Easier Than Pie

My two youngest boys show off their Japanese knotweed stalks.
The plants are also growing in the background. Collecting these invasive weeds
is easier than making knotweed-strawberry pie.

A mallow plant sprouting at the edge
of the parking lot at the train station.
Mallow leaves are roundish, with gently wavy
margins. They are covered in tiny hairs,
have a long petiole, and have a dark spot
at the tip of the petiole (in the
center of the leaf). I find this latter
characteristic helpful in distinguishing
mallow from look-alikes, although I haven't
seen it mentioned in any book.

This past Saturday I took my two youngest sons to our local train stop to see what we could find growing there. It was much easier to look around the edges of the parking lot without so many commuters' cars in the way. I was hoping to find some purslane, which I did find there last year and unsuccessfully tried to transplant to my garden (this is both annoying and unbelievable given that my books claim it is sure to be found in every garden but, believe me, I've looked! Especially after I tasted the purslane I finally located at the train station last year; it was yummy! Succulent and lemony. So I tried to transplant some, but it didn't take, even though supposedly other gardeners have a hard time getting rid of it.) The purslane must not be up yet, but we did find lots of garlic mustard (see previous post), wintercress, and mallow.

Mallow has mild flavored but slightly mucilaginous leaves, which are covered with fine hairs and are thus a little fuzzy on the tongue. I first identified it at a kids' birthday party on a farm in southern Massachusetts last summer. It's most recognizable when it bears its tiny fruits, mallow "peas," which are cute little spirals that my kids thought it was so fun to eat. They don't really taste like much, but the cuteness makes up for it. They're a little crunchy and would make an interesting salad addition. They (like okra) have good thickening properties and would be useful in soups (one of my books has a gumbo recipe I'm interested in trying). When we first identified the mallow growing by the barn, my eldest son was so excited that he collected a handful of the mallow fruits and ran off to offer some to his friend, big sister of the birthday girl. To his great disappointment, she wouldn't try any, but another little girl volunteered. She put the "pea" in her mouth but almost immediately spit it out whilst delivering the most dramatic display of disgust I have ever seen. "Ew!" She shrieked. "That is disgusting!" I think she even spat. Truly, it was an amazing performance. And performance it most certainly was; I assure you that no

Wintercress in flower. A mallow plant is in the
foreground.

open-minded person could possibly object to the mallow pea. I later learned that this little girl objected to vegetables on principle, so that leads me to wonder why she would so enthusiastically volunteer to sample the thing in the first place.

Unlike field mustard, wintercress (a member of the mustard family)
has ridges along its stalk.

Well, now that I've got that off my chest, let's get back to the parking lot at the train stop. In addition to the mallow, (which isn't making its fruits yet), I found multitudes of yellow flowers that I thought might be field mustard. After reading the description of field mustard, though, I decided that couldn't be right. A little more investigation pointed to wintercress, which my sources agreed was bitter, bitter, bitter. Usually, if a plant is bitter, my guide will advise that one just needs to harvest it at the right stage, or harvest the right part, or cook it the right way, and then the thing will be delightful. Not so with wintercress. No part of the plant is not bitter, and there's really nothing one can do to make it otherwise. Boiling the unopened flower buds and tender stalks for a few minutes reportedly makes the plant marginally less bitter, so that it tastes pretty much like broccoli raab. That wasn't warming me up to my discovery; I detest broccoli raab. However, being the adventurous outdoorswoman that I am, I picked a leaf and put it in my mouth. I'd like to be able to tell you that the reports were wrong, but in reality I couldn't spit that leaf out quickly enough.

A collection of wintercress flower buds.

Not one to give up without giving something a thoroughly fair trial, I decided to broil some of the unopened flower stalks with a little olive oil and salt, as I do with broccoli (which I also find bitter unless I prepare it exactly right). I then squeezed a little lemon juice on top and tried again. Although I managed to swallow this time, my mother-in-law, who was with me, can assure you that my reaction did not invite further tasting. "Oh! That is really nasty! Disgusting!" I cried.

Later I read another wintercress description that claimed the flower buds are excellent in cheese sauce. I'm not sure I'm willing to give this vegetable another trial, or at least not quite yet. My taste buds are still recovering. The bottom line is that, if I'm ever lost in the woods, I'll have a ready source of food if I can just manage to swallow without tasting or chewing. Wintercress is apparently loaded with nutrients, and it grows everywhere (although I first found it in a sunny location, I later found it while hiking in the forest, too).

We collected this knotweed in about 2 minutes.
I'm sure it would take an adult
without kids even less time.

The most exciting discovery at the train station, though, was that the Japanese knotweed stalks were coming up. As you might recall from a previous post, Japanese knotweed is an invasive weed with large, hollow stalks. When the stalks are just growing and still tender, one can easily snap off the shoots and have an excellent substitute for rhubarb. The boys and I collected an armful of shoots in our few remaining minutes before we had to head to soccer practice (my husband and my eldest son were already there). It turns out that there was more Japanese knotweed growing at the fields, so after his game my eldest son collected more. So much more that it took me quite a while to peel all the leaves off when we got home!

My eldest son collects Japanese knotweed after his soccer game.
He has made a little pile of it by his soccer ball.

We of course had to try a knotweed-strawberry pie right away, so my middle son and I headed to the grocery store to get strawberries. Collecting the knotweed turned out to be much easier than making the pie; the juices didn't set right, so we ended up with a pie crust dunked in a knotweed-strawberry soup. Nonetheless, the results were delicious. I have read that knotweed-strawberry pie is even better than strawberry-rhubarb pie. Without the two contestants in front of me at the same time, I would be hard pressed to say, but the knotweed version is certainly in the running.

I also tried sauteed knotweed, which at first I rather liked, as did my middle son; my other family members found it too sour. After eating several stalks, however, the sourness began to get to me. I will have to experiment with more ways to eat it, especially given that I now have two gallon-sized Ziplock bags full of it in my freezer!

Here you can more clearly see the dark spot in the center of a mallow leaf.