For the adventurous, weeds and other wild plants offer an unusual resource, not only for cooking, but also for making cosmetics and remedies and dyeing. Charmian Smith talks to Johanna Knox, the author of The Forager's Treasury.
When Johanna Knox was a child, she buried some apples in a plastic bag in the garden to preserve them, fantasising that she would bring them out, perfectly preserved, in the middle of winter and surprise her family.
''I'd learnt about underground storage,'' she explains.
''Dad wondered why some of his apples were missing, then got a fright one day when he was digging in his garden and put his spade right through the bag of apples!'' she said with a laugh.
Her book, A Forager's Treasury: A New Zealand guide to finding and using wild plants, has just been published. In it she gives a wealth of advice and information about wild plants you can find around New Zealand and how to preserve and use them, not only for cooking, but also for cosmetics and dyeing and even as remedies for headaches, cuts, bruises and other ills.''
When I was a teenager, I fancied myself as a bit witchy. I liked that whole idea of mixing up potions - body care and cosmetic things,'' she said.
Her parents were keen gardeners with an orchard as well as a vegetable garden, and there was a focus on nature and the environment in her family. Being scientists they tended to have a ''research-and-experiment'' approach, she said.
"Plants are everywhere so there's always plenty of material to experiment with. I was quite careful what I gathered. I knew what I could and couldn't. I guess my parents drilled this into me. I had a lot of books about herbalism and cooking with herbs, and making crafts and cosmetics with herbs. That fascinated me right into my teenage years.''
However, it wasn't until she went flatting and, later, when she had children that she became interested in cooking and nutrition and she returned to foraging, having given it up in her late teens and early 20s, she said.
"It seemed to be an activity that was in accord with the way all my other belief systems and viewpoints were heading. In terms of nutrition, wild plants tend to be quite high and it gives you an appreciation for the environment around you.''
She believes there's a growing interest in foraging.
"I think it's a sign of the times, because there's this huge backlash going on towards commodification of various resources and commercialisation and industrialisation in terms of the environment and where that's leading us - climate change and peak oil, though people aren't talking about that so much at the moment. I think there's a real yearning to go back to sustainable ways of doing things.''
How much she forages for herself and her family varies with the season and what's happening in her life - and how poor she is. A bit of extra time and less money will take her outside to gather all sorts of things. Many she makes into fritters, which her children like and are good for bulking out a meal. Needless to say, when she was writing the book, they ate a great deal of foraged food.
The plants she lists vary from elderberry and ice plant, through to various types of wild spinach and greens, including onion weed, dandelion, clover and fennel, scented pelargoniums, pine needles and fruits such as blackberries and crab apples.
Some native plants, such as cabbage tree (hearts), manuka, flax, hen-and-chicken fern, kawakawa, horopito and some seaweeds, were used by Maori.
Some plants, like the wild brassicas, escaped from gardens and reverted to their wild forms over a few generations, and many are descended from cabbage, turnip or radish. Others, such as apples, plums and citrus, may have grown from cores or pips people threw away.
Although she planned to include non-plant foragables, such as snails and bugs, there was no space.
The publishers have not included an index, which reduces the usefulness of the book, but Knox says she will put one on the adjunct website, foragerstreasury.blogspot.co.nz, that can be printed. The website is also a reference to provide more images to help identify wild plants as the book has only a few line drawings, she says.
"It's really difficult to identify wild plants you don't already know from one single source, so we thought if we do a website at the same time that has plenty of photographs and plenty of links to other photographs on other websites, that will give people a lot more information.
"It would be rare for me to figure out what a plant was and to identify it from a single image. I think you need to get several views of it to match it up, so if I'm talking to people I always encourage them to get someone to show them what a plant is because you can't beat that. If not, you need to cross-reference it and find several different sources of information and images about it.''
Un-palak paneer
Palak means spinach so I've called this ''un-palak paneer'' to acknowledge that it uses wild greens instead of cultivated spinach. There are many recipes for palak paneer, but this is adapted from an Indian cookbook, Mallika Basu's spiritedly urban Miss Masala: Real Indian Cooking for Busy Living (Collins, 2010).
Ingredients
2 cups cubed paneer (firm, fresh cheese) or tofu
salt
½ tsp chilli powder or flakes
oil
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 finger of ginger, peeled and finely grated
4 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp garam masala
2-4 cups chopped foraged greens packed firm
½-1 cup water or ½-1 cup peeled tomatoes
Method
Put paneer or tofu in a bowl and sprinkle with salt and chilli. Set aside.
Pour oil into a heavy-bottomed frying pan over medium heat.
Fry paneer or tofu until golden brown all over, turning as required.
Return browned cubes to bowl.
Add onion to the pan and cook until it begins to become translucent and slightly browned.
Add ginger and cook 1 more minute, stirring.
Add garlic and cook 1 more minute, stirring.
Add cumin and half of the garam masala, and stir.
Add foraged greens and stir until they have wilted.
Stir in the water or tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes.
Place the contents of the pan in a food processor and blend, or use a hand-held blender and process until smooth.
Return mixture to the pan and add paneer or tofu and the remaining garam masala.
Simmer for 5-10 minutes.
Add salt to taste and serve with rice.
Variations
• Chenopodium, mallow leaves, miner's lettuce, borage leaves, nettle, dead-nettles, cleavers, plantain, a few nasturtium leaves or flowers and chickweed will all work with this recipe.
• You can also use bitter greens like Brassicaceae, dandelion, puha and other DYCs [damn yellow composites, i.e. with dandelion-like flowers], but you may want to pre-boil them first to remove some of the bitterness.
• If you don't have a blender, chop the greens very finely before adding.
Weed pakoras
I used to think this was a meal for two, until I had a teenage boy. Now I would say it makes a meal for one hungry teenager, or a snack for two. Chickpeas are known in Hindi and Urdu as chana and in the Americas as garbanzo beans. Serve pakoras with yoghurt and/or relish.
Ingredients
1 cup chickpea flour
1½ tsp curry powder or cumin
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
a big pinch of chilli powder (optional)
2 cups finely chopped foraged greens, loosely packed down
2 Tbsp grated onion
water, if required
oil
Method
Whisk dry ingredients together.
Add greens and grated onion.
Mix to a very thick, dry batter. If necessary, add just enough water, a few drops, to moisten the mixture and to get it to hold together.
Heat 1cm of oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan over medium-high heat.
Dollop in small spoonfuls of batter, or use wet hands to mould into small patties and drop them into the hot oil.
When golden brown on the underside, turn each patty and fry on the other side.
When patties are browned on both sides, remove from the oil and place on a paper towel to drain.
Variations
• These foraged greens will work well on their own or in combination with each other: parsley, tutae koau, wild celery, onion weed, nettle leaves, chenopodiums, New Zealand and beach spinach, puha, dandelion and other DYC greens, sea lettuce, young plantain leaves, young cleavers leaves, borage leaves, dead-nettle leaves, purslane, miner's lettuce, chickweed and wild Brassicaceae.
Tips
• If using very bitter greens, such as older dandelion leaves or wild mustard greens, you may want to boil them first for 2-5 minutes in a large volume of water, then leave them to drain well before chopping and adding to the batter. You may need to squeeze some of the water out, so your batter is not too wet or runny.
• Recipes from A Forager's Treasury: A New Zealand guide to finding and using wild plants by Johanna Knox.
Tips for foraging
Apart from being sure to identify plants correctly and being aware of polluted run-off, and, of course, respecting private property and reserves, these are some of Knox's tips for foraging. - • Harvest from places where the plants are growing lushly. Bitterness concentrates in slow-growing plants The choicest foragables will often be in the fastest-growing patches.
• The newest leaves and stems on a plant will generally be more tender and delicious than older ones.
• Avoid stunted, damaged or diseased plants.
• Cut greens to just above the leaf nodes to encourage more growth.
Read it
A Forager's Treasury: A New Zealand guide to finding and using wild plants by Johanna Knox is published by Allen and Unwin. The adjunct website is foragerstreasury.blogspot.co.nz
