Steemit Iron Chef 2017 #08: Savory Pumpkin Custard on a Bed of Baby Wild Greens – with Black Nightshade and Spruce Tree Dressing – and Flowers!
There are advantages to recognizing some weeds when they are small! I use three tasty weeds that have just started growing with the return of the fall rains in the Pacific Northwest. They make a great bed of baby greens to go with a savory pumpkin custard – made from a Giant Pink Banana Squash.
Timing Is Everything, Sometimes
It’s amazing how many seeds of weeds are in the soil, just waiting for the right conditions. Here at Haphazard Homestead, in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, that means the return of cool autumn rains after a terribly dry summer – with no rain at all for 3 months. Those rains have brought to life many weed seeds at the surface of the soil. Where the soil has been the most disturbed, the more weeds there are – and some of them are really tasty!
Right now, these weeds are small, like delicate microgreens. But they won’t stay that size for long. I was headed out of town for my job again, so I wanted to use these microgreens while they were still small. By the time I get back this weekend, they will be too big to be tiny enough for a fancy, elevated plate!
I gathered a few other plants that are either returning or headed out of season. Black nightshade (Solanum nigrum) berries are starting to ripen up in larger numbers. They need to be completely ripe and black to be edible. And the Rose-of-Sharon shrub (Hibiscus syriacus) is shutting down for the winter, so these are the last of their pretty purple flowers.
Savory Beats Sweet, Sometimes
Pumpkin goes so naturally and well with sweet ingredients. But for this dish, I wanted to highlight savory pumpkin flavors. I’m using a Giant Pink Banana Squash. I have grown 30-pound ones in the past. This one is from a couple years ago. Cured and stored right, they can last over a year just sitting around. When I roasted this squash, I froze the extra and that’s what I’m using here.
I carmelized some onions and pureed that with the squash. Then I added butter, milk, eggs, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. I put the mix into little round ramekin dishes – and then put the ramekins in a roaster holding a couple inches of water, into the oven.
It’s Always Worth Cooking for the Steemit Iron Chef Challenge, Not Just Sometimes
My work has been unusually demanding for the past few weeks. I’m not on Steemit as much as earlier this year. But the Steemit Iron Chef Contest has been my motivator to be consistent – once a week. That’s something for an admittedly Haphazard Homestead. I cooked all this yesterday, before leaving town early this morning. It was really tasty!
The pumpkin custard turned out more thick than I planned, but it was tasty! The olive oil, nightshade berries, and spruce tree balsamic vinegar dressing was just right for the pumpkin custard and the greens! I even took some of the pumpkin custard with me on the plane today.
What Do You Think?
- Do you like pumpkins sweet or savory?
- Do you have any edible weeds reappearing around you this autumn?
- Would you eat my Pumpkin Custard with its wild plants?
I eat a lot of wild plants and show you how, because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wild places.
I would like Steemit to be the premier site for Foraging on the Internet! If you have any thoughts about foraging, or experiences to share, write a post and be sure to use the Foraging tag. And check out the @foraging-trail to see curated quality posts about foraging. Happy Foraging!
Thanks @progressivechef for creating the Steemit Iron Chef contest series. I haven't been able to be on Steemit much lately, but I can't miss the contest series or I would miss out on my 1 point! ;D
Plant List
Post Script – I’m writing this post in my hotel and the internet is down. So I’m headed out to find a place to edit my photos and upload the post. I’ll include my usual plant list when I have better Internet access.
Here is the plant list.
Note: I didn't edit my post within the 7-day limit. I'm upvoting this comment, so it appears at the top of the comments and is easy to find.
Great desert i hope you have good luck in this steemit ironchef, sorry for the last result you should get the first gift, because you are cooking with your own fruits and vegetables.
Well i love the pumpking but here we only eat in soup when are young and in sweet in old pumpking.
We uses Black nightshadebut only the leaves to cook pupusas, or in soup because it is a good source of iron for our body, i will try with the fruit i think is sweet.
Be the way, what hapend with my cup of coffee i want one :) please do not forget me.
Best regard @galberto
Thanks, @galberto! It was too late in the day for a coffee for me, lol. I'm so glad to read about your use of Black Nightshade. Many people are confused about whether it is OK to eat or not. I am a fan of it! The berries are not too sweet. But it's always nice to have something wild!
I am glad that you find the time in your busy schedule to post on SIC. I love to read your dishes each week. Your dishes are more interesting than most of the "fine" dining restaurants in the NYC area, where I live. I like pumpkins savory. I'm not sure about edible weeds from autumn... but I did find some shaggy mane mushrooms after a heavy rain storm last week. I would totally eat your pumpkin dish. In fact I would like a reservation to eat at your homestead! Thanks for a great post.
Thanks so much for your kind words of appreciation. So great about you finding those Shaggy Manes! They are so good! Here's to the wild things that taste so good! :D
This is just awesome. So adventurous - foraging wild berries and leaves. I love that! I thought those nightshade berries were poisonous, for some reason. Shows me how much I have to learn. In fact, I'm noticing my kids are even braver than I am when it comes to taste-testing the leaves and berries we see. We have a friend who owns an urban farm here in Austin, where she exclusively focuses on edible weeds, including chickweed. We recorded a vid with her:
Anyhow, I greatly admire your understanding of the plant world, and I adore your creative spirit.
That's a great video! And I learned something new -- I'll be eating peach leaves next spring, that's for sure - very cool! There are so many great weeds, she's so right! There's a lot of misunderstanding about black nightshade. I think it stems from a misunderstanding about common names. Sam Thayer has a great, definitive article on the edibility of Black Nightshade.
Cool! Thanks for the resource here. Yeah, I think somehow I've equated black nightshade with “deadly nightshade,” as it says in the article. So interesting to consider the spectrum of plants that belong to the nightshade family: potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers...
I'd like to learn more about foraging! The only things I know how to take from the wild here in Minnesota are raspberries, dandelions and morels. when I lived in Missouri, we'd pick wild mâche (which has to be the best weed ever -- I plant it now!) and mulberries. I should find a local class or something!
Your dish is very pretty. Edible blossoms really do amp anything up! (It was too late in the season to find squash-blossoms, but that would have been great for this challenge.) I'm a savory pumpkin guy, I've never like e.g. pumpkin pie and I'm even a little leery of the nutmeg you used -- the traditional pumpkin spice mix turns me off, but I like nutmeg in other contexts (like with cheese) so I'm not really dubious. I'd totally eat that. :)
Weird off-topic question: if you're over the coastal range, but still up in the hills does it rain in the summer? We've been thinking about moving to Oregon in maybe five years and I've been searching for ruralish property in roughly the triangle between Portland, Astoria, and Tillamook (or maybe further south) and trying to figure out the weather -- it'd be nice to avoid floods, droughts and heat waves, but maybe that's asking too much.
It sounds like you know some good foraging already -- raspberries, dandelions, and morels are a great combination! About the weather -- here in Oregon's Willamette Valley, we don't get much rain in the summer. It's a Mediterranean climate that's really wet in the winter and dry in the summer. Not even one inch total for July and August, most years. This year is was zero -- zilch -- in those months. It would be cooler and wetter in your triangle than in the Willamette Valley. Maybe not rain, but fog along the coast. The big shift that bothers most folks is the cloudiness of the fall, winter, and spring. It can be gray for a long time! Hope that helps -- and be sure to visit Oregon in the winter, not just the summer!
This looks delicious and you are inspiring me to do search for edible weeds. I need to know how to cure and store squash- would it work for acorn and butternut? I’ve got so many right now and I’d love to get more time before I need to use them all! An extension, if you will ;). Beautiful entry as always friend- safe travels!
Thanks, @jaymorebeet! There are so many great edible weeds out there. For your squash, so many folks say to keep them cool and moist. I disagree. They are warm weather plants and last so much longer in warm, dry conditions. When it's still warm out at the end of summer, I set them outside in a warm, dry place to cure for a couple weeks. Then I put them in the warmest room of my house -- on the shelves of my bookcases in my office, and don't let them touch each other. Acorn squash will last for months and just turn from green to orange and get lighter as they dry out, so slowly. Butternuts will keep for almost 2 years! They are the longest keepers I have ever seen. Even Patty Pan squash will last until January, and I've got a Spaghetti Squash on my bookshelf from 2016! It's great having garden harvests that don't take any special storage processing.
This looks great. I love dishes that include wild edibles. The wild chives around here just started growing again after the heat of summer is past.
Glad you enjoyed my pumpkin custard and wild greens. How great that you've got wild chives coming back! They are so easy to us. That's sure better than buying chives at the store, alright! Happy foraging!
Beautiful dish! Pumpkin is one of my favorite vegetables. This looks really yummy.
Good luck for the the challenge! ;)
Thanks, @tangmo! I'm glad you enjoy pumpkins -- that's at least one vegetable that you like! (And corn, too!)
You’re welcome! Yes, you’re right! And I’m happy to hear that you still remember my favorites! ;)
I am so honored reading your post where you always make lovely mention of myself and steemit iron chef my friend! Thanks so much!
I am so happy that despite your busy schedule, you are finding time for SIC!
You are so lucky to be able to have and enjoy these wild greens, lovely entry as usual!
It's good to have a lot of wild greens around, that's for sure. My neighbors would say I have a lot of weeds in my yard, lol. Even though I've been busy, your Steemit Iron Chef has been great motivation to make one post every week! I better get the 09 done in time! :O
I love pumpkin every way! And it is such a pity I discovered it not so long ago. We didn't eat it at home, though we did have it in a garden sometimes. I think it was just for the seeds and maybe nobody wanted to cook it, or didn't really know how to prepare.
Now I make pumpkin soups, mash pumpkin (like potatoes), mash pumpkin with potatoes, risottos, roasted pumpkin, pancakes, cookies, pumpkin breads, muffins and sweet jams :D
I'm glad you know the goodness of pumpkins now! Like your list shows, they are so good in so many ways! Enjoy them all winter long! :D
I am planning to :)