Cooking Healthy in February

Welcome back to another episode of Lost in the Farmers Market.  I know this post is two days late but work ate up my time on Friday so better slightly late than… super late? Well I thought it might be interesting to share with all of you the recipe I use to turn Chickweed and Henbit into curried rice. The basic recipe is very simple, the ingredients can be bought at any supermarket.

Curried rice with wild forage greens

Ingredients:

4 Cups of Henbit or Chickweed shoots (older growth may get fibrous).

2 Teaspoons of Curry powder.

6 whole cloves.

3 Tablespoons of Butter.

½ Teaspoon of Cinnamon.

2 Tablespoons of Flour

1-2 Cups of Sour cream, (Your forage might be pungent, add the cream as needed.)

            Cooking Instructions:

1.      Wash your foraged greens thoroughly and pick out any dead leaves or debris that may be mixed in with them.

2.      Chop your wild greens finely and place them in a sauce pan, covered with water.

3.      Set your saucepan on the stove and boil the water and greens for 10 minutes.

4.      In a frying pan, melt the butter.

5.      Add the Curry Powder, Cloves, Cinnamon to the melted butter.

6.      Stir and cook the seasonings and butter for about a minute, stir in the flour and cook for another minute.

7.      Add ½ cup of water from the cooked greens to the frying pan, and stir until the mixture is smooth and gravy-like in consistency.

8.      Add the cooked greens to the mixture in the frying pan and then stir in the sour cream.

9.      Simmer for another 10-15 minutes and then serve over rice.

The ingredients are super-easy to find and the recipe can be modified to your taste.

I am sure plants have actual nightmares that start like this.

The above two forage greens are Chickweed (Stellaria media) on the right and Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) on the left. Since they are low-growing I always advise you wash them thoroughly to avoid having grit in your meal. In the south all sorts of detritus gets snagged in these weeds so be on the look out for pine straw, small leaves and the occasional spider.

It's amazing how bulky greens can be.

believe it or not, the the greens in the 4-cup measuring cup as shown, when picked occupied about half of a 2.5 gallon bucket before being washed and sorted. The final product after cooking will occupy even less space. Greens 'shrink' in cooking because as they are cooked the cell walls of stems and leaves rupture and collapse leaving only the fibrous content to make greens look like what they were before cooking. This cooking process also releases liquids which can dye the broth too. In the case of this forage curry, it makes the sauce greenish-tan.

This is what the curry sauce looks like before the greens or sour cream is added.

The curry sauce, with greens and sour cream, it almost looks like creamed spinach.

The finished product.

The above is the finished product, in case you are wondering, the Jasmine rice is yellow because I added Turmeric and Annatto to it to make it golden yellow so it stood out against the plate and the curry. Now I suppose you can substitute in any sort of conventional greens for this recipe such as Spinach, Swiss Chard, Dandelions, Mustard, Carrot Greens, Bok Choy and Turnip greens as they all are seasonally available and fit the cooking time for this dish. I've not tried harder greens such as Cabbage, Kale, Collards and so on because they tend to dominate a dish. Curried Rice with Forage greens is a dish that's not heavy on strong flavors, it's a fairly mild dish that is resource efficient and easily made just about anywhere. I encourage you all to try this recipe and see what you come up with.

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic vegetables, herbs and fruiting shrubs come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

Plants & Stuff Available Now:

Soup Kit, Parsnip - $6.00

Soup Kit, Turnip - $6.00

Ginger, 6.0 oz - $2.00

Garlic, Whole bulb - $1.00

Seasoning Pack - $2.00

Lavender Pack - $3.00

Miniature Peace Lily, 4” - $4.00

Gold Dust Bamboo, 4” - $6.00

Flowering Maple, 4” - $3.00

Flowering Maple, 6” - $5.00

Polka-Dot Plant, 4” – $3.00

Coming Soon:

These days I am generally at Leclair’s General Store once a week, for the weekly Sustainable Neighbors meeting at 5:30pm through 7:00 pm. If you have questions then I will be there to answer your questions. Since our meetings have an open-door policy you don’t need to sign up for anything or join anything, you can come on in ask for us and join the meetings. If not, you can always send me questions through this blog or visit the farmer’s market or pay attention to what Sustainable Neighbors is doing at the link below.

https://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/

                        This brings to a close the third LITFM post of the new year, stay tuned the next episode which should be posted on the 22^nd of February. There will be more garden updates and other cool stuff.