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Food & Cooking
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Cooking With Nature
Text and Photos by
Storm
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A wise man
once said, “Supper is where you find it.” To harvest tonight’s
wild repast, I walked over to our meadow and collected a wild
mustard and a Goosefoot (Chenopodium
sp.). Both plants are 4.5 feet tall. Some might consider
them too old for the table, but au contraire, mon amie! |
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This Beavertail Cactus (Opuntia
basillaris var. basilaris) prefers warm south-facing slopes
up here at 8000 feet. I can hardly wait until those flowers
transform into juicy, sweet, purple fruits!
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This busy bee is foraging in a
Rose Sage (Salvia pachyphylla) flower. It being one of
the fragrant sages, I collected some for use as a spice. |
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Those two tall greens yielded four
handfuls of vegetable matter. While I could have boiled and
subsequently chewed the large-diameter stems, I chose to toss
them outside instead.
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Beavertail cactus is very
precarious to handle due to the minute, soft, barbed spines. I
flamed them off, then scrubbed the surface of the pads, flamed
them again, then scrubbed once more. I did end up with about a
half-dozen spines in my hands. There’s the Rose Sage in the
middle.
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Frying the cactus pads (the inner
flesh is also known as nopales). I had previously sliced them in
half, so the inner flesh is in direct contact with the cast
iron. I did not flip them—saw no reason to. I love my cast iron
frying pan—the best implement for cooking mushrooms.
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I had dried a bunch of Rose Sage
earlier in the week. Using a coffee grinder, I powdered the sage
for a wild and free and delicious condiment.
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Bon appetit!
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Text and Photos Copyright by Storm
www.stoneageskills.com
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