wild dock, honey, almond, egg, goat, oat: Dock sorbet, honey whipped cream, almond-milk and egg-white pancake, goat's milk cream, oat and whole-wheat flour biscuit. Acidity at its local best, waking up roundness. Basil, lemon, almond.
// Lemon and lime cream, unsweetened almond ice-cream, fresh almonds, basil pesto, two types of cake: lime and basil. Other things to do with herbs. Chard mousse.
// Blanched chards blended into kamut-flour and olive oil roux, seasonned with a bit of mustard, folded into whipped aquafaba (the cooking, or canned, liquid of chickpeas which behaves like egg white due to the similar protein structure). Basil, apple and raw beetroot salad, goat's cheese. Have fun with the 'vegetable + roux/sauce + aquafaba/eggwhite' principle. Spinach and kumquat buckwheat tortelloni.
// Spinach salvage, buckwheat egg pasta, fresh whole kumquat, ricotta-style cheese. Celebration in a plate when you couple foods from different sources — local organic kumquats are a beautiful winter sun-ray. Red dead-nettle ('lamium purpureum').
// Lamium purpureum pan-fried, seasonned, and sprinkled with 'poor Man's parmesan' (breadcrumbs - actually 'COVID-confined-Man's parmesan') and a fried egg. How parsley and other herbs so often go to waste in people's homes is another line in the long list of greenery-related mysteries. Babajuans.
// Speciality of Nice, classically with chard filling and einkorn casing. Here rice, chickpea, buckwheat and olive oil pastry, chard greens, onion, pepper, rice, ground flaxseed, seasoning, nutmeg, oregano filling. Not the easiest pastry to work with but very crunchy and tasty. |
The whole carrot.
// Carrot ribbons (curtesy of vegetable peeler), butter-fried with a bit of spice, carrot greens added to the end of some millet cooking with some garlic. Warmth and freshness. Carrot greens, possibly the single-most wasted leaf on the planet. Kuku sabzi.
// Nothing but herbs and/or green leaf vegetables (leek greens for instance), hashed fresh or first blanched, held together with a minimal amount of egg, pan -fried slowly for 15min or so. Preferred dish of the League Against the Rule of Bread and the Anti-Green-Waste Movement — and, incidentally, classical Iranian food ('kuku':omelet/galette/frittata; 'sabzi': herbs. You can also just call it herb cake, but why not use every opportunity to travel?). Foraged mix pasties.
// Eight different wild plants, blanched (for reducing biterness or removing sting) or not (vetch, for ex): burdock (herculanum sphondylium), vetch ('vicia sativa'), nettle ('urtica dioica', 'urtica urens'), burdock ('arctium lappa'), plantain ('plantago lanceolata'), dock ('rumex obtusifolia', 'rumex acetosa'), cowslip ('primula veris'), white dead-nettle ('lamium album'), soaked and partially ground flaxseeds to tie it all up, seasonning. Spelt and chickpea flour and olive oil pastry. Excellent breakfast, excellent givaway, excellent Nature connection. Pesto.
// Nettle, hogweed ('herculanum sphondylium'), radish greens. Just a few cases. One example of use: ladled over rice and courgette ribbons. Not the most original thing to do with greens, in people's imaginary, but then not that many people actually do it. Eggs, parsley, anchovies.
// The hard-boiled egg yolks (well, not quite for better consistency and digestion - about 6min, if boiled from cold) creamed with parsley, washed anchovies, pan-fried onions, seasonning — the basic idea being the yolks plus whatever. How parsley and other herbs so often go to waste in people's homes is another line in the long list of greenery-related mysteries. Dandelion frittata.
// Dandelion buds and a bit of leftover potato purée. Just add an egg, and some butter or oil in a pan. Another excellent breakfast. |