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| Personally I don't care for the recipes, their too rich for me, The idea /method is here. |
Photos by Mark Bittman
These are unopened milkweed flowers; I began to eat them while first learning how to forage in central Vermont in the 70s. (How’d I learn?
Euell Gibbons , of course.) The season is
very short—just a couple of days for each plant, spread out over a period of maybe a week or two in any given location—so you have to be lucky to find them. Once the buds start to open up, they’re done. But when they’re tight and broccoli-like, as these are, they’re sweet, and cook instantly. I parboil them for a minute or two before incorporating them into other things. (Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to gather a big mess, and then I parboil them and toss them with vinaigrette or melted butter.)
Here, I made dirty rice, the Louisiana version of fried rice. I took leftover brown rice (I really love Kokuho, from
Koda Farms) and tossed it with duck fat
(coconut butter) and chopped duck
/chicken liver from my friends at
Grass + Grit (more on those folks soon), fresh garlic and Bonita beans, both hand-“imported” (by me) from California, scallions, kale, and turnip greens from
Glynwood, and my milkweed buds (which, truth be told, did not steal the show, but neither did they disappear).
Other seasonings were minimal (that brown thing at the bottom of the picture is a dried chipotle). Obviously, you’re not going to duplicate this recipe
but the concept is easy enough. And if you’re fortunate to find milkweed…check it out.
It is impossible now to write about eating common milkweed without addressing the butterfly concern; monarchists are on the correct moral side but are sometimes not very well informed about milkweeds in general.
http://www.gardenista.com/posts/weeds-you-can-eat-milkweed-buds-with-soy-and-ginger/