Remember the days back in college when all you needed to guarantee attendance was a sign advertising “free food”?
Well, step right up ladies and gents, have I got good news for you! You, yes, you can have FREE salad and stewing veg all winter long — if you can identify it, that is.
It’s sprouting from every street corner, alley, empty lot, park, and even every private garden in Tel Aviv. And most of you probably thought they were just lowly weeds.
An Anarchists’ Amblings
My good friend Moshe invited me to come along on a walking tour being hosted by Salon Mazal, an interesting place that according to Wikipedia is:
an infoshop in Tel Aviv, Israel. Its purpose is to spread information and raise awareness of issues related to social change, including human rights, animal rights, the environment, globalization, social and economic oppression, consumerism, feminism and gender issues. It is run by an open, non-hierarchical collective of volunteers at 32 Yitzhak Sadeh Street, Tel Aviv.
I had actually been inside their premises a few years ago (and two locations ago), when I had no idea who they were…and left quickly when it sank in that I was in what appeared an anarchist bookshop. Moshe says that they’ve actually branched out from then, hosting lovely events and lectures, and that generally friendly people frequent the place. I’ll have to drop by sometime for a better look.
Back to the veg – As I was pouring wine all day last Friday (I got to open the Yarden Cabernet Sauvignon, a rare treat), so I couldn’t attend the walking tour. Lucky for me, Moshe took me on a private post-shabbat nighttime tour of central Tel Aviv’s tiny patches of green, sharing with me what he learned from the experts. What we found astounded me.
Mallow
The mallow plant has gotten a bad wrap in modern times. It’s been thought of as a subsistence green, a poor man’s refuge, if you catch my drift. It used to grow just about everywhere in Israel. In fact, I think it still does, despite the urban sprawl. The Arab community cooks with it quite a bit, and it can be found in all of their suks. The Jewish markets…not so much. Luckily for us, this very easily identified plant grows everywhere…and I mean everywhere. This is a great little article in Hebrew about mallow, and if this works, here is the googled-translation of the same story. My friend Moshe told me to eat it like a salad green, very neutral yet pleasant taste. The Arabs sautee it with onions, include it in stews, and I’ve seen it used to wrap other foods in (like grape leaves).
Mustard
Slightly less obvious, but also quite plentiful is the mustard plant. For those of you who have never eaten mustard greens, they taste like the condiment. They really do. Somewhat brighter, sometimes more spicy, even. And this bold flavor is marvelous for cooking. Moshe, who I might add is a vegan, recommended that it also be eaten raw. Fine for some. In the States I bought mustard greens when I could find them (the first time was a mistake…I’m a sucker for strange veg I’ve never tried before). Great for stewing, steaming, sauteing. “Southern greens,” you know the kind that are stewed and drenched in fats and seasonings of all sorts indeed include mustard. Even the flowers are good, spicier than the rest of the plant.
Sorrel
My new favorite green! I’ve already written about this green extensively, and now I don’t even have to hunt it down in the markets…it’s right out front! With delicate little leaves that look like flat folded clover, the stems are sturdy and snap crunchily when you bite into them as the lemony sour taste pours into your mouth. Lovely! Every part of this plant is edible – leaf, stem, flower. All sour. It packs great punch in a salad, and as I’ve demonstrated a few times this year, it’s extremely wonderful in soups and stews.
There are a few more edible greens in my public urban garden, according to Moshe, but they are more difficult to identify and are supposedly far more boring in flavor. For now, I’m going to stick to these three and see if I can come up with a creative recipe with them.
If I have the guts to go foraging, I’m going to have free soup and free stew and free stir-fry all winter long. You should try it too. Just wash these greens very, very, very well. You’ve got a good imagination, you can figure out why…
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Check out this cool blog I found on the New York Times called “The Urban Forager”
Mallow’s growing EVERYWHERE in my neighborhood now but truth be told I’m a bit afraid of it – god only knows what’s leached into the soil around here. We’re improving, but this town has not exactly been a haven of pastoral bliss for many decades…
(To see what I mean, three of the last photos I blogged (basically all of the recent ones except for the Olive Tree print I’m offering in the One World One Heart giveaway) are in the same place as massive quantities of mallow. Just doesn’t seem as appealing when you glimpse the rest of the surroundings.)
You bring up a very good point. It might be smart to branch out into suburbia or the country to harvest these things. That said, plants are excellent filters. I am probably not correct here, and I’ll have to look into it. I just remember when going to South and SE Asia that plants were some of the healthiest choices, even it the exceptionally dirty conditions. After yet another bout of Delhi belly a doctor recommended I start buying coconuts on the street to drink their water and eat their fruit. I had always been curious about this, but the street vendors were the dodgiest of the dodgy with their filthy knives, sitting around huge piles of garbage. I plucked up the nerve. Needless to say, I never got sick off of veggies and coconut in India. And with the amount of pesticides used on our supermarket veg, how do we ever know we’re safe anyway?
I love mallow and it indeed grows almost everywhere. I usually fry it like the Arabs do with lots of onion and then add lemon juice,but never thought to have it in salads. I wish I knew how to recognize sorrel and mustard weeds,as I am sure they grow too nearby. Ain’t it great to have all those edible things growing near us:-)
Yael, it sure is wonderful to have them! I feel lucky to be able to identify them, now. Walking down the street, I say to myself, look, there’s some sorrel, and there’s some mallow…like a game. I will try your mallow recipe first, I think. It seems to be the favorite.
Sorrel is very easy to identify. You have to look for very long thin stems with yellow flowers. The base will have very beautiful looking leaves, like flat hearts, almost like clover. You’re not going to poison yourself if you take a little nibble (and spit out if necessary). You’re looking for a very sour taste, best identified in that long thin stem.
Mustard is a little harder, as there is at least one other plant that looks a lot like it. I started identifying them better when I realized that their leaves are always jagged, like sharks’ teeth…and one step further, the individual leaves have waves on the sides, like fingers (think of the fjords in Norway). Taste it, and if it tastes like mustard, you’re good.
Maybe next time we meet I can point some out.
Irene you are a gem! Every week its something new an exciting that makes my mouth water! I love it!
Okay, so talk to me about this sour sorrel…
I’ve never been a fan of sour (except when using lemon on fish), and I cant fathom how you would make a sour taste complimentary in a stew?!?! What kind of recipe and flavor blend are you thinking?
I love the idea of this urban foraging, yum!
Kimberly, it’s about little tiny zings of flavor. Not overwhelming. Think of a dark painting. It might be very rich with imagery, well drawn, etc. But if there’s not even a little bit of light, it’s hard to see all the beauty. Contrast. One makes the other better and vice versa. I dare you to add a tiny bit of shredded lemon zest to your next heart meat stew. It gets really soft, so don’t worry about a weird texture. Most people might not recognize it, but I really think it would shed some light on an old recipe. Even if it’s a favorite, as it is.
That Salon Mazal event would have been fun to attend! For some reason, the sorrel (hamtzitz) I bought looks nothing like the clover-esque things in your photos.
Nettle is another weed that’s supposed to be pretty good. Once I confirm that I haven’t made some sort of ID’ing mistake, I’ll try eating it.
Regarding the pollution issue, I spoke to someone who noted that much of the mallow and other such greens in the markets are picked from the sides of fields — which are next to roads. Meaning, the stuff growing in cities may not be worse than many other greens we eat. Not sure if that’s comforting or frightening.
Yes, the sorrel in the city is pretty much “baby sorrel, although I’ll need to do some research to see if might be another species. The stuff I buy in the market is much leafier – like spinach.
I like nettle, too. It is spicy in tea, feels great going down if you’ve got digestion issues. I’ve never bought it raw, only been stung by in all too often when I was living in England. Let me know how it goes.
While you are focusing on greens in this post, don’t forget about all the herbs that you can forage as a result of decorative plantings. I have never seen so much decorative use of lavender and rosemary as I have in Israel. Now, since these are decorative, you may need the owners permission to take clippings if the plants are not on public property (or next to, such as on curbs or sidewalks). However, this shouldn’t be an issue given the long growing seasons. I am sure there are other herbs that are either wild or decorative that are ripe for the taking.
This year I cooked extensively with mallow, nettles and chickory. My sons always have a hamsitz (Oxalis pes-caprae) hanging from their mouths and my grandmother told me the Arabs she knew used to chop it up and put it in yogurt (like many other herbs such as za’atar).
The sorrel Liz is talking about is a species of rumex a different family altogether (same as Rhubarb) but both share the acidic flavor caused oxalic acid.
I was about to call out the plant in the first picture, but it seems to have already been identified by Sarah. Oxalis is a great plant I used to grow indoors. Mine was purple though. Never Noticed it green. Never eaten it. I’ll try it next time I spot it 🙂
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