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Best dandelion soup ever

March 13, 2019 By Erica M. Davis Leave a Comment

Two years ago I was harvesting great quantities of dandelions greens from my back yard—which is located at 10,000 feet in Colorado’s high country—on April 7. Last year, we pushed our harvest back more than a month to May 22, when finally, after a wet rainy spell, the leaves lifted off the ground in healthy abundance. Now as I stare across the sparkling white expanse deep with record snowfall, I wonder again how long I will have to wait.

But wait I do, eager with anticipation. For finally, after so many years, I have a preparation for spring dandelion greens that I truly adore.

An Italian soup made with bitter greens, vegetables, and sausage, “manest” was a bane of Carol’s childhood existence in suburban Philadelphia—so Italian as to make her feel like an outsider. Why couldn’t her family eat normal food, she wondered? Her grandparents would gather the greens in the field; wash, chop, boil, and drain; and serve them in a light broth with sausage and hard cheese sprinkled on top, as a precursor to the main dish.

How she hated what that manest stood for. And yet, here I am today, chasing Carol down for any details she can pull from her memory.

The proper spelling of manest—menest, menestra, minestra—is up in the air, but it appears to be a predecessor of minestrone, for which pasta and beans are added. I pieced this preparation together with the help of Carol and her mother, as well as a recipe for Dandelions in Vegetable Broth from the website Cooking with Nonna.

Carol’s mom emphasized the importance of washing the dandelions well. To do that I usually plunge the lot into a big pot full of water and swish them around vigorously before a final, careful rinse.

Before you get started you want to gather a good mess of dandelions. Cooking with Nonna recommends 4 lbs. I usually like to have at least two large salad bowls full of fresh-picked dandelion greens to feed 2-3 people, or the same quantity blanched-and-frozen and reconstituted later.

I find the ideal time to gather dandelion greens is after the first warm, wet spell in spring, when the greens lift, robust and healthy, up off the ground, but before they begin to flower in earnest. A few flowers here and there are not a problem. If they end up in the soup, fine. But I do try to take in my harvest before the whole yard turns yellow. It’s best to aim for lifted up, non-sandy dandies to mediate the grit factor.

Probably the trickiest part about making this soup is finding a poison-free spot to forage dandelions, since the poor, disparaged, yellow composite is usually subject to lunatic levels of herbicide savagery. But once you find that spot—a yard managed without chemicals, or an organic garden, or a hidden meadow that has escaped attention and therefore management—hopefully you will be able to return there year after year.


Dandelion Manest

INGREDIENTS

  • Carrots
  • Onions
  • Tomatoes
  • Celery
  • Potatoes
  • Olive oil
  • 2 big bowls of dandelion greens
  • Italian sausage
  • Hard Italian cheese

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Cook veggies and broth: For a small batch that feeds two, boil 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 tomato, 1 celery stalk, and 1 potato chopped up with 1 Tbsp olive oil and water to cover for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are done. You want a tasty broth. If the veggies alone don’t do it, some herbs or bouillon can be added.
  2. Cook sausage: Open casing and brown sausage.
  3. Cook a mess of dandelions: Set a big pot of water to boil. Wash and rough-chop dandelion greens. Boil a couple minutes until desired softness.
  4. Compose manest: Drain and plate a mound of dandelions in a bowl. Add sausage. Pour veggies and broth overtop and serve with a healthy dose of fine-grated Italian cheese. We used a parmesan romano blend; Cooking with Nonna recommends pecorino.

Yes, yes, I hear you—dandelions are bitter. But there’s something about that flavor, balanced by sausage and cheese, that adds a certain brightness, a freshness that evokes the vitality of spring, that leaves me craving more every time. Hopefully you’ll give this soup a try—and especially if you’ve had a bad experience with dandelion greens before, maybe in it you’ll discover a new appreciation for this common, healthful, wild green.

Filed Under: April, edible, featured, high altitude, non-native, recipes

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Wild Food Girl

2 months ago

Wild Food Girl

Another edible plant I found on my road trip through Utah was red barberry (Berberis haematocarpa syn. Mahonia haematocarpa). It has holly-like, tough leaves with spines on the points—features I am most familiar with in the related, low-growing Oregon grape (Mahonia repens), whose tart, powder-blue berries I enjoy. But this high-desert-loving red barberry is a shrub bearing big, sweet/tart, fruity red berries. It was growing on a dry hilltop amidst pinyon pines (Pinus edulis) and juniper, where it stood out because of all the fruit it bore. I gathered a small sample to study and nibble, but I look forward to collecting enough for a jam or jelly next time I make this lovely plant’s acquaintance! ... See MoreSee Less

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Wild Food Girl

2 months ago

Wild Food Girl

I took myself on a solo road trip to Nevada last week, and I’m so happy I did! I have been studying pinyon pines, primarily our local two-needle pinyon (Pinus edulis), but I wanted to check out the singleleaf pinyons (P. monophylla) of the Great Basin too. They are having a mast year there, so the trees and ground were covered with pinyon nuts of many colors, shapes, and sizes. Even better, when I pulled into the campground I met a nice Navajo couple up from Arizona to do the same, so we camped and harvested pinyons together for a couple days.

It is a Navajo belief that if you shake the trees, early winter will come—so we just gathered from the ground, talking and telling stories to pass the time. I am embarrassed to say it took some work to keep up with my new 65 and 70-year-old friends, who could go for 6 hours straight. But I learned so much—how they winnowed out the blanks, and roasted and salted pinyon nuts to perfection, not to mention other things like how various other plants are used for medicine, food, and utility, and how to make ash bread and fry bread and nixtamalize corn with juniper ash.

I am counting my blessings for such a wonderful and unexpected experience with new friends—and of course, all the pinyones I’m stuffing my face with right now.
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Wild Food Girl

2 months ago

Wild Food Girl

Here is a neat plant I found for the first time on my cross-country trip last week—purple poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrata). I first read about this plant in Kelly Kindscher’s book, Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie. Then Sam Thayer chose it to grace the cover of his latest book, Incredible Wild Edibles (2017), and of course included a very useful account.

This relative of common mallow (Malva neglecta) is also low-growing with leaves that are similarly structured, but more deeply lobed. It is also known as “prairie winecups” for its pretty flowers, which I was glad to find too.The green parts and flowers are edible, as is the taproot. Sadly, I didn’t find a place to dig any purple poppy mallow on my trip. The first place I found it had only a couple specimens, and this native perennial should only be dug where there is a healthy population, preferable one that needs thinning, Sam writes. The second spot had a decent-sized population in the mowed grass along an Arby’s parking lot, but I didn’t think Arby’s would love it if I dug up their lawn. So, next time!

Sam shows eastern Colorado as the starting point (headed east) for this Great Plains species, but I didn’t find any in Colorado. The two populations I found were in central Nebraska. These are often cultivated as landscaping plants too.
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