So one of my goals for the eating locally challenge was to sample a new food each week. Last week’s stinging nettles was a great success, leaving us excited to try something else. Unfortunately, we slept in last Sunday and my top two new samples — rhubarb and duck eggs — had already sold out. There didn’t seem to be a lot there that we hadn’t tried before, so we bought some dandelion greens, figuring we could make them into a salad or stir-fry.
Everyone knows the dandelion. It runs rampant everywhere, delighting children when it goes to seed and vexing gardeners and lawn-mowers alike. A member of the aster family, the dandelion goes beyond its decorative purpose and can be used as a food source. (If you use fertilizer on your lawn or have pets that use the backyard as a bathroom, I would not recommend picking your own; otherwise, go ahead.)
Dandelion flowers can be used to make wine. The iron-rich leaves can be used as a salad green, in a stir-fry, or in soup. Its roots are similar to chicory’s and, when roasted, can be used as a coffee substitute for those who like the taste. Dandelion root is also sold as a diuretic in pharmacies in many countries, where it is drunk, I believe, as a tea. Finally (and in a non-culinary use), some people use the milky sap from the dandelion stem as either a mosquito repellent, a wart cure, or as a rubber substitute (the last using the Russian variety).
A confession here: I don’t particularly like bitter foods. I have a sweet tooth. I enjoy salt. I like spicy and I like sour.
So it should not perhaps, come as a surprise, that when Rudi came up with a salad on the internet that was comprised of raw dandelion greens and tomato combined with a balsamic vinaigrette that it was not immediately going to wow me.
I wanted to like it. I did. I like the smell of dandelions and the greens taste almost exactly like the flowers smell. And it was palatable when I put some ranch dressing on top. But I would not intentionally choose to make a salad with dandelion greens on their own again because it was just really not that pleasant to eat.
It could be that our leaves were older ones and therefore more bitter than you would usually include in a salad. Or, perhaps, mixed with milder lettuces, like butter or romaine, dandelion could add some flavor to the combination. And we have yet to try it in a stir-fry, where bitter greens tend to work extremely well.
