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Dandelion, Stewed
The first mention of this dish would perhaps inspire most English people with aversion, but we can honestly advise them to try it. It is an inexpensive dish, and easily obtained; for fresh growths after showery weather may be had throughout summer and winter. Gather an equal quantity of fresh dandelion and sorrel leaves. Pick off all the withered tips and hard parts of the roots; shred them into fine strips, and wash them free from grit. Put the dandelion by itself into a copper stewpan, cover it with a small quantity of boiling water, and stew until nearly tender; add the sorrel, and simmer until the water has evaporated and the whole is soft. Mash with a wooden spoon; stir in a lump of butter; flavour with pepper and salt, and serve like spinach. The dish may be garnished in a variety of ways, either with hard-boiled eggs, sippets of fried bread, or slices of boiled carrot cut into shapes. It is usually served with white meats, as veal, sweetbreads, etc.; but it is excellent as a garnish for poached eggs. Some persons cook this vegetable without sorrel, but to our taste it is too bitter, and wants toning down. It is impossible to fix a price for the plant, as it is not a market article. It will, in all probability, be more often found on the tables of the rich than of the poor, not from its cost, but from its peculiar taste and flavour.
A wild-greens dish that reads as thoroughly modern once you accept the foraging. Two points matter more than the rest: choose your leaves early, and do not use the pan the book specifies.
- Not a copper panSorrel is loaded with oxalic acid, which attacks unlined copper and leaches it into the food; the same is true of the older tinned-copper linings once they wear through. Use stainless steel or enamelled cast iron. A modern lined copper pan is fine, an antique unlined one is not.
- Pick young leavesDandelion turns aggressively bitter once the plant sends up a flower stalk. Gather rosettes before flowering, or the pale inner leaves of a large plant, and expect the book's warning about bitterness to be understated if you skip the sorrel.
- Where you gatherAvoid roadsides, lawns and parks that may be treated with herbicide, and anywhere dogs walk.
- Sorrel in moderationSorrel is very high in oxalates and dandelion adds more. This is an occasional dish rather than a staple, and worth avoiding for anyone prone to kidney stones.
- Quantities and yieldThe original gives none. Roughly 1 lb of dandelion and 1 lb of sorrel cooks down to a side dish for four; the volume loss is dramatic, much like spinach.
- Water and timingBarely cover the dandelion, no more, since the water has to boil away at the end rather than be drained. Dandelion needs 10-15 minutes; sorrel collapses to a purée in two or three, which is why it goes in second.
- SippetsSmall triangles or cubes of bread fried in butter or dripping. Cut them thin and fry them just before serving or they soften on the plate.
- FinishingThe mashing with a wooden spoon gives a coarse purée, not a smooth one. Butter goes in off the heat; a little cream softens it if the sorrel has gone sharp.
Dandelion has been eaten far longer than it has been weeded out, and the defensiveness here — the assumption that the very name will repel an English reader — says a good deal about attitudes to wild food. On the Continent it never lost its place: French cooks treated pissenlit as a salad and potherb without apology. The closing remark is the most revealing line on the page. A plant free for the taking, the author notes, will probably appear on rich tables rather than poor ones, the reason being not its cost but its peculiar taste and flavour. Wild greens were becoming a matter of taste rather than necessity, which is roughly where they sit again now.