GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: garlic mustard video

  • Foraging: Garlic Mustard & Nettle Pesto Recipe : GF Video

    Foraging: Garlic Mustard & Nettle Pesto Recipe : GF Video

    Foraging was on our minds this weekend, seeing some edible wild plants in our yard, after listening to this NPR story on eating and cooking wild foods like edible Garlic Mustard and Nettles.

    Yes, you can eat nettles, despite the fact that the stems of the nettle plant have tiny barbs that sting if you grab Nettles without gloves. The secret is blanching before eating the nettles.

    Garlic Mustard is an edible wild green, its leaves have hint of Garlic taste, though the mustard leaf taste is more prominent. Garlic Mustard is a non-native invasive plant that crowds out woodland native flowers like trilliums, bloodroot, etc. When harvesting Garlic Mustard, be sure to remove the entire root base, so it doesn’t grow back.

    Our Wild Edible Plant Pesto Recipe made with Stinging Nettles and Garlic Mustard is inspired by an NPR interview of Leah Lizarondo whose food blog is Brazen Kitchen. A big thank you to Larkin Page-Jacobs of NPR and Leah.

    Please tell us about your foraging recipes and tips below the recipe, thanks.

    Foraging Videos & Edible Plant Identification:

    Here are other plant identification foraging videos we have done:

     Dandelion, How to find, forage, and cook Dandelion Video

     

    Lambsquarter, Foraging and Cooking Lambsquarter Video

    Click for photos of Garlic Mustard and Stinging Nettles for plant identification.

     

    Garlic Mustard & Nettle Pesto Recipe
    Recipe Type: pesto
    Author: Eric Rochow
    Prep time:
    Cook time:
    Total time:
    Serves: 2 cups
    A simple pesto recipe made from foraged edible plants, Garlic Mustard, Stinging Nettles and Dandelion
    Ingredients
    • 1 cup Blanched Nettles
    • 3 cups Garlic Mustard Leaves
    • 1 cup Parmesan or Romano cheese, grated
    • 1 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
    • 1 cup Dandelion Leaves ( optional )
    • 1/2 lemon
    • 1 tablespoon lemon zest
    • 1 cup toasted walnuts
    • 2 medium cloves garlic
    Instructions
    1. Wash all greens in a salad spinner – wear gloves when handling stinging nettles.
    2. Take 2 large handfuls of nettles – wear gloves! and blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes, drain in a colander.
    3. Grate 1 cup of cheese using the large holes on a box grater, don\\\\\\\’t buy the pre-grated cheese, it tastes awful.
    4. Toast the walnuts in a fry pan on the stove, keep an eye on them, the burn easily.
    5. Place the greens, walnuts, cheese, garlic in a food processor, pour olive oil over the ingredients in the food processor.
    6. Add lemon zest and the juice from half a lemon.
    7. Turn on the food processor and watch the fun, you want the greens to become a roughly chopped paste, but not turn to mush.
    8. Serve this over pasta ( whole wheat pasta goes well with these flavors ) or in white bean soup, or on bread, its great.

     

     

     

  • Garlic Mustard Plant Identification & Foraging : GF Video

    Garlic Mustard Plant Identification & Foraging : GF Video

    Garlic Mustard is an edible wild plant food. Here is video on how to cook garlic mustard, we made a great pesto recipe. You can forage for the leaves, but you can also eat the flowers and the seeds.

    Other names for Garlic Mustard are Jack-by-the-hedge, Poor Man’s Mustard, Garlic Root, Hedge Garlic, Jack-in-the-bush, Penny Hedge, Sauce-alone.


    This wild mustard is a non-native invasive plant, its just plain bad to have it growing in North America. It takes over the growing areas of trilliums, bloodroot, and other slow growing woodland and hedgerow plants, taking up sunlight, nutrients, water. Deer do not eat Garlic Mustard, btw. When you harvest it, be sure to remove the entire plant, including the roots. I bring along a garden trowel or forked digging tool to remove the whole plant and roots.

    The plant is a biennial, it grows over 2 years, the first year the plant is a low to the ground rosette, the second year the plant grows up and flowers. The leaves are spade shaped with ridges and about 2″ across. After the plant flowers, the seed heads are upright, they look like small string bean pods, about 2″ high and green. You want to remove the plants before they go to seed, as spreading the seed is a bad thing.

    Garlic mustard

    So until we eradicate this mustard green from North America, lets enjoy as what I call ‘free food’. In other words, yet another plant we call a weed yet is actually a nutritious plant that should land on our table. According to Wikipedia, mustard plants in general are a rich source of vitamins A, C, & K. I didn’t really think about the vitamin value, I just think its always good to have more greens in your diet. Maybe we can add this to some sort of power smoothie? What do you think? Let me know below.