by "Wildman" Steve Brill (the man who, incidentally, was arrested for eating dandelions in New York City's Central Park before being invited to do a stint as a naturalist leading tours there for the city). "This is one of the best ways to learn how to appreciate the flavor of dandelions," Brill comments next to the recipe, so I figured it was a good place to start.
Dandelion greens seem to be a logical first choice for would-be wild edible plant aficionados--and yet for some reason, I didn't try them until yesterday. (I tasted a lot of wild plants when I was growing up on the east coast, but usually late in the season after they had matured and were easiest to identify.) This spring, however, I am dedicating myself to the search for edible young shoots and leaves. The environs, of course, are somewhat limiting. Here in the Rockies above 11,000 feet the snow is just melting away now, and the few plants that grow at this altitude are barely starting to appear.
Gregg gets the credit for spotting our young dandelion rosettes on a sunny, sandy bank outside of Breckenridge, Colorado. In keeping with the literature, we aimed for plants that had not yet flowered, lest the leaves be overly bitter. (Brill explains that for midsummer harvests, a boil or two will leach away some of the extra bitterness, and that late fall after the first frost is another good time to harvest dandelion greens, as the frost serves the same purpose as the boiling.) Anyway, we collected a small bagful, which, when "finely chopped" as the recipe requires, became two cups.
Brill's recipe for Dandelion Saute also calls for onions, grated carrots, garlic, soy sauce, and a tablespoon of unspecified wine, sauteed for 10 to 20 minutes in olive oil. He explains that sweet vegetables, like carrots, are good for countering the dandelion leaves' bitter flavor.
I tried to set his mind at ease by quoting Gregory Tilford in Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West
Anyway, Gregg was further swayed by several authors' assertions that dandelion leaves are very good for you, since he is currently in the midst of a healthy cleanse. "The leaves are more nutricious than anything you can buy," Brill writes.
In their out-of-print book, Common Edible and Medicinal Plants of Colorado
In the end, Gregg not only ate a sizable portion of dandelion greens, but he also exclaimed that they were the best dish on the table. Success!
There is so much more to say about the dandelion--other edible parts, medicinal uses, how to identify it correctly, and a volume of colorful lore--but those are topics for another entry on another day. In the meatime, consider picking up one of these excellent pieces of edible wild plants literature, all of which contain entries about the delicious dandelion:
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