Getting Wild in the Kitchen: Soup and Risotto

Thistle stalks: trimmed, peeled, and ready to be chopped up for soup.

Thistle plant with all its defenses.

In search of dinner one recent rainy day, I drove around to check out a few favorite foraging spots and a few I haven't thoroughly examined this year. Let me explain about the weather: on a rainy day, no one minds letting me go by myself. So, with rain jacket donned, I began at the end of my road, where I was hoping to harvest some pokeweed shoots I wanted to substitute in a green-bean dish. Unfortunately, the pokeweed was too tall and probably already getting toxic, so I snipped away at a few of the plants to encourage the root to send up new growth. I could then come back a week or so later.

The thistle plants had also gotten markedly bigger, but in this case bigger was better. Tall, thick flower stalks a couple of feet high had sprung up where only ground-level basal rosettes had been before. I'd previously tried the midribs of thistle leaves and found them to be like celery, only slightly more bitter. I had read that the flower stalks are the best part of the plant and so was excited to see such tall specimens.

Thistle flower stalks trimmed of leaves.
Grape leaves can be seen at the right.

All those thorns and prickers certainly did look intimidating, but I took out my scissors and carefully snipped away until just the flower stalk remained (it helps to start at the top of the plant so that one has increasingly more room to maneuver as the project unfolds). Then I snipped that too and held it cautiously at one end, where my fingers could take advantage of the prickerless hollow inside of the stalk. Gingerly, I carried the stalk to my car and used a knife to scrape off as much of the prickly hairs and thorns as I could while resting the stalk on the hood of the vehicle. Then I was back out snipping away at another stalk.

At home, I used a vegetable peeler to finish the pricker removal (see top photo), and then it was time for a taste. Even more celery-like than the leaf midribs, thistle would make a great addition to salads (I would like to try it in my chicken salad), stir fries, and soups. And in fact, the latter was where this thistle was destined, but I'll come back to the soup.

Milkweed flower buds. The buds turn pinkish
just before they open. I understand it's
best to collect the buds at about 2/3 the final
size, and probably not when they're pink, although
I did collect some pink ones and didn't notice any
difficulty in eating them (older buds are supposed
to be slightly tougher).

After collecting a few thistle stalks, I drove to my favorite parking lot to see whether the milkweed shoots I'd collected had grown back (I'm not sure whether milkweed sends up new shoots to replace harvested ones). I think perhaps new shoots are growing, but there were certainly a lot of tall plants -- many more plants than I'd noticed when they were only 6 inches tall and hiding in the weeds. Now the plants had green flower buds, slightly reminiscent of broccoli heads. These flower buds are edible, so I snapped off a small baggieful to add to the soup.

Next I was off to some local conservation land, where two of my boys and I had found a cattail pond back in February. Alas, the overgrowth was now so thick that I couldn't even see the pond, much less get to it without pushing through tall grasses and overgrown bushes, becoming soaking wet (remember, it was raining, and water would be clinging to the grasses), and probably getting covered in ticks. Although someone had mowed a path through some of the field, apparently the area with the pond is not maintained.

I thought this was a blackberry bush,
but now I'm not so sure.

I therefore settled for walking along the mowed path. I found what I thought were some blackberry bushes, although since then I've found some bushes that already had little green blackberries on them, and although the leaves are similar, they do look slightly different. There are so many blackberry relatives, and I can't keep them all straight, and now I'm not entirely sure that what I found that rainy day was any type of berry bush. The flowers did strongly resemble blackberry flowers, though.. Someday I'll have to spend time really studying the differences between blackberries, dewberries, raspberries, black raspberries, wineberries, and all the rest. I'll have to visit these bushes again later in the summer and get back to you.

Cattails in a soggy field.

As I was nearly at the end of the loop through the field, I came to a stand of cattails, which I remembered having seen the previous fall, when they had their brown, velvety spikes. They hadn't been there in February because someone had mowed the entire field, cattail stalks and all. They weren't growing in a pond but in soggy ground, so it would have been difficult to harvest the roots or lateral stalks (the horizontal stalks that grow underground before sending up a new above-ground stalk). But they were perfectly located for harvesting the "hearts," the tender core of a growing leaf stalk. I could walk right into the patch and pull up as many hearts as I liked: no rubber boots or wading through ponds required!

Cattail stalk resting on my backpack,
which is obscured by its rain cover.

To pull out each cattail heart, I tugged first gently, then with increasing force at the inner bunch of leaves until -- squeak! -- out slipped the heart. Easy! Fast! Fun! I pulled out several more in a matter of minutes. I then trimmed the green tops off the leaves to make it easier to carry the bundle back to my car.

After a relatively unsuccessful venture down the part of the trail across the street (no one had mowed the field at all there, and soon my pants were so soggy and the grasses so tall that I had to turn back short of the plum trees I wanted to investigate), I took my harvest home to the cutting board. I've already discussed my preparation of the thistle stalks and milkweed buds (both of which I chopped up) above. The cattail hearts were a bit trickier because I wasn't really sure how much of the leaf core was tender. It turns out that the leaves become fibrous on the outside of the stalk before they do on the inside, so the trick is to use only as much as you can easily puncture with a fingernail pressing horizontally to the direction of the fibers (I used too much of the leaf core the first time I tried this, so now I also apply the bite test -- it's fine to eat cattail raw, so I bite into a leaf from the outside just above where I plan to stop cutting, and if it's still tender, I use a bit more).

My collection of trimmed cattail hearts lying on top of the dark
greenery I discarded (only a small portion of each heart is
tender enough to eat, though, so the size of this pile is deceiving).

I also wasn't really sure how to cook it. I was modifying a recipe for potato-leek soup, so I first tried sauteing some of the cattail in a little butter, as I would leeks (afterall, the trimmed cattail looked a lot like leeks). That method produced tough and unchewable results, though. I then tried boiling some cattail hearts in a bit of water, and the result was soft and tasty, slightly reminiscent of corn and very mild. I then decided to throw the rest of the cattail hearts, along with the thistle and milkweed buds, in my soup during cooking. The results were yummy enough to warrant my sharing the recipe. Also see below for a recipe for chickweed risotto.

Milkweed flower-bud clusters on my cutting board. Milkweed
buds taste exactly like the stalks. The texture is just different.

Potato Soup with Leek, Cattail Hearts, Milkweed Flower-Bud Clusters, and Thistle

2 leeks
approximately 2 cups cattail hearts or laterals
several handfuls milkweed buds
1 to 2 cups thistle flower stalks, sliced
6 T unsalted butter
1 T flour
5 1/4 cup chicken broth (preferably homemade)
1 bay leaf
1 3/4 lb peeled, cubed red potatoes
2 ham steaks, diced into 1/4-inch cubes
salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Bring water to a boil in a small pot and boil milkweed buds 15 min. Chop and set aside. (I am not clear on whether there is anything toxic in milkweed broth, so I took this precaution).

2. Chop the white and light-green portion of the leeks by slicing them lengthwise and then chopping into 1-inch pieces. Heat the butter in a Dutch oven over medium-low heat until foaming, then add the leeks and increase the heat to medium. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the leeks are tender but not mushy or browned. Sprinkle the flour over the leeks and stir to coat evenly. Cook until the flour dissolves, about 2 min.

3. Increase the heat to high and gradually add the broth while whisking constantly. Add the bay leaf, potatoes, cattails, milkweed, and thistle. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, until the potatoes are almost tender, 5 to 7 min. Remove pot from heat and let sit, covered, 10 to 15 min. Place a portion of the soup in a blender and puree, then stir the puree back into the soup. How much puree you use depends on how creamy or chunky you like your soup. Add diced ham and heat another few minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Parmesan Risotto with Chickweed

A lush patch of chickweed grows at my house.
I've been snipping off the tops and adding them to various dishes.

I also recently made this tasty risotto with the chickweed lushly growing under some pine trees at my house. I highly recommend it!

3 1/2 cups chicken broth
3 cups water
4 T unsalted butter
1 medium onion, finely diced
salt
2 cups Arborio rice
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
as much chickweed as you can collect, perhaps 1 to 2 cups loosely packed, then chopped

(optional) throw in some sheep sorrel or wood sorrel leaves if you find them, but not too many because they will overpower the more mild chickweed (a quarter cup chopped would be good)

1. Bring the broth and water to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting and keep warm.

2. Melt the butter in a 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Once the foaming subsides, add the onion and 1/2 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft and translucent but not brown, about 9 min. Add the rice and cook, while stirring constantly, until the edges of the grain are transparent, 2 to 4 min. Add the wine and cook while stirring constantly  until the wine is completely absorbed, about 2 min. Add the broth mixture, 1/2 cup at a time, and stir frequently until each portion is absorbed. Continue until rice is cooked through  but still slightly firm in the center (taste to test for doneness). You might not use all of the broth mixture, but cooking time should be approximately 20 to 25 min. Add the chopped chickweed (it's OK to use the flowers too) and cook an additional minute, or until chickweed is wilted. Remove from heat and stir in cheese, then season with salt and pepper to taste.