Cabbage, weeds, a trio of homestead vinegars and other harvests, and vegan beer brats! It's a wild slaw celebration - 3 kinds of cabbages, 3 kinds of coleslaw. One plate of deliciousness!
Getting My Ingredients Together
I struggled with this round of the Steemit Iron Chef. I'm a big fan of cabbage, but all I could envision is homestead-style cabbage. Not anything elevated. But then, I just started wandering around in my yard, collecting weeds. I brought them into the kitchen and then it all made sense.
It's still late winter, but I'm finding some good wild greens out in my yard. And I've got a few things put by, too, from last year.
- The Bittercress is coming on strong. It's one of the earliest edible weeds of the year and is a relative of cabbage.
- Almost the last apple of the ones I foraged last fall and used in my Wild Apple Snow for the 2017 Steemit Iron Chef contest.
- Young curly dock leaves are just emerging from their perennial rootstocks.
- Homemade raisins from the seedless green grapes that have grown on this homestead for decades and decades.
- Wild chives or wild garlic, whichever common name you prefer. It is a garlic, Allium vinale, but it has the form and taste of chives in the winter.
- Homegrown sunflower seeds.
- Fennel leaves.
- Hedge mustard - it's a cabbage relative, too.
I'm glad I made these different vinegars last year! On the left is a vinegar I use to pickle hop shoots in the early spring. You can see how to make it in my video - How to Pickle Hop Shoots. I ate all the hop shoots, they are so good! But I saved the pickle juice and added the inner parts of Yucca flowers and Cat's Tongue mushrooms. The little Yucca flowers are floating in the left bowl. Here's my post about harvesting them. They are refrigerator pickles, not preserved. But it all takes on a peppercorn kick - so good!
In the middle is my Spruce Tree Balsamic Vinegar. It has such a wonderful spruce flavor and aroma! It's a blue ribbon prize winner from my local county fair.
On the right is my Elephant Garlic Flower vinegar. Every year, I allow some of my Elephant Garlic to flower, because the flowerheads are so huge, the bees love them, and I can eat the flowers. This vinegar smells just like Garlic Bread. It's amazing! I added dried Redbud flowers to the vinegar, too. I harvest a lot of Redbud flowers in the spring.
Serving It Up!
What Do You Think?
- Do you like flavored vinegars?
- Do you forage for any wild food?
- Would you eat my wild cole slaw trio?
- Which one is your favorite?
I eat a lot of wild plants and show you how, because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wild places.
I would like Steemit to be the premier site for Foraging on the Internet! If you have any thoughts about foraging, or experiences to share, write a post and be sure to use the Foraging tag. And check out the @foraging-trail to see curated quality posts about foraging. Happy Foraging!
Thanks @progressivechef for creating the Steemit Iron Chef contest series!
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Plant List
- Bittercress - Cardamine hirsuta - tender leaves and stems
- Hedge mustard - Sisymbrium officinale - young leaves
- Yucca - Yucca gloriosa - flower centers
- Sunflower - Helianthus annuus - seeds
- Curly Dock - Rumex crispus - young leaves
- Eastern Redbud - Cercis canadensis - flowers
- Elephant garlic - Allium ampeloprasum - flowers preserved in vinegar
- Fennel - Foeniculum vulgare - young leaves
- Wild chives - Allium vinale - young leaves
