Indian Country Today Media Network
3 Amazing Wild Foods That Shouldn’t Scare You
http://bit.ly/1dSmU0v
3 Amazing Wild Foods That Shouldn’t Scare You
http://bit.ly/1dSmU0v
Pop Wild Rice and Eat Stinging Nettles Without Getting Burned
How to Pop Wild Rice, Step 1
Get some manomin.
(Mary Annette Pember)
How to Pop Wild Rice, Step 2
Pop the rice, but only for a few seconds.
(Mary Annette Pember)
How to Pop Wild Rice, Step 1
Get some manomin.
(Mary Annette Pember)
How to Pop Wild Rice, Step 2
Pop the rice, but only for a few seconds.
(Mary Annette Pember)
How to Pop Wild Rice, Step 3
Drain the rice.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Drain the rice.
(Mary Annette Pember)
How to Eat Wild Rice, Step 4
Put the rice in a bowl.
(Mary Annette Pember)
How to Eat Wild Rice, Step 5Eat the rice!
(Mary Annette Pember)
Put the rice in a bowl.
(Mary Annette Pember)
How to Eat Wild Rice, Step 5Eat the rice!
(Mary Annette Pember)
Popped Wild Rice
Close view of popped wild rice.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Close view of popped wild rice.
(Mary Annette Pember)
How to Cook Burdocks
Hayden Binning, 9 holds a burdock leaf.
\(Mary Annette Pember)
Peeling BurdocksPeeling the outer stem of the burdock
(Mary Annette Pember)
Hayden Binning, 9 holds a burdock leaf.
\(Mary Annette Pember)
Peeling BurdocksPeeling the outer stem of the burdock
(Mary Annette Pember)
Burdock Burrs, or Fruit
Fruit or burrs of the burdock
(Mary Annette Pember)
Fruit or burrs of the burdock
(Mary Annette Pember)
Detail of Wild Hazelnuts
Detail of wild hazelnuts
(Mary Annette Pember)
Cracked HazelnutsSummit participants help separate shells from meats of wild hazelnuts.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Detail of wild hazelnuts
(Mary Annette Pember)
Cracked HazelnutsSummit participants help separate shells from meats of wild hazelnuts.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Hazelnut Milk
Cooking the hazelnut milk.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Cooking the hazelnut milk.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Stinging Nettles
Cooks carefully tear away stinging nettle leaves from their stalks.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Stinging Nettle SoupStinging nettles leaves get incorporated into soup for lunch.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Cooks carefully tear away stinging nettle leaves from their stalks.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Stinging Nettle SoupStinging nettles leaves get incorporated into soup for lunch.
(Mary Annette Pember)
Quote:
By:
Mary Annette Pember
July 22, 2013
The Wild Food Summit on the White Earth Ojibwe reservation was held in the world’s biggest classroom, the outdoors. (RELATED: Learning to Wildcraft: Foraging and Feasting on the White Earth Reservation)
Here are a few recipes and descriptions of some of the foods that Summit-goers prepared:
Popped Wild Rice (Manomin)
I’ve tasted many examples of popped wild rice. Unfortunately, none of them have tasted very good. Now I know why.
According to Bill Paulson, White Earth Ojibwe, if wild rice doesn’t pop within a few seconds, it isn’t’ going to pop, it will only burn. I now realize that all the popped wild rice I have tried has been burned.
Paulson, a presenter at the Summit and director of facilities at the White Earth Tribal and Community College says that rice from Nett Lake in Minnesota seems to be the best popping rice but that any wild rice will work as long as it is not over parched or too dry. Larger kernels seem to work best, he notes.
Directions for popping:
Heat about 2 inches of high temperature oil, such as peanut or grape seed oil, in a deep cast iron fry pan to 400 degrees.
Place about 1.4 cups of dry uncooked rice in a small sieve or tea strainer and submerge the rice in the hot oil. Rice should pop within seconds. Quickly remove the rice to a bowl and continue popping rice until you have enough for a treat. Add a little maple syrup and eat! The rice kernels pop up to about the size of a maggot, notes Paulson.
“This was made as a seasonal treat. I think that people stumbled upon it by accident while parching rice,” Paulson observed.
“It’s not something that you make a lot of and store; it’s best to make it and eat it right away,’ he suggests.
Burdocks a.k.a. “Stickers”
Burdock (Arctium) is considered a weed in North America but is used as a blood purifier in Asia where it is also eaten as a vegetable. This common plant has large leaves and a woody stalk and is known by its distinctive burrs-like fruits that attach to pant legs and imbed themselves in animal hair.
Laura Reeves, a botanist from Gardenton, Manitoba demonstrated how to cut and peel away the fibrous outer layer of burdock stalk to expose its tender inner celery like flesh. These can then be chopped and added to a stir-fry. They have a delicate flavor and reminded me of asparagus. According to Reeves, the root can also be eaten and tastes like lotus root. She suggested harvesting and eating burdock stems earlier in the growing season before they get too tall and woody.
See pictures of how to peel burdock stems.
Stinging Nettles (urtica dioica) are higher in iron than spinach and high in calcium and other minerals according to Reeves. The plant also has medicinal uses as a diuretic and treatment for painful muscles and joints. To avoid the distinctive sting, she suggests wearing gloves when harvesting the plants early in the growing season. Cooks at the Summit, however, didn’t wear gloves as they removed the nettles leaves from the stems, suggesting that a quick sure tear was the best method to separate the leaves without getting “stung.” See photos:
Think of the nettle leaves like spinach when gathering and cooking since they reduce in size considerably once cooked. The leaves must be cooked in order take away the sting and can be substituted for spinach in many dishes. Summit cooks used the nettle leaves as a thickener in a delicious chicken soup. Reeves suggested making stinging nettle pesto. According to edibleportland.com, Italians make nettle pesto, “pesto d’urtica,”
3 cups raw stinging nettles
3 medium garlic cloves
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Parmesan cheese, finely grated
1. Using tongs or gloves, measure 3 tightly packed cups of raw young nettle tops. Add them to salted boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes, drain immediately and then place the greens in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Cool, strain and squeeze dry using a tea towel to remove every drop of moisture that you can.
2. Coarsely chop the nettles to make about 1 cup. Add them to the bowl of a food processor with the garlic cloves and pine nuts. While pulsing, slowly add the olive oil, 1 tablespoon at a time. Season to taste with salt, pepper and Parmesan cheese. You might add a small knob of soft butter and a squeeze of lemon juice if it needs brightening. Blend once more to incorporate the final additions.
Makes 1 generous cup
Wild Hazelnut Milk
Sam Thayer, nationally known wild food instructor and researcher, and author of The Foragers Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting and Preparing Edible Wild Plants, prepared milk from wild hazelnuts. The hazelnut is a perennial shrub from the birch family and grows from three to ten feet high in open areas of the forest on sandy soil. Thayer suggests that after harvesting, the nuts should be dried on a tarp in the attic or dry place for about 3 days before shelling. Wild hazelnuts are small, about 1.2 the size of cultivated hazelnuts and surrounded by a tough shell, so shelling them can be a slow process. Thayer, however, had a handy device called a “Dave Built,” nutcracker that made the process much faster. After the shells are cracked and separated from the nutmeats, the meats can be ground into a paste with a mortar and pestle and slowly mixed with water. Thayer, however, uses a Vitamix blender, which takes about 15-20 seconds to produce a smooth paste, slowly adding water to desired consistency. He suggests cooking the milk in order to reduce the nuts gas producing effects. Thayer slowly boiled the milk until it began to foam. The resulting foam can be scooped off and used as a spread on bread or fruit. He emphasized that preparing hazelnut milk is a process rather than a recipe. He added maple syrup to the warm milk and served cups of the delicious drink all around. He explained that the milk can be refrigerated after cooling but warned that it doesn’t have a very long shelf life and should be used within a day or so. According to Thayer, wild hazelnuts are about 20 percent protein and 40 percent oil.
Summit participants also ate lambs quarters, a wild leafy green (chenopodium album), served raw in salads, cattail roots served pickled, basswood leaves as wraps for cheese, wild venison and lots of wild rice manomin.
“Wild rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner?!” asked Mike Larson. “It doesn’t get much better as far as I’m concerned.”
“There was so much to learn at the Summit! I am looking forward to experimenting with wild food gathering and preparation,” noted Lavonne Schildst. She also enjoyed learning the Ojibwe cultural approach to gathering wild foods and caring for the land. “In the classic white approach to nature, you go in and take what you want, but at the Summit they showed us how to be respectful and grateful for the gifts of the earth.”
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/gallery/photo/pop-wild-rice-and-eat-stinging-nettles-without-getting-burned-150529
By:
Mary Annette Pember
July 22, 2013
The Wild Food Summit on the White Earth Ojibwe reservation was held in the world’s biggest classroom, the outdoors. (RELATED: Learning to Wildcraft: Foraging and Feasting on the White Earth Reservation)
Here are a few recipes and descriptions of some of the foods that Summit-goers prepared:
Popped Wild Rice (Manomin)
I’ve tasted many examples of popped wild rice. Unfortunately, none of them have tasted very good. Now I know why.
According to Bill Paulson, White Earth Ojibwe, if wild rice doesn’t pop within a few seconds, it isn’t’ going to pop, it will only burn. I now realize that all the popped wild rice I have tried has been burned.
Paulson, a presenter at the Summit and director of facilities at the White Earth Tribal and Community College says that rice from Nett Lake in Minnesota seems to be the best popping rice but that any wild rice will work as long as it is not over parched or too dry. Larger kernels seem to work best, he notes.
Directions for popping:
Heat about 2 inches of high temperature oil, such as peanut or grape seed oil, in a deep cast iron fry pan to 400 degrees.
Place about 1.4 cups of dry uncooked rice in a small sieve or tea strainer and submerge the rice in the hot oil. Rice should pop within seconds. Quickly remove the rice to a bowl and continue popping rice until you have enough for a treat. Add a little maple syrup and eat! The rice kernels pop up to about the size of a maggot, notes Paulson.
“This was made as a seasonal treat. I think that people stumbled upon it by accident while parching rice,” Paulson observed.
“It’s not something that you make a lot of and store; it’s best to make it and eat it right away,’ he suggests.
Burdocks a.k.a. “Stickers”
Burdock (Arctium) is considered a weed in North America but is used as a blood purifier in Asia where it is also eaten as a vegetable. This common plant has large leaves and a woody stalk and is known by its distinctive burrs-like fruits that attach to pant legs and imbed themselves in animal hair.
Laura Reeves, a botanist from Gardenton, Manitoba demonstrated how to cut and peel away the fibrous outer layer of burdock stalk to expose its tender inner celery like flesh. These can then be chopped and added to a stir-fry. They have a delicate flavor and reminded me of asparagus. According to Reeves, the root can also be eaten and tastes like lotus root. She suggested harvesting and eating burdock stems earlier in the growing season before they get too tall and woody.
See pictures of how to peel burdock stems.
Stinging Nettles (urtica dioica) are higher in iron than spinach and high in calcium and other minerals according to Reeves. The plant also has medicinal uses as a diuretic and treatment for painful muscles and joints. To avoid the distinctive sting, she suggests wearing gloves when harvesting the plants early in the growing season. Cooks at the Summit, however, didn’t wear gloves as they removed the nettles leaves from the stems, suggesting that a quick sure tear was the best method to separate the leaves without getting “stung.” See photos:
Think of the nettle leaves like spinach when gathering and cooking since they reduce in size considerably once cooked. The leaves must be cooked in order take away the sting and can be substituted for spinach in many dishes. Summit cooks used the nettle leaves as a thickener in a delicious chicken soup. Reeves suggested making stinging nettle pesto. According to edibleportland.com, Italians make nettle pesto, “pesto d’urtica,”
3 cups raw stinging nettles
3 medium garlic cloves
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Parmesan cheese, finely grated
1. Using tongs or gloves, measure 3 tightly packed cups of raw young nettle tops. Add them to salted boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes, drain immediately and then place the greens in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Cool, strain and squeeze dry using a tea towel to remove every drop of moisture that you can.
2. Coarsely chop the nettles to make about 1 cup. Add them to the bowl of a food processor with the garlic cloves and pine nuts. While pulsing, slowly add the olive oil, 1 tablespoon at a time. Season to taste with salt, pepper and Parmesan cheese. You might add a small knob of soft butter and a squeeze of lemon juice if it needs brightening. Blend once more to incorporate the final additions.
Makes 1 generous cup
Wild Hazelnut Milk
Sam Thayer, nationally known wild food instructor and researcher, and author of The Foragers Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting and Preparing Edible Wild Plants, prepared milk from wild hazelnuts. The hazelnut is a perennial shrub from the birch family and grows from three to ten feet high in open areas of the forest on sandy soil. Thayer suggests that after harvesting, the nuts should be dried on a tarp in the attic or dry place for about 3 days before shelling. Wild hazelnuts are small, about 1.2 the size of cultivated hazelnuts and surrounded by a tough shell, so shelling them can be a slow process. Thayer, however, had a handy device called a “Dave Built,” nutcracker that made the process much faster. After the shells are cracked and separated from the nutmeats, the meats can be ground into a paste with a mortar and pestle and slowly mixed with water. Thayer, however, uses a Vitamix blender, which takes about 15-20 seconds to produce a smooth paste, slowly adding water to desired consistency. He suggests cooking the milk in order to reduce the nuts gas producing effects. Thayer slowly boiled the milk until it began to foam. The resulting foam can be scooped off and used as a spread on bread or fruit. He emphasized that preparing hazelnut milk is a process rather than a recipe. He added maple syrup to the warm milk and served cups of the delicious drink all around. He explained that the milk can be refrigerated after cooling but warned that it doesn’t have a very long shelf life and should be used within a day or so. According to Thayer, wild hazelnuts are about 20 percent protein and 40 percent oil.
Summit participants also ate lambs quarters, a wild leafy green (chenopodium album), served raw in salads, cattail roots served pickled, basswood leaves as wraps for cheese, wild venison and lots of wild rice manomin.
“Wild rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner?!” asked Mike Larson. “It doesn’t get much better as far as I’m concerned.”
“There was so much to learn at the Summit! I am looking forward to experimenting with wild food gathering and preparation,” noted Lavonne Schildst. She also enjoyed learning the Ojibwe cultural approach to gathering wild foods and caring for the land. “In the classic white approach to nature, you go in and take what you want, but at the Summit they showed us how to be respectful and grateful for the gifts of the earth.”
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/gallery/photo/pop-wild-rice-and-eat-stinging-nettles-without-getting-burned-150529