orWine Tastings in the Comfort of you own villa or B&B while on holiday in Tuscany or Liguria

To book an informative and fun wine tasting whilst holidaying in Italy or arrange for a wild food walk in your area contact me on tuscanytipple at libero dot it or check out my Facebook page

Total Pageviews

Saturday 6 February 2010

Wild Food of the Month: February



Here comes No. 2 of the series wild food of the month. This month I'm featuring the primrose:

This photo was taken last year, as they are not in flower this year yet. I learnt about the edibility of this pretty herald of spring from afore-mentioned calendar from our local hardware store. It says both leaves and flowers are edible and suggests either throwing them into a salad or boiling them briefly and serve with olive oil, lemon juice and a bit of salt.

Now both these suggestions seem to be the standard in Italy for anything edible from the wild. If in doubt, add to salad or serve with olive oil and lemon juice. It does go on and further suggest adding the flowers to soups or an omelette, however I was after something a bit different, so googled for other recipes involving primrose.

During my search I came across this brilliant blog called "The Old Foodie" (http://www.theoldfoodie.com/) by an English woman in Australia. She has made it her mission to find a traditional food / menu for each day of the year. This became a bit of an obsession by the sounds of it and she has collected 100's of historical recipes and anecdotes in the process.

According to her, 5 February is primrose day and she published a couple of recipes for that. I couldn't collect primroses yesterday, because it rained all day. The recipe that I will have to try, but can't do quite yet is called Spring Tart and is taken from the Cook's and Confectioner's Dictionary from the year 1733. It goes like this:

"To make a Spring Tart.Gather such Buds, in the Spring of the Year, that are not bitter, also the Leaves of Primroses, Violets, and Strawberries; take also a little young Spinage, boil them, drain them in a Colander; then chop them very small, and boil them over again in Cream; add to them Naples Bisket grated, and so many Yolks and Whites of Eggs as will make the Cream very thick, colour all green with the Juice of Spinage; season with Salt, Nutmeg, Cinnamon and Sugar, and bake it in Puff-paste or otherwayes."

The main reason I haven't tried this yet is that the violets aren't quite there yet. I saw one single solitary one today. Saying that, it does say the leaves, doesn't it? "Naples Bisket" I'm told is a type of sponge biscuit. So shall try this out very soon and let you know the result and quantities used.

For today we shall use some with everything else we gathered on todays wild food gathering expedition in a wholesome soup involving potatoes, lentils plus wild chicory...


...wild onions, daisies, borage, stingy nettles, salad burnett aaannd... I think that's all. Anyway, just to give you an idea of our walk today. After 24 hours of rain the air had cleared beautifully and the views were magnificient. It was one of the few days in the year when we could see Corsica clearly in the distance.

This a view back to our village:


and that one over towards the sea and the Gulf of La Spezia.

Unfortunately the photo doesn't do reality any justice, but it gives you an idea.

12 comments:

Ayak said...

This is so interesting. You are really opening my eyes to all the wild flowers and plants, and what they can be used for...the excellent photos help too.

Mr. H. said...

You are making me feel stupid Heiko.:) Why am I not aware that primroses, that we grow, are edible? Now I do. We have a couple growing on a window ledge, I will have to sneak a leaf when the wife is not looking.

I love your foraged meal, my type of food.

GetSoiled said...

That is great info K! I love to add flowers to salads and had no idea primroses were edible...

PS: whenever you get tired of that view and need a change I can trade with you. Beyond our garden you will see angry teenagers, rappers & cars speeding. What? Think about it? What's there to think about??? ☺

GetSoiled said...

PS: feel free to email me if you'd like help with that "neat link thing" and I can send you instructions...it is quite easy.

Later!

Heiko said...

Mr. H, Nothing to feel stupid about. I reckon if anyone were to make a list of all plants, the list of non-edible ones would probably be shorter than the one for edibles. And if you made a list of plants with no use to humans at all it would probably fit onto the back of a postage stamp.

Get Soiled, I'll think about that swap. I'm particularly interested in those angry teenagers. Ours here seem all very polite.

You might get an e-mail re. technical questions. I should be able to work it out myself, but I never have the patience to work things out unless they are essential.

jann huizenga said...

What beautiful views you have! Thanks for writing this series. I live down in Sicily and really hope to get more comfortable foraging for my dinners...

Kate said...

Goodness, the things we learn from each other on blogs! Hello, I am Kate from Australia, and here you are, a Dutchman in Italy telling me about an Englishwoman in Australia eating primroses.Wonderful and its lovely to have found your blog. I have put it on my list.
http://hillsandplainsseedsavers.blogspot.com/

Laura said...

I just came across your blog today - I love it adding you to my blog roll - great idea this series on edible wildfoods we gather a lot of wild leaves from the mountains here in France and last year I went on a walk with a botanist with a big interest in edibles stuff it was fascinating so much we can actually eat growing all around us.

Dirty Girl Gardening said...

Reminds me of the book stalking the wild asparagus... great stuff!

Cherrye at My Bella Vita said...

Ha. Who knew? Thanks for the FYI.

Heiko said...

I've been neglecting things a bit the last few days, sorry. Time for another post and thank you for your comments to all me new readers, you can talk dirty to me any time...:-). Cherrye, what's FYI? Fill You In? Filthy Yoghurt Invasion? Sorry never quite got the hang of abveri... abrive... ?? Come to think of it long words give me trouble too.

travesti said...

very nice blog