Until a few months ago, I had no idea how much fun It would make to go out into the garden and collect all the flowers and plants which i came across. Behind what I, like many other people, have previously considered as weeds, there is so much more than you can imagine.
So after browsing through an bookshelf i found an old book about plant identification, nothing stopped me from flipping trough the pages. I was fascinated of the beautiful drawings and I noticed that many plants seemed familiar to me, because I often saw them grow in our garden. I carefully read the descriptions and was amazed that every single plant in this book had it´s own meaningful use. In addition to the healing effects, many of them had another (for me very important) property, they were edible. I was curious immediately. How would this "weed" taste? Isn´t it toxic? and of course, the question arose, how to make a great recipe out of these "normal" plants, flowers and leaves. On my next walk I collected every straw and every leaf that seemed edible to me. After comparing it with the descriptions and illustrations from the book, I was able to get an accurate picture of what I had in front of me and I was sure that most of the plants were edible ones. The same day I created my new recipe, which should have been published on this blog long time ago, because it is a fresh summer salad. Despite the delay, I do not want to withhold it from you. Today almost nobody knows something about the special
properties of our native plants and flowers, which I consider as a great pity. They can be useful to us in so many ways. Whether for the production of natural cosmetics, for the preparation of self-made tea or just the opportunity to make a wonderful wild herb salad or liqueur - use this gift of nature to perhaps avoid buying tea from the supermarket or rather give away some self-made presents. Trust me - it's worth it! :)
For the recipe you will need the wild herbs listed below, green asparagus, the white shell of a watermelon, as well as vinegar, oil, brown sugar, lemon juice and agave syrup. When collecting wild herbs, you need to be hundred percent sure that they are non-toxic, edible plants. Once you have picked the herbs, wash them off thoroughly and put them into a bowl of water to keep them fresh throughout the rest of the preparation time. In general, I recommend you to use the wild herbs directly after collecting, as they wither very quickly. The idea of marinating the white peel of watermelon came to me on the day of making the salad. However, if you have more time I would recommend to marinate the peel earlier. To be able to cut the asparagus into thin slices, I used a cheese slicer. Put the asparagus into hot salted water and blanch it for about 1-2 minutes. For the vinaigrette simply mix oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and drizzle over the salad just before serving. When setting up the salad you have no creative limits! :) Prepare the salad as you like.
INGREDIENTS:
For the pickled watermelon peel (for about 15 strips):
white peel of watermelon
4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
2 tsp brown sugar
For the wild herb salad:
green asparagus
Ivy Gundermann
Petals of the cornflower
pansy
young yarrow
daisy
thyme flowers
chickweed
young sorrel
For the vinaigrette:
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
1 tbsp grapeseed oil
1 teaspoon agave syrup
Pepper salt
PREPARATION:
- Put the vinegar and brown sugar in a small pot and heat the liquid until the sugar has completely dissolved. While it cools down prepare the watermelon. Remove the white peel from the melon
with a cheese slicer. Now cut the peel into bite-sized strips and place it with the vinegar in a bowl. Leave the watermelon white for at least an hour in the vinegar sauce before using it for the
salad.
- Collect the corresponding wild herbs and make sure that they are one hundred percent the said, edible plants. Wash them thoroughly and put them in a bowl full of water to keep them fresh and
crisp.
- In the meantime you can cut the asparagus with the cheese slicer into thin slices. Let a pot of water get hot and add some salt. Blanch the aspargus for about 1-2 minutes in salted water.
Then rinse the asparagus with cold water.
- For the dressing simply mix the given ingredients. Just before serving, drizzle the dressing over the salad.
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