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Sunday 10 February 2013

Common chickweed and a lovely recipe

There's lots of chickweed growing at the moment! It has been said that there is no part of the world where Chickweed is not to be found. It’s one of the first greens available in winter and the tenderest of wild greens. It’s available all year round, but gets stringy around midsummer. As the name suggests, poultry love it.

Chickweed is readily distinguished from the alike plants by a line of hairs that runs up the stem on one side only, which when it reaches a pair of leaves is continued on the opposite side. As you can see on the picture.

Chickweed can be eaten raw. Most obvious is eating it as a salad. Or how about liquidized in a green smoothy? It makes a nice pesto as well. But the best recipe I've come across is chickweed pakoras...


Chickweed pakora
From: Hedgerow – John Wright

Makes 8

Don’t be too precise on quantities: it’s hard to get this one wrong…

100 gr gram (chickpea) flour
1 tbsp medium curry powder or to taste
½ tps baking powder
½ tsp salt (or more)
About 120 ml water
50 gr chickweed, washed, dried and roughly chopped
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic or a handful of wild garlic
Vegetable oil for shallow frying

- Mix flour, curry powder, baking powder and salt
- Slowly stir in enough water to form a paste with the consistency of mustard
- Mix in chickweed, onion and garlic
- Heat a thin layer of oil in a heavy-based frying pan
- When hot, spoon in heaped spoonfuls of the pakora mixture to form little cakes. Space them well apart
- Cover with a lid and cook over a medium heat for about 5 minutes until crisp and golden brown on one side.
- Turn over the cakes and brown the other side
- Drain on kitchen paper and serve

This post was shared on Wildcrafting Wednesday

6 comments:

  1. Wow! Thank you for sharing this on Wildcrafting Wednesday! I love finding out about the "weeds" in my yard. ;)

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  2. Meredith/GreenCircleGrove14 February 2013 at 12:24

    Very interesting post. I've found (surprise!) that my chickens love it, too! Thanks for sharing--I found this on Wildcrafting Wednesdays, by the way.

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  3. Always happy to have a new recipe! Thanks for sharing, Eveline! xx

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  4. We eat chickweed in our mesculin mix from our local farmer. never tried it alone though.
    Congrats on your featured post on Wildcrafting Wednesday.
    The Entwife

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  5. Congrats on being featured on Wildcrafting Wednesday! I love using weeds for food :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I never knew about the little line of hairs on chickweed. This is a fabulous picture of that feature. Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

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