Winter greens
I've been living in the galilee
for close on 30 years. Over this time, I have seen my neighbours from the
villages close to my house walking with bags of something, which they've picked
in the fields. I never quite knew what the "something" was, but was
always fascinated to find out. Since opening my business, organizing workshops
in the houses of those same neighbours that I have seen with the bags full of
something, I now have a better idea what it is they're picking in the fields.
The first trick was to identify
the different weeds that they'd picked. This in itself was a revelation.
Suddenly, at best, things that I'd never given any thought to, proved to be
edible. Or worse, things I used to spray with poisons in order to get rid of
them, proved to be really tasty. "Roundup" out, wild endive, in. Za'atar (hyssop) was easy. It grows
everywhere, including my back yard, and even I know what it looks like. I have
picked it and used it in salads for years. When one of my hosts first brought
my guests olesh, I had no idea what it was. I had to look up a few
on-line translators to realize that it was wild endive, or chicory. Wild
silverbeet, spinach and fennel only vaguely resembled what I'd been buying in
the supermarket all these years. And then there's the weeds that really don't
have a common English name. Hubeza, translates into English as malva,
and the protected spikey weed called akub
only has its scientific name, gundelia, for us English speakers to identify
it with. I can't quite imagine little Johnny in Boston saying "oh no, Mom,
not gundelia for dinner again"
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| olesh, or wild endive - before |
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| Olesh - middle |
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| olesh - squeezing out the liquid after cooking and cooling |
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| Olesh, served with fried onion |
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You can't imagine the looks I got from my
family last winter when I returned from one of my first workshops, strode into
the back yard and started picking a green weed that was growing so thickly that
you could barely see the grass through the weeds. When I rinsed the garden vermin
in the sink, cut it up, cooked it and served it for dinner, my children started
to doubt whether this new business was such a great idea. Now, they can't wait
for the hubeza to grow in the garden. Who needs grass, anyway?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised
that the wild equivalents of what I'd been used to buying in the supermarket
tasted the same, but so different. That's to say, we can recognize the taste,
but with about 3 times more flavor. Of course, a plant that is fed with
fertilizers, sprayed with pesticides, grown in a hot-house and picked unripe so
it will be "ok" 5 days later when it gets to the supermarket shelf, can't
hope to taste as good as it's brother that gets the amount of sun that nature
meant it to get, grows where nature planned it to grow and gets fed only what
is in the ground in the vicinity of its roots. The supermarket variety might be
prettier, but has nowhere near the intensity of flavor. It's not just me saying
it. My guests always comment that greens or vegetables that they have previously
bought in the supermarket, taste so much bolder when used in the workshop.
I am in no way advocating that we
all eschew mass grown and marketed vegetables for the wild variety. This would
be an ecological disaster. There are less radical and damaging alternatives. I
know the local markets and green grocers in the Arab villages in the Galilee
sell the local greens. They are commercially grown, but no GMP, no mass
chemical fertilizers and lots of flavor. Even akub, which has been
picked almost into extinction, is now grown in the hothouse of a kibbutz in the
Upper Galilee.
I have no idea if you can readily find seasonal,
edible vegetables and greens in various places around the western world. For those that somehow do have access, in
season, to local greens and vegetables, I strongly recommend asking the locals
how they're prepared and giving them a try.
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| getting ready to prepare ftir (stuffed pastries) with fresh za'atar |
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| cooking ftir on the saj |
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| ftir - pastry stuffed with wild fresh hyssop |
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| Tabouleh (on left) and wild spinach salad (on right | ) |
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| hubeza |
