Wild Food Recipes.

[Gliondrach]

Some unusual recipes, such as Sea Plantain Risotto, Sweet Pickled Cow Parsley Stems,
Hairy Bittercress, Dandelion & Papaya Salad,
and Buttered Hart’s Tongue Fiddleheads.

Some have butter in them but can easily be veganised..

eatweeds.co.uk

[Bowwowmeow]

I should post how I prepared acorns I harvested from a customer's white oak tree.

I'm also looking for info on preparing cattails. I hear they are edible.

[Gliondrach]

I remember seeing Ray Mears preparing some.
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From:
ht-tp://wildfoodplants.com/2007/06

Curried Cattail Soup
June 11th, 2007

Cattails are a delicious food, wildly abundant, generally found throughout the world…yeehaw, it’s cattail shoots time in northern MN. I am here visiting my Mom and will soon be heading to the Wild Food Summit on the White Earth Reservation.

In this video you’ll see how to identify cattails shoots (along with a poisonous ‘lookalike’ plant), process them, and then cook them into a soup. I’m admittedly terrible with botanical identification of plants, and am a bit unsure of whether these were the Narrow-leaved cattail (Typha angustifolia), or the Common cattail (Typha latifolia) as I said in the video. I have a feeling both were represented in that stand, and that there may have been some of the hybridized version of the two (Typha x glauca). Another botanical snafu on my part was saying stem in the video, when in fact I meant to say leaves. You are actually taking advantage of the tender part of the leaves when eating the cattail hearts/inner core.

You can follow the energy of the plant through the seasons, and can eat this plant virtually year-round. It’s rhizomes, corms, new shoots, immature male flower spikes and pollen all provide tasty wild food nourishment. I got the idea to do a curried cattail soup from Anne Gardon’s book The Wild Food Gourmet: Fresh and Savory Food from Nature. This is the soup I brought for the Wild Food Summit potluck. Tune in tomorrow to see a video of the second annual Wild Food Summit.

Curried Cattail Soup

3 T butter
1 small onion, minced
1 1/2 cup cattail shoots, chopped
1 1/2 T curry powder
1 T cattail rhizome flour, or wheat flour
2 t Bragg’s liquid aminos, or soy sauce
4 c chicken or vegetable stock
salt & pepper to taste

Saute onion in butter until translucent. Add cattail shoots and curry powder. Saute 1-2 minutes and sprinkle cattail or wheat flour on top. Mix together and cook 1-2 minutes. Add liquid aminos/soy sauce, mix well and add stock. Bring soup to eating temperature, add salt & pepper to taste and serve.

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From:
ht-tp://ww-w.darkcoding.net/society/a-week-in-the-woods/

We wade into a very muddy lake (between Eridge Park and Forge Wood in the map linked on Day 1) to collect cattails. You can eat the base of the stem. Peal the outside layers off and eat the inside. It’s like eating a big leek, but softer.

The root is a rhizome which runs parallel to the ground from one plant to the next. We pull one out each. There is carbohydrate in there. Later on we will roast them in the fire. Put the whole root directly in the fire. When it is charred on the outside remove, peel, and eat the inner white bit. Be careful not to eat the outside.

When collecting cattails make sure not to confuse them with the poisonous Iris which grows near it – the Iris does not have the cotton flower, and has a regular root running up-down instead of a rhizome.


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These are from:
ht-tp://sites.google.com/site/walternieuws/kanker/verenigde-naties/quotes-prominent-conspi/wat-kan-ik-ermee

Cattail (Typha latifolia)
Cattail
Found: These tall aquatic like plants are found throughout Europe, northern Asia, North America, Africa, Australia, and in some Pacific islands. Wherever they grown, they are generally found year round, and always near or in water.

Eaten: They are best baked or roasted (the roots) and you can chew out the starch for nutrition, spitting out the fiber. They can also be eaten raw. The white part of the new shoots and flowering spikes are also edible, but only before blooming.

A real multi-tasker of a wild food and a life-saver in winter.

Roots can be eaten raw or boiled like potatoes..
Chop up root into small pieces and boil with water to make a sweet syrup..

Grind root into powder-protein rich.Mix with wheat flour for all your fave bready-type snacks.
Stem..Remove outer and base of mature plant as a substitute asparagus..mmmm.. my favourite veggie.. Tastes like pea-pods but with more substance..

Seeds are small and a little insubstantial but can be ground for a flour substitute with your root flour too.
everything2.com...

Medical.. The medicinal uses of cattails include poultices made from the split and bruised roots that can be applied to cuts,wounds, burns, stings, and bruises. The ash of the burned cattail leaves can be used as an antiseptic or styptic for wounds

Other uses. The utility of this cattail is limited only by your imagination. The dried stalks can be used for hand drills and arrow shafts.

w-ww.backwoodshome.com... (Makes good tinder too.)

Nutritional value The root contains about 80% carbohydrate (30 - 46% starch) and 6 - 8% protein
ww-w.pfaf.org...


Interesting facts about cattails:

Cattails are so rapid growing and spread so fast that they can over-take a pond or other body of water very quickly. A lot of people view them as invasive because it makes other aquatic plants struggle to survive in the same waters.

Cattail pollen is equal to bee pollen in terms of minerals, enzymes, protein, price, and energy.
Cajun traitueses and Native Americans have used cattails as herbal remedies for a variety of ailments for centuries. Most commonly, a jell is made from the young leaves of the immature cattail for healing wounds, sores, boils, etc. It also has some pain reduction properties.

Cattails have also used for more than the modern day use of decorative flower arrangements. In the past they were used to thatch roofs, weave baskets, seating for chairs, mats, and bedding.
Lighting Fires With Cattails