Berries to Crow About

In which Fefe Noir and caribougrrl confront the terrible summer weather by walking right into it.

The cold wet summer we've been experiencing in Newfoundland seems to have been good for black crowberry (Empetrum nigrum); they are unusually abundant this year.

This summer in Newfoundland has been record-breakingingly-non-existent.  In previous years we have experienced Jun-uary and Fog-ust, but neither of these events could prepare us for the horror of Jul-ember.   

The garden is almost a bust.  I have replanted three times.  It has just been too bloody cold for anything to grow.  I don’t blame those bean plants for not wanting to poke their heads out of the soil and into the freezing wind.  Who living in Newfoundland for the month of July did not want to stay lying in bed until this hell ends?

The last few days of July (it had to be warm by then right?), caribougrrl took some time off so we could get some work done on the house.  It was too wet to paint and too windy to be up a ladder.  The weather did not improve.  As the cool temperatures were perfect for a good walk we bravely packed a picnic, grabbed our sweaters and headed out.  “I’ll take the camera just in case,” I said.  I wished later I had also brought mittens.

Moose are a fairly regular road hazard in Newfoundland, but having a camera
handy is a much less common occurrence.

On the drive to New Melbourne we came upon two very lovely moose.  (And NO we did not turn them into sausages.)  Miracle of miracles I actually had the camera in the back of the car and with some impressive gymnastic moves grabbed it from the back seat and got the shot. 

For a landmass largely made up of ponds, bogs, and fens, frogs are a strangely
uncommon occurrence in Newfoundland. 

We headed to one of our favourite trails and stopped to check out the frog pond.  (And NO we did not gather frog legs either.)  I have never seen so many frogs.  They must like the cool weather.  Maybe all their predators were so affected by SAD they couldn’t face placing their paws and beaks and snouts into the freezing water. 

As we continued down the trail admiring the truly awesome view of sea and sky and pointing out the occasional whale flip- flop out in the water, caribougrrl bent down and offered me what I presumed was a juniper berry.  “No thanks,” I said.  And then she put one in her mouth and made her this-is-bitter-face and I thought, what did you expect?

Then she asked if I had any bags in my camera case.  What am I going to do with a pound of juniper? How much gravlax does she think we can eat? Why does she keep eating the berries?  I distracted her by pointing out a whale, okay maybe it was a rock, but we didn’t have to spend the next two hours collecting berries.  

Or so I thought.

It wasn’t until we were selecting where to sit on for our picnic and I pointed out some blue poop on a rock and asked, “What do you think that was eating?” that I realized it was not juniper that I had been offered earlier but one of the zillions of black crowberry that were growing all over the place.  I’d been too busy looking for whales to notice these shining jewels literally at our feet. 

Someone else has clearly been eating the black crowberry.

“Are you sure they are edible?”  I asked as caribougrrl proffered me another one.

And it turns out they are.

Someone, somewhere described black crowberry as having an “uninteresting” flavour.  And this caught on: just about any internet site about black crowberry will repeat this description.  The poor maligned crowberry, growing where and when no other berry will go, is consistently called uninteresting.  And yet it is one of the precious garnishes people are willing to pay big bucks for at NOMA.   This berry needs some rethinking and a new reputation.

The black crowberry is interesting, but if you were expecting sweet think again.  This berry is juicy and complex and once cooked it is tasty.  (Not to mention free, local and growing in abundance… food security, my friends!)  So let us praise the black crowberry; it is not uninteresting it is just misunderstood.

How to Find and Identify Black Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum)

Black crowberry is a northern berry, which means if you live in the south you are out of luck unless you are vacationing in the north or you happen across them at high elevations.  It is primarily found in open habitats like coastlines, bogs, heaths, barrens and rocky outcrops.

Black crowberry is a low-growing shrub, characteristically a creeping groundcover.  Crowberry tends to form mats and thus, under foot, it feels springy (for information purposes, that springy-ness is a bit deceptive as it's prickly on any exposed skin if you sit on it for very long).  Stems are densely covered in short, pointy needles that are arranged alternately and whorled on the stalk.  (If that means nothing to you, don't worry... it's the one that hugs the ground but isn't juniper.  Rely on the pictures.)

The berries (technically drupes) are small, black and are semi-glossy but not shiny, each with a prominent dimple on the opposite end from the stem.  Although they can appear clustered, berries are individually attached  to the stem.  Since the berries are dark not wildly charismatic, they can easily go unnoticed if you aren't actually looking for them.

Ripe black crowberry can be picked any time from when they turn black through the next spring.  It seems that quite a lot of people prefer them after a frost because they get sweeter, and some won't even pick them until late winter or early spring.  Frost and the freeze-thaw of winter, however, can make them soft and texturally unappealing, so the summer berries have the advantage of firmness.

The black crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) fruits are very distinctive: small and polished-black with prominent dimples.  The foliage resembles heather but creeps much tighter to the ground.

If you poke around the miracle of internet looking for information on the black crowberry taste, you will find most sites say they are uninteresting raw but improve with cooking... this really needs to be corrected.  The raw berries are extremely interesting to taste (in the summer, at least): startlingly tart and grippy from tannin.  It might be a bit of an acquired taste, but it is certainly not boring.  After cooking, the flavour is less punchy; the taste loses the acidic edge to become sweeter and the tannin mellows but retains a depth.  These berries do not taste like anything else we've eaten anywhere.  Do not put one in your mouth anticipating a blueberry-like flavour, you will end up feeling confused.

The tannin makes them particularly suitable for wine-making.  Extra special bonus points to you if you make the effort to collect enough of these for wine making.  We will applaud while we sit on our front porch sipping the black crowberry wine produced by Auk Island Winery and wonder how the wine can be sold for such a low price considering the labour that goes into collecting the tiny berries...

A Recipe For Black Crowberry Clafoutis

(heavily borrowed from Julia Child's cherry clafoutis recipe)

There is nothing that tastes quite the same as black crowberry.  Cooking sweetens the berries and mellows bitterness, but the tannins retain a depth and complexity of flavour; the clafoutis custard provides a perfect silky support.

Clafoutis a seriously fantastic way to use black crowberry.  Sophisticated enough for dinner party dessert, but with enough eggs, milk and fruit to justify eating it for breakfast.  Full of win.

1-1/4 c. milk (2% or fattier)
2/3 c. raw cane sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tsp orange blossom water*
pinch of sea salt
1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
3 c. black crowberries, cleaned**
icing sugar for dusting

* orange blossom water is very pleasantly perfumey, a nice foil for the tannin... but if you don't have any, feel free to use the 1 tbsp of vanilla extract which Julia Child puts in her cherry clafoutis

** rid of any insect stowaways from your berry bucket, picked free of debris, rinsed, and dried by very gently rolling up in a tea towel

Clockwise from top left: Use a food processor or blender to ensure
a perfectly smooth clafoutis batter.  Bake a thin layer of custard until a skin
forms and sprinkle the berries gently on top to keep them from sinking.
The clafoutis baking dish can be filled the brim.  When cooked, the clafoutis
will be puffed up, browned and firm to the touch in the center.

Pre-heat oven to 350F.  Grease a deep pie dish or tart/flan dish (or any baking dish that can hold about 7 cups) with butter.

Put all ingredients except for the berries and icing sugar into a a food processor*** or blender. Mix until fully blended and smooth.

***did I say food processor? Why yes, I did.  We finally bought one.

Pour a thin layer of batter (about 1/3 cup of the mixture, more or less depending on the shape of your pan) into the bottom of the baking dish and bake for about 8 minutes or until a skin forms.  Remove from oven and distribute the berries lightly on top of the batter layer.

Pour the remaining batter over the berries.  Return to oven and bake an additional 50-60 minutes. It's done when it's puffed up, well browned, and the batter has set through (like custard or quiche).

Let rest to cool slightly (it will fall, that's what happens).  Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Stingin' in the Rain

Using the same chemical weapon as fire ants, there's something just a little Day-of-the-Triffids about stinging nettles.  But not to worry, they're only dangerous until you cook them.

Serve nettles cooked in red wine over fried polenta and top with some shaved parmesan.  A first course worth building a dinner party menu around.

Stinging Nettle and Polenta Starter

for the polenta

1 c. chicken stock
1 c. nettle tea (see below) or vegetable stock
generous pinch of salt
3/4 c. cornmeal
1/2 tbsp good quality olive oil
butter for pan-frying (bonus points for using your own hand-crafted butter!)


for the nettles

1 tbsp olive oil (or more or less to coat bottom of skillet)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small shallot, thinly sliced
ground pepper to taste
salt to taste
1 dried red chili pepper, torn into pieces
1 c. blanched and drained stinging nettle leaves (see below), roughly chopped
1/4 c. red wine
1/4 c. nettle tea (see below) or water
Parmesan-Reggiano, shaved, to taste


Prepare the polenta at least 3 hours and up to 2 days ahead of time.  In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat the stock, nettle tea and salt over med-high heat until boiling.  Turn down to medium, but keep the liquid at a rolling boil and slowly pour cornmeal in, stirring constantly to prevent lumps.  Turn the heat down more if the polenta is sputtering.  Continue stirring until the cornmeal is cooked and the polenta is thick.  Remove from heat.  When the mixture is no longer bubbling, stir in the olive oil.  Pour into a square baking pan (glass, non-stick, or lightly oiled), spread to corners and level out.  Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours to set the polenta.

(Three hours, conveniently, is enough time to go back out to pick and process another batch of stinging nettles for the freezer.)

You can tell they're good for you just by looking at the rich green colour
of the blanched stinging nettles.  They taste good too.

Prep your nettle ingredients.  Cut the polenta into 4 squares and set aside. (Trim the outside for a more even edge, the scraps can be fried as a snack or to dip in soft-cooked eggs for breakfast...)

You do have at least two skillets, right? 

Put a generous pat of butter into the pan where you plan to fry the polenta.

In your other skillet (the one you have a lid for), heat olive oil over medium-high heat.  Saute garlic and shallot until softened.  Add black pepper, salt and hot pepper and saute for another minute.  Add nettles toss until fully covered in oil and slightly wilted (1-2 minutes). 

Turn the heat under your polenta pan to medium.

Add red wine to nettles and stir until liquid has evaporated.  Turn heat down to med-low, add nettle tea, cover and cook for 5-6 minutes.

While the nettles steam, fry your polenta squares.  When the butter in your polenta pan is thin and the foam is subsiding, add the squares of polenta.  Cook 2-3 minutes on each side until heated through.  They should have a thin golden brown crust.

Remove cover from nettles and allow any remaining liquid to evaporate.

To plate, top each polenta square with 1/4 of the nettle mixture, then artfully place shaved parmesan on top.  Serve as a first course.  (This would also make a good side dish for grilled salmon or lobster.)

Nettles have a very present yet delicate flavour but none of the bitterness that many wild greens have... their defense is stinging, so they don't need to taste bad to avoid being eaten.  While the flavour is not as strong as mature spinach, but the texture is much meatier.  

~~~

There is an enormous nettle patch a short diversion from one of our favourite coastal trails.  Getting ready to head out foraging, it felt a bit insane choosing to go out gathering food in the famous Newfoundland rain, drizzle and fog... especially knowing that when we returned, we'd be cold and damp and the dogs would inevitably smell like, well, wet dogs.

Bella and Sam are inevitably "helpful" when we're foraging.
To save them from their loyal and eager-to-please selves,
we tethered them away from the stinging nettle patch.
Bella was smart enough to take advantage of the tree and
get out of the rain.  Sam, on the other hand...

But if you always wait for perfect weather to go outside, you might rarely leave your house.  (Especially if live on an island in the North Atlantic.)  You'd miss out on the magic of being in water-saturated air... sure, it's wet, but the colour of the rocks and trees and birds is deeper and fuller and sound travels with more richness.  The reduced visibility makes the world a bit smaller and cozier.

As we were wading, drenched, through the knee-high patch of nettle, snapping of the tops of the plants, we heard the drone of an outboard motor halt.  It's funny how sometimes you only hear a noise because it stops.  The motor cut and was followed by the hollow thump-thump of lobster pots being checked.  The motor starts, then stops, thump-thump, thump-thump, repeat.  The rhythm of that work is very distinct to the ear and even though we both knew what we were listening to, we looked up anyway, because that's what you do.  

As though waiting for us to turn away from the nettles, a massive bald eagle suddenly flew close enough and low enough we could distinguish the yellowish-whites of its eyes.  An eagle beside us, a lobster boat below us, a couple of great big bags full of nettle... that's exactly why we were out in the rain instead of bundled up on the couch watching the new season of Orange is the New Black.

~~~

Identifying and handling stinging nettle (Urtica spp.)

Nettles tend to grow in patches and can often be spotted by the change
in texture they create.

Stinging nettle is most commonly found in disturbed and disused areas.  Old pastures, abandoned properties, gardens, the edges of your composter, fence lines...  it's also found on roadsides, but don't bother looking there, you don't want the contamination from exhaust fumes anyway.

The easiest way to identify a nettle is by touching it.  If you've ever walked through a patch of tall weeds when wearing short pants, only to find your legs prickling with fire, you've encountered stinging nettle.  The touch-method is not recommended.  Head out dressed for the job: long pants, long sleeves, gloves.

Since it was rain-drizzle-and-fogging the day we went out searching for nettle, in addition to pocketing a pair of rubberized gloves, I wore my rain suit.  Rain jacket, rain pants, rubber boots.  No matter that we've lived in rural Newfoundland for over 6 years, Fefe Noir's fashion rules irrationally exclude rain pants.  She refers to them as my "plastic trousers" and rolls her eyes at me whenever I put them on.  But who got the last laugh?  Not only did I stay dry, but as we were wading through a field of nettle, Fefe discovered that you can, indeed, be stung by nettle through a pair of jeans.

(But wait, between that handicap and her photo-taking duties, I ended up doing most of the actual harvesting...)

Stinging nettles are easily identified by touch, but try to avoid finding them that way.  Look for slender plants with large, toothed leaves in opposite pairs.  The stems and leaves are fuzzy from being covered in stinging hairs.

Nettles are tall plants with slender stems and paired leaves.  The leaves are broad but come to a definite point on the ends and the edges are toothed.  The leaves and stem are covered in tiny hairs.  The flowers are green-ish and hang in clusters, but you don't need to know that much: if it's already flowering, it's too late in the year (but write the location down somewhere so you can come back next year, earlier).

Wear rubberized gloves when you pick stinging nettle.
For older plants (over 20 cm high), snap off the top
15-20 cm only.

USE HEAVY RUBBERIZED GLOVES when you pick them.  Take the whole above-ground part of the plant if it is really young (less than 20 cm high); if the plant is older but not yet flowering, pick the top 15-20 cm.  A lot of people use scissors or garden shears for harvesting, but we found it awkward to hold kitchen scissors with our big rubberized gloves, so just broke the stem off with gloved fingers for efficiency's sake.

Once you're home and ready to process the nettles, keep your gloves on while you break off the top young leaves and pull the older leaves from the stem.  Toss the stems and rejected leaves (brown, moth-eaten, bruised) into your composter.  Blanch the nettle in saltwater to neutralize the sting, and squeeze the nettle tea from them.  Hank Shaw provides a very good description of processing stinging nettles, so I will direct you there rather than taking up unnecessary space.  Save the nettle tea for this recipe, or to use as a substitute for vegetable broth in all sorts of dishes.

We All Like a Little Weed Now and Then

If you can't beat 'em...

Seriously, you won't ever win.  The best thing you can do with dandelions is pull them out by the roots, then eat them.

Cranberry Beans with Dandelion Greens

It's getting close to the end of storage season, but sweet
local carrots can still be found.

1-1/4 c. dried cranberry beans (or dried pinto beans)
1 carrot
1 shallot
1/4 tsp salt
5 cups chicken stock (use vegetable stock if you're a vegetarian, water will do in a pinch but it won't turn out as well)
1 big bowl full of dandelion greens
1 tbsp pork fat (or lamb drippings or olive oil, in case you're a vegetarian)
1 clove garlic julienned  

Don't bother peeling the carrot and shallot, you'll remove
these before eating.

a splash of dry vermouth (or dry white wine)

Soak beans in water overnight. Drain and rinse thoroughly.

Wash carrot and shallot, leaving the skins on.  Put beans, carrot, and shallot in a large saucepan.  Add salt and stock.  Bring to a boil over medium heat; reduce heat and simmer until beans are tender (approximately 2 hours).  Remove carrot and shallot and continue cooking to desired consistency.

The larger, darker and pointier a dandelion leaf, the more
bitter it will be.  That's great for cooked greens.  Save the
smaller, paler and rounder leaves for eating raw.

While the beans are cooking, wash dandelion greens several times (like 4 or 5 times, soaking in between) in cold salted water.  This is particularly important if you were enthusiastic when weeding, leaving the dandelions covered in soil and detritus like we did...  Pick over carefully, watching out for precocious slugs and other early season pests.  Feel free to be choosy about the leaves, dandelion aren't precious and it's not like you paid for them.  Dry the leaves in a salad spinner or by lightly rolling in clean tea towels.  (Don't forget to reserve any unopened buds for making capers.)

When the beans are very nearly done*, heat pork fat** in a skillet over med-high.  When the fat is good and hot, saute dandelion greens until wilted add the garlic and saute for a minute.  Deglaze with vermouth***.

*Or if you made them a day ahead, reheat when you are ready to cook the dandelion greens.

**The first time Fefe made this dish, she used drippings from a pork roast.  The next time she made it, she tossed the pork fat into the pan then thought it smelled strangely like lamb fat... which it was... sometimes it's hard to keep track of the various jars of drippings in the refrigerator.  The good news is that both work.

***The first time Fefe made this dish, she used vermouth to deglaze the dandelion pan.  The next time, as she was recovering from the shock of the lamb fat incident, she quickly grabbed the vermouth bottle only to discover it was empty.  Luckily, there was some white wine handy.  Luckily further, white wine also does a lovely job in this recipe.

Dandelion leaves will wilt fairly quickly in a hot pan, so wait until the beans are ready before cooking them.

Serve your delicious dandelion greens over the beans as a side for lamb chops or as a hearty lunch with crusty bread. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

~~~

Yes indeed, it's dandelion season again.

If you've been reading this blog word for word like I expect you to do (right?), you'll know we've had a slow start to spring.  Here we are in mid-May and this week we woke up to a crust of ice.  Not frost, actual ice.  A thick layer coating the entire surface of the visible world.

The snow shovels are prominently displayed on our front
porch as a charm to ward off further snow.  It didn't work
all winter, so I'm not sure why I think it will work now, but
I feel it will...

No matter, the ground itself has thawed, so it's time to call an abrupt stop to all indoor projects and take advantage of the short northern growing season on this cold Atlantic island.  As not to unnecessarily jinx this reprieve, we can't yet put the snow shovels away.  We've even moved them out to the front porch where the afternoon sun illuminates them: our talisman against rogue late-May snowstorms.

It's time to catch up on the work we didn't do last fall.  Prune the perennials that need pruning before they start growing and prep the garden beds.  Which means weeding.  And, oh, boy, do the weeds ever take advantage of any bit of open space.  

While you're out there madly digging, hoeing, forking or raking the weeds out of your vegetable beds, reserve the dandelion.  Be brutal and get them out by the roots, but put them aside because they're good eating. The earlier you can do this in spring, the more tender and less bitter the dandelion leaves will be.  For this dish, a bit of bitterness works well, so later season dandelion is also suitable.

Seriously, it's like if you turn your head away for a moment,
more dandelions suddenly appear.

If you don't have vegetable plot, I suspect you can find dandelion in your lawn or flower gardens.  No yard?  No worries.  Dandelion can be found pretty much anywhere that soil has been disturbed.  Go for a walk with a trowel and a basket; avoid foraging on roadsides (you don't need any exhaust or road salt in your food) but take advantage of trails and hedgerows or cooperative neighbours.  You may even come across an enthusiastic lawn-owner with a wheel barrow full of dandelion already plucked from the ground.  

Save the smallest, roundest leaves for salad and pesto.  Use the older, darker, pointier leaves as cooked greens (like in this recipe).   The unopened flower buds make excellent capers.  For a plant so universally hated, it's pretty magical.

Even cats like dandelion.  Or do they hate dandelion?  Can't remember.

Chasing Lovage, Stumbling on Plantain

In which caribougrrl and Fefe Noir go whale watching, take note of some foraging opportunities, get outmaneuvered by some sheep, make way for the caterpillars, and provide you with some tips for picking and preparing a couple of seaside edibles.

It started the way these things usually do.  We were out for a coastal walk, looking for whales.  A minke was swimming along the shoreline, quite close, but we were up a cliff and having trouble keeping our eye on it.  So I scrambled out on a rocky head for a better look and once there, I noticed in a crevice next to me a plant I vaguely recognized.  I knew I should know what it was but just couldn't conjure it up.  So I did what you do in those situations; picked a couple of leaves and crushed them between my fingers then inhaled.  Celery-like.  So I stuck it in my mouth, like you would, right?  Contemplating the flavour (celery-parsley-fresh air-ness) and trying to bring the name of the plant to mind, I heard a stern voice behind me.  Fefe Noir.  "Did you just eat something?"

"Noooo...," I said in my most convincing (er, I mean transparently-guilty sounding) voice.  I have a habit of lying about stuff like this even, or perhaps especially, when I know it's abundantly clear that I'm lying.  I don't know why I do it.  Survival instinct?  No, I didn't hear a noise that sounded like that bear over there, it must be your imagination..  Of course I wasn't trying to break that large branch into firewood  by standing on one end and pulling up the other end; you must be seeing things.

Young love-age.

"Lovage!" I shouted as it came to me.  "Scotch lovage!"

Then the important question: Fefe Noir squinted at me and said, very slowly, "Are you sure?".  I don't know why she's always so skeptical.  She doesn't know how I'm still alive.

I had to admit, no, not absolutely certain.  Pretty sure.  Ninety-six-point-seventy-five percent sure.  So I picked some and stuck it in my pocket, to identify later.  I scoured the area though, several small plants, none looking big enough to cut back just yet, but maybe in a couple of weeks.  The whale by then was almost forgotten, until it surfaced so close to us we could hear the blowing.  Lovage forgotten.

After consulting with both Peter Scott's field guide to edible plants of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Peterson guides for both edible plants and wildflowers (and despite the conspicuous absence of scotch lovage from the Peterson guides), I was able to convince Fefe Noir that I was indeed correct about the identification.  We started talking, obsessively, about what to do with it specifically for the blog... and while making this decision over the next few weeks, we seemed to see it everywhere we went.  In one place where the scotch lovage was so abundant, we could have literally picked bushels and hardly made a dent... it was, of course, a day when we weren't ready for it and we were too far from home to consider going back for some later.  Aside from a bit of seaside nibbling, we left that field of lovage alone but we did stop there for a picnic.

Seaside plantain is the sort of plant you walk past and
walk over without really seeing it.   It's worth paying
attention to.

Now, recall that I have been flipping through my edible plant guides, and I may have been poking around the miracle of the internet to see how other people use lovage... and thus checking out other seaside edible plants.  And there we were, sitting on the ground and right next to me is a plant I recognize.  A plant I've seen all over the place for years, but I didn't know was edible until very recently: seaside plantain.  I couldn't recall having read anything about there being similar toxic plants and I couldn't quite recall how it's meant to be used, so I did what I do best and picked a leaf and stuck in my mouth.  I was contemplating the slightly bitter but otherwise strangely tasteless raw leaf when I heard a stern voice behind me... 

So here's the thing.  Both scotch lovage and seaside plantain are extremely common along the coast of the north Atlantic ocean.  Until you are ready to use them, then the plantain remains happily abundant but the lovage disappears.  But, you're thinking (and you're right), we had seen lovage, lots of it, and taken note of where it was.

Most of the places we'd been to were with visitors from away... so places a bit far-flung for a quick trip for a fistful of lovage, or places that you visit because they are nature preserves and, well, protected, so picking lovage isn't cool (much less permissible).  No problem.  Although there wasn't very much lovage in that first place I spotted it, some time had gone by, so we knew it was a sure spot for how much we needed.  However, I failed to mention earlier in the post that this particular area is part of a municipal pasture.  Did it cross my mind that if I was interested in eating scotch lovage, the local sheep might likewise be interested?  Admittedly, no.  Lesson learned.

A multitude of similar coastal trails visited, thousands of plantain plants, no lovage.  So we finally went back to the place we harvested the plantain (skipping the lovage at the time because we were evidently over-confident about being able to find it closer to home).  We brought the dogs to kill two metaphorical birds with one metaphorical stone, making it feel a bit less like back-tracking.

One last amazing thing before you get to the how-to below:  the scotch lovage which was still right where we left it was already occupied when we arrived.  A couple of short-tailed swallowtail caterpillars were busy munching on loveliest of lovely scotch lovage plants.  There was enough lovage to share (thankfully) and we carefully harvested stems from parts of the plant not being used by the caterpillars.

Short-tailed swallowtail caterpillars are strongly associated with scotch lovage.  And very pretty too.

~~~

Identify, pick and use seaside plantain and scotch lovage.

Seaside Plantain Plantago juncoides (also known as Goose Tongue)

Seaside plantain tends to grow in colonies.

The Peterson guide aptly describes seaside plantain as a "homely" plant.  It's low growing and generally found in colonies above but close to the high tide line (though looking at how it's distributed, you get the sense that wave action is part of how seeds are dispersed; it's not uncommon to see a lone plant here or there, up a cliff face or much further inland than the others).  We have found it on pebbly beaches, in rock crevices, and interspersed with black crowberry on coastal heaths.  The leaves are fleshy with a deep groove through the length and although some grow straight, many of the leaves curl and curve around in strange ways.  Flower stalks are erect and are topped with a tight elongated cluster of greenish-yellowish flowers.

Pick only 1-3 leaves from each plant (fewer from smaller plants, more from larger plants) being careful to not pull the roots of the plant up.  The leaves twist out of the plant fairly easily if you are selecting younger central leaves... the older the leaf, the more bitterness it has, so we stuck to the younger leaves.  If they are resisting plucking, they are probably too old anyway.

Since this was the first time we used seaside plantain, we stuck to the recommendation in all the field guides consulted: we boiled the leaves in a small amount of water and served with butter.  They hold their shape during cooking and the flavour is slightly salty and bitter like rapini, the texture similar to asparagus but slightly chewier.  This would be an excellent green to serve with lamb.

As a **cautionary note**:  Apparently in areas where there are salt marshes, a similar plant called seaside arrowgrass accumulates cyanide in the leaf.  Avoid confusing the two!  Seaside arrowgrass leaves grow more or less straight up (rather than curling) and are not grooved.  My suspicion is that it's difficult to confuse them side by side, but if you are salt-marsh wanderer, be mindful.

Scotch Lovage Ligusticum scothicum (also known as Scots Lovage, Sea Lovage, Sea Parsley, Sea Celery)

Scotch lovage is very similar to flat leafed parsley in appearance and taste.

If you are familiar with herb garden varieties of lovage, you will have no trouble spotting this plant.  We found them on pebble beaches, in crevices of rocky outcrops/rocky heads and in coastal heaths.  Plants are bushy and tall (10-60 cm) with clustered white or greenish-white flowers in an umbrella-like shape (similar to yarrow and other carrot-family flowers).  The leaves are alternate on stalks and composed of three flat three-lobed leaflets with toothed edges.  Veins in the older leaves are visually prominent ranging from dark green to reddish-purple; but are not terribly prominent in the young growth.  When you crush the leaves, they smell heartily of celery.  Black and short-tailed swallowtail caterpillars are strongly associated with scotch lovage (and other wild parsley or parsnip-like plants).

Like any perennial herb, it can stand cutting, but since we share wild plants with wild (and, apparently, domestic) animals, we left the vast majority of the plant intact.  For use as a fresh herb, select thinner stems; for use as a cooked herb go ahead and cut some of the older, thicker stems.  The flavour is (not surprisingly) very similar to flat-leafed parsley but with a strong celery note and the taste of sea-air, probably from the saltiness.  Use as you would use parsley or celery leaf.  We made tabbouleh, one of our favourite parsley dishes.

Fefe Noir's Seaside Tabbouleh

1 c. whole grain bulgur (cracked wheat)
juice of 1-1/2 lemons
2-inch piece of preserved lemon, rind only, finely diced
1 tomato, finely diced
1 bunch scotch lovage (or substitute parsley from your herb garden), leaves only, minced
sprig of fresh mint (bonus points for wild mint, we couldn't find any), leaves only, minced
2-4 spring onions (2 if they're large, 4 if they're small), finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed
salt to taste
a goodly grind of black pepper


Pre-soak bulgar:  In a non-reactive bowl combine bulgar with the juice of 1/2 lemon plus enough water to make up 1 c. liquid.  Let sit overnight (or if you didn't plan ahead, give it at least 2 hours for the bulgur to absorb the water).

Combine all remaining ingredients with soaked bulgur (don't forget the other lemon, juiced).  Let sit for at least an hour before eating to let the flavours combine.  Serve at room temperature.  

Another excellent side for lamb... we may have a meal here... 

~~~

The lovely Bella did some seaside foraging of her own while we were out gathering lovage.  She's rather fond of
getting getting some extra calcium by scavenging crab shells discarded by gulls.