A Spring Menu
Published: 2018-04-20Tags: рецепти, Дива кухня, Листни зеленчуци, зелении в кутии, от лехата до устата
Translation
This is a translation of a Bulgarian-language post. It conveys the content faithfully but is not the author's original English writing.
Spring is such a season that, with its arrival — in sync with the new life being born, the natural changes we see everywhere — it awakens in us the desire to renew and cleanse ourselves too. Mother Nature, as always, has seen to it that right now, everywhere around us, the most suitable cleansing and strengthening food abounds, for our bodies exhausted by the long winter.
Dandelion, nettle, dock, sorrel, parsley, mint. The first wild edible little leaves, with their roots hidden deep in the soil sodden after winter, dare to break through to the surface despite the frosty mornings, and to share their healing powers with us.
I am grateful that these natural detoxifying immune-stimulants grow literally at every step here, and in our family we never miss the burst of "greens" as a chance to "charge up on green" for the whole year. Perhaps all of you also pass by, on your way, whole clumps of dock and huge quantities of nettle gone to seed. I would not, of course, recommend you pick from the kerb by the bus stop or from those in front of the block; but if you have no chance to get out into wild Nature and obtain clean, fresh greens, you can always buy them in season from the Farmers' Markets and Hrankoop.
From them — "nature", or in the company of various products found in the cupboard and fridge and seasonal vegetables — you can prepare both wonderful raw drinks and salads, to quickly quench our cells that thirst for vitality, and many recipes for cooked dishes — be they classics, variations of them taken from the net, retold by friends (with a variable dose of improvisation), or recipes entirely invented by us, dictated by what is on hand and by moods, or simply inspired from above.
Here is this week's culinary inspiration, inspired by all our friends gifted with the gift of giving. Thank you ❤️
(In the basket: nettle, dock, sorrel, courgettes, parsley, mint, spring onion, fresh garlic, lettuce, radishes; farm eggs, cheese and yoghurt.)
Couscous with nettle, dock and sorrel
Ingredients:
- 500 g Moroccan couscous (not the pasta kind!)
- 50 g butter
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 large carrot
- 2 stalks spring onion
- 1 stalk fresh garlic
- 1/2 tbsp turmeric
- 500 g nettle
- one bunch dock
- one bunch sorrel
- 1 l vegetable stock or water
- the juice of one lemon
- 1/2 bunch parsley
- optionally, a few cherry tomatoes, halved
Method:
Pour the couscous into a deep dish and add the butter in small pieces, rubbing it in with your hands until all the couscous is moistened. Set aside.
In a pan, heat the olive oil and fry the finely chopped carrot, spring onion and fresh garlic together with the turmeric for about 5 minutes, stirring often. Add the cleaned, washed and chopped greens, just stir them, and take off the heat. Add salt and black pepper to taste, and tip it all into the couscous.
Separately, heat the stock/water to boiling and pour it into the dish with the couscous. Stir everything quickly and cover tightly with a lid. Leave it like that for 15-20 minutes, until the couscous absorbs the liquid. When the process is finished, uncover, add the lemon juice, the finely chopped parsley and the tomatoes, and stir the dish carefully with a fork so the couscous becomes fluffy.
Serve with a green or other salad of your choice, or with the dairy sauce I offer below.
Courgette rolls with a cheese filling
Ingredients:
- 1 kg medium-sized courgettes
- 2 cloves garlic
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 200 g farm cheese, curd cheese or cream cheese
- 50 g nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, shelled seeds)
- 1/3 bunch dill
- salt, black and red pepper to taste
- optionally, 2 red peppers, roasted and peeled, or pickled
Method:
In a small dish, mix half the olive oil and the crushed or finely chopped garlic. Brush both sides of the courgettes — cut lengthwise into thin slices — with this mixture, then grill them on a griddle pan (I kept the side end-pieces for the spring schnitzel recipe).
Mash the cheese with a fork and flavour it with the crushed nuts or seeds (toasted in advance in a dry pan), the finely chopped dill, the remaining olive oil, black and red pepper; and if curd cheese is used, salt is also needed. (I also found and added a few finely chopped pickled peppers left over in a jar.) Mix all of this well. Put a little of this filling on each courgette slice and roll it up.
Spring schnitzels with nettle, sorrel and parsley
Ingredients:
- 500 g nettle, 1 bunch sorrel, 1 bunch parsley
- (I also added the courgette end-pieces that could not be made into rolls)
- 2 eggs from pasture-raised hens
- 100 g farm cheese, curd cheese or cream cheese
- 3 tbsp wholemeal flour
- salt, black pepper to taste
- 4-5 tbsp oil, olive oil or other fat for frying
Method:
Clean the nettle and sorrel. In a suitable dish, pour boiling water over them and cover tightly for a minute or two. Drain and chop finely. Grate the courgettes. Chop the parsley finely too. Add to them the salt, pepper, cheese, flour and eggs, and stir until you get a homogeneous mixture.
Heat the fat in a pan. Scoop from the mixture and drop it in, shaping and pressing it lightly with the spoon to form flat schnitzels. Fry until golden.
It is best to serve them with a green salad or dairy sauce (see the recipe below).
Buckwheat tabbouleh
Ingredients:
- 250 g buckwheat
- 2 bunches parsley
- 1 bunch mint
- 1 red onion
- 2 cucumbers
- 2-3 tomatoes
- the juice of 2 lemons
- 1 apple
- 1 tbsp cumin
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- salt and black pepper to taste
Method:
Boil the buckwheat in half a litre of salted water, then rinse it well with cold water and leave it to drain. (If you use raw green buckwheat, before boiling you can toast it in a hot dry pan for a minute or two, to enhance its flavour.) Chop the parsley, mint, onion, cucumbers and tomatoes finely and mix them with the buckwheat. Blend the peeled and chopped apple together with the lemon juice, olive oil, cumin, salt and pepper, and flavour the tabbouleh with the resulting mixture.
It can be served as a salad, a side dish, or a standalone dish, generously drizzled with our dairy sauce, for example (recipe follows).
Dairy sauce with nettle and dill
Ingredients:
- 1 jar of farm yoghurt (500 g)
- 200 g nettle
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp shelled sunflower seeds
- 1/3 bunch dill
- salt, black pepper to taste
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
Method:
In a dry pan, toast the seeds and set them aside. In the same pan, heat the olive oil and fry the finely chopped garlic in it for about half a minute. Immediately after, add the cleaned, washed and drained nettle and fry until it darkens and the moisture evaporates (about 3 minutes). Add the sunflower seeds, salt and pepper, and set aside to cool. Whisk the yoghurt well and add to it the finely chopped dill, the lemon juice and the fried, cooled nettle.
The sauce is good for flavouring a green salad or garnishing all the dishes from this week's menu.
ENJOY!