Winter Solstice Salad

 I garden in the southern hemisphere and it is winter right now, although we’ve had high temperatures.

Salads in winter are not “everyone’s cup of tea” but last night I prepared and ate a gorgeous Solstice Salad made entirely from my tiny vegetable patch in a community garden.

·         Beetroot leaves

·         Blood vein sorrel

·         Chervil

·         Corn salad

·         Mint

·         Mizuna

·         Mustard

·         NZ spinach tips

·         Radicchio

·         Rainbow chard

·         Sorrel

·         Upland cress

·         Water cress

 

Plus olive oil, lemon juice and lashings of ground pepper.

Burdock

Some large impressive leaves turned up uninvited in my vegetable plot. A fellow gardener identified them as Burdock. They grew into huge, grand plants with impressive tall, prickly seeds.

Harvested, the root was so long it didnt leave the earth without snapping off. Ugly too. It still won a prize at a 'Grow and Show' competition 'unusual' category and then was sacrificed as kinpira gobō.

Burdock roots can apparently grow to a metre long. The root has a reputation as a general herbal remedy and is one of the best blood purifiers.

Burdock leaves are beautiful, grey and furry and the young stems are a soft pink/purple colour. Immature flower stalks can be eaten too. The plants are architectural and grand. Like globe artichokes, they would look lovely in a flower garden. They are related to the artichoke.

The prickly seedheads of burdock are noted for easily catching on to fur and clothing – great for seed dispersal. After taking his dog for a walk one day in the early 1940s, George de Mestral a Swiss inventor, became curious about the seeds of the burdock plant that had attached themselves to his clothes and to his dog's fur. Under a microscope, he noticed the hook-and-loop system that the seeds use to hitchhike on passing animals aiding seed dispersal, and he realised that the same approach could be used to join other things together. The result was Velcro.

The Royal Horticultural Society defines burdock thus – Arctium lappa - Arctium is from the Greek arktos, (bear) after the rough coated fruits, The common name “burdock” refers to the fruits (burs) , and the large dock like leaves. Lappa is from the Latin lappare, “to seize”, and describes how the burs cling to passing animals.

Shakespeare called it a weed.

Crown’d with rank fumitor and furrow-weeds,
With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo flowers,
Darnel and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn.
- King Lear

Burdock is cultivated as a vegetable in Japan where it is known as gobo. A popular Japanese dish is kinpira gobō - julienned or shredded burdock root and carrot, braised with soy sauce, sugar, mirin and/or sake, and sesame oil. I tried it. It was earthy and sweet. The burdock root smelt like Jerusalem artichoke when cut.

Dandelion and burdock is a soft drink that has long been popular in the United Kingdom.

The 100 Mile Diet

Foodiot

I’ve volunteered to take part in a ‘The 100 Mile Diet’ experiment for a month. Everything that I eat must consist of ingredients sourced from within a 100 mile radius of my Auckland home.  I note that ironically the first day of this quest is ‘April Fool’s Day’.

A tiny but productive vegetable plot at a community garden is my veggie garden and I grow microgreens and herbs on my second floor apartment balcony. Other fruit, veggies and eggs come from a farmers market which has a rule of only selling produce from within a 200 km radius. That makes a distance discrepancy of a few kms...I’m not worried about that. I don’t buy much other produce from the farmers market, although they have one type of cheese, mussels, pork, bread and honey. These products are good but high priced ... they don’t fit my budget.

I’ve borrowed the book ‘The 100- Mile Diet, A year of local eating’  by Canadian authors Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon from the library and see that Anthony Bourdain endorses this book with ‘I think they’re nuts.’  I’m up to page 188 and the authors are finding the challenge tough to say the least. Uh, oh, what have I let myself in for?

I’m allowed five exemptions and after much thought I choose tea, flour, yeast, yoghurt and wine. I also invoke the ‘social exemption’ clause so that I don’t subject prospective hosts to this madness. Salt and pepper are thrown in as a bonus.

It’s dawning on me that this is not as simple as I first thought. Did I think I was previously living sustainably? Now the prospect of packing away my spices, soy sauce, mirrin, palm sugar, chilli sauce, fish sauce, anchovies, and rose water is daunting. No pulses either ... I’ll miss cous cous, quinoa, noodles and rice. Is it spuds for a month?

I feel smug that I’ve been growing turmeric, ginger, galangal, and myoga ginger in my allotment - that may add some fresh spice to my life, when I decide what to do with them. I’ll do something with my fresh horseradish too to add some flavour to dishes. I have a lone pineapple plant too, but it shows no sign of fruit. I’m not keen about the prospect of veggie ‘baby food’ and eggs for a whole month. I’ve got two days to sort myself out.

A jar of olives I pickled a couple of years ago languishes in my fridge. They were not great but now take on a new and improved aura. A friend gave me three litres of gorgeous Spanish Olive oil; it’s been pushed to the back of the pantry. Buying costly, albeit good, kiwi olive oil for cooking seems extravagant. Butter maybe, and blow the cholesterol? But where do the butter ingredients come from?

I keep the seeds from a pumpkin and set them out to dry (I think the pumpkin seeds I buy are imported) but they look like big tough inedible pellets. How does one get the little seed out of each tough coat?  I will make my own bread; I’ve found a recipe that includes pumpkin and sunflower seeds. I have given up muesli as I believe the grains and dried fruit are all imported. I eat very little sugar and will buy local honey for the two teaspoons in my bread mixture.

In the supermarket I read more labels than I ever have before but they seem vague. Like milk that says ‘Fonterra brands, Takanini Auckland’ but doesn’t mention where the cows grazed; or a chicken marked ‘marketed by Pams products Mt Roskill Auckland’ but I wonder where the chicken resided. And on the chicken bag ‘Made in New Zealand from local and imported ingredients’ – maybe they’re talking about the plastic bag? This is getting complicated. I ask the supermarket meat counter assistant. He looks at me as if I’m speaking Swahili.

Driving to Northland I pass a crude roadside sign saying ‘Home Butcher’. I visualise gruesome entrails hanging in a garage and motor on. In the supermarket packaged meat says nothing about the birthright of the meat. A food co-op that interests me says ‘pretty much all our dry goods etc. are from far away’... I may lose weight...

Watch this space !