The harvest of early spring greens from the garden continues. I had always heard that you can eat dandelion greens, so I picked some of the rocket-shaped weeds growing near the pathway inside the community garden. I felt more comfortable eating these than the ones growing along the sidewalk in our neighborhood, watered by who knows how many dogs each day. Also, my plot had some overwintered beet and turnip plants that were clearly not developing harvestable roots, so to make space for new plantings I picked a bunch with the idea of eating their tender leaves rather than give up on them entirely. Now, how to eat them?
As I was pondering whether to steam, saute, or boil, another project was ready to harvest at this point: broccoli sprouts. These had been growing in my kitchen for 5 days and were now 1/2 inch long. Just needed a few hours of indirect sunlight on the counter to "green up" and we were in business. Salad seemed the way to go from here.
A couple green onions and parsley sprigs from the garden, a few radishes from the store, as the garden ones weren't quite ready, a handful of lightly toasted sunflower seeds, and a chunk of feta cheese, and it had all the makings of a potentially lovely salad.
To offset what I feared would be the bitter taste of the greens, I quickly made a strawberry vinaigrette. The strawberries were frozen, as our plants have yet to even flower, but when a heaping cup of them was thawed, then blended with 1/4 cup each of red wine vinegar, olive oil and safflower oil, plus pinches of sugar, salt and white pepper, they made a dressing to rival even my daughter's favorite raspberry dressing from Trader Joe's.
A burning question remained, however: what were the leaves going to taste like??? As it turned out, (in my most ridiculous British accent), they wahn't bahd, ahctually! Bitterness wasn't really an issue, thanks to the semi-sweet dressing and the salty cheese, but texturewise it was nothing like a Bibb or a romaine. More chewy, thanks to the thicker stems, but when I cut them up with my handy kitchen scissors, they were easier to eat. We all enjoyed the salad, and felt good knowing that our veins were now coursing with vitamin A and lots of other wonderful vitamins and minerals.
You brought back memories of going to the battery in Charleston with my grandparents to pick dandelions when I was small. When we returned home, the greens were boiled in a small amount of water. My grandfather loved to drink the water from the pot saying it was good for regularity. The greens were then dressed with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper. We ate them with big chunks of my grandmotheer's bread and feta cheese. Heaven!
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