The weather was fantastic over the weekend and like many people with gardens or allotment plots, I was out working in mine. Between the two of us, we got loads done including a lot of weeding including dandelions.
The potatoes have gone in. I have sowed many seeds. The seeds I sowed two weeks ago have germinated, tomatoes, courgettes, chard, broad beans and some have not. I will up-date my Sowing The Seeds page to let you know what I am attempting to grow this year, but today, I am sharing my dinner plate of vegan meatballs on a bed of wilted dandelion leaves.
I was inspired by a recipe for Fried Dandelion Greens with Lemon and Garlic Potatoes I saw in Street Vegan by Adam Sobel. My food presentation is not good, a little corny I think but the finished dish was delicious. The meatballs were zinging and the spicy herby coating infuse the crispy brown exterior of the veggie meatballs. The sauteed dandelion greens were not at all bitter, but the flavour was completely transformed.
Other Wild Week Recipes on Allotment2Kitchen
Wild Weed 'Eccles' Cake
Wild Weed Tortilla
Stinging Nettle Hummus
Stinging Nettle Gnocchi
Stinging Nettle Risotto
Foraging Eyes
Last year I think I overdosed on wild garlic, not literally - just in a culinary sense. I dubbed my two week wild garlic culinary binge as The Wild Garlic Chronicles, even cheekily Wild Garlic Girl. So as you can imagine, I have been a little hesitant foraging for some this year, but whilst driving through a narrow lane a week or so back, I spotted some growing and decided to return to forage for some. On return the wild garlic was shooting up its edible flower buds like firework sparklers.
Its funny, around this time I struggled to find many Wild Garlic recipes in cookbooks and on the Internet, but this year - wow - there has been an explosion both the Internet and blogosphere and you can find lots of ideas and inspiration for your foraged wild garlic. Other than the usual pestos, soups, breads, pasta dishes, potato cakes and egg dishes like frittata, souffles and quiches, you will find it in scones, quinoa patties to deep or shallow fried fritters, added to 'curry style' dishes, as well as enhancing traditional recipes like basic pastry, coleslaw, mayonnaise, aioli and salsa verdes . Anyway, this was going to be a plain old 'Wild Garlic Tortilla', but having briefly visited my Dads allotment a couple of days ago I picked some wild stinging nettle and in my own garden some young dandelion leaves, so I decided to add some of these to the tortilla. I wanted a little more texture too, so in place of my usual garden peas, I also threw in some cooked chickpeas.
I garnished the completed Wild Weed Tortilla with wild garlic flowers for optional extra heat, for those who dared for a little extra bite.
