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Picking & Growing Wild Greens

It is difficult to delve into Italian cooking without coming across references to foraging and serving wild greens and herbs. Generations of Italians have stayed close to the land, often under very lean conditions. For their survival, and because many outlying towns remained isolated, rural Italians continued to harvest from the wild after much of Europe had ceased doing so. For many years this practice had little status, and the plants gathered, like borage and mustard, were considered peasant food. Nowadays upscale restaurants serve many of these “wild” greens, and it’s not unusual to find market stalls in Italy offering them too. Some of the greens are still gathered from the wild, but more often they are grown in market gardens. Italian cookbooks also call for wild greens these days, and proponents all over the world see consuming these nutrition-packed greens—whether grown domestically or in the wild—as a part of a healthy lifestyle. Even though some of these greens are not widely available outside of Italy, as a gardener you are in the fortunate position of being able to grow most of them yourself. Further, gardeners are better able to gather plants from the wild because they have the skills to recognize different species more readily than does a nongardener.

A home garden in Italy backs up to the Alps. In this cooler climate, summer gardens include broccoli, lettuces, leeks, onions, cabbages, and fava beans.

These plants may be uncommon in markets, but it’s not because they are hard to grow. After all, they grow untended in many parts of the world. In fact, give some of them a chance and they can become thugs and crowd out their weaker domestic cousins. As a gardener, you probably already know a few “up close and personal,” namely, dandelions and purslane (one of the pigweeds).

Over the years there have been dozens of plants associated with wild harvesting, some used as potherbs or vegetables, others used raw in salads. In Italian these plants are referred to as erbe selvatiche. The more familiar ones include arugula (Eruca vesicaria, Diplotaxis tenuifolia); borage (Borago officinalis); burnet (Sanguisorba minor); the many chicories (Cichorium sp.); the cresses (Barbarea verna, Nasturtium officinale); dandelion (Taraxacum officinale); fennel (Foeniculum vulgare); corn salad, also called mâche and lamb’s lettuce (Valerianella locusta); hops (Humulus lupulus); mustard (Brassica nigra); nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus); purslane (Portulaca oleracea var. sativa); salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius); sorrel (Rumex acetosa); and violets (Viola odorata). The more esoteric ones include chickweed (Stellaria media); Good-King-Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus); nepitella, also called calamint (Calamintha nepeta); minutina, also called erba stel-la and buck’s horn plantain (Plantago coronopus); shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris); silene (Silene vulgaris); mallow (Malva sp.); alexanders or black lovage (Smyrnium olusatrum); rampion (Campanula rapun-culus); samphire (Crithmum maritimum); and nettles (urtica dioica), which must be cooked so the multitudinous prickly hairs on the leaves are softened.

“Wild greens” are borage, violets, sorrel, nepitella, purslane, nasturtiums, corn salad (mâche), and wild lettuce; rows of young nasturtiums and chicories (OPPOSITE BOTTOM) are ready for harvest as “wild greens.”

Historically, these wild greens were a welcome sight in the spring after a long winter of meals that were devoid of fresh edible leaves. The greens were consumed as a “tonic” to cleanse the system but were also enjoyed as a treat to the palate and for the senses after a gray winter. In fact, Italians who move to the city or away from Italy speak fondly of them. Italian chef Celestino Drago, who operates three restaurants and a bakery in Los Angeles, would make an annual pilgrimage to his home in Sicily. If he and his brothers couldn’t make the trip in early spring, their mom would make sure they could still enjoy the taste of the first flush of young wild greens, which she would lovingly cook or steam, drain and freeze until her sons could come home to her table. In the spring, when the California hills are covered with wild mustard, Drago would gather this potherb and continue the culinary tradition by preparing it for his family in several ways: as a simple vegetable, sautéed with garlic and olive oil; combined with a tomato sauce and spooned over pasta; or in risotto.

Seeds for many of the species mentioned above are available from specialty nurseries, but seeds for those plants known only as garden weeds (like shepherd’s purse and chickweed) may take a little more effort.

So let’s start with the easiest way to obtain these greens—seeing which ones are already growing wild in the fields and woods or growing as weeds in your garden. Obviously, these plants need to be identified properly. Use a field guide, such as the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants; better yet, go out in the wild with someone who knows the plants (just as with mushrooms, a number of wild plants are poisonous). Keep in mind that common names are different all over the world, so use only the Latin names. Personally, I find Roger Phillips’s Wild Food a great help in identifying plants; it has many photos. Another helpful resource is the venerable Complete Book of Fruits and Vegetables, by a number of Italian botanists.

If you are gathering your greens from the wild, make sure they’re not growing by a heavily traveled road (to prevent lead contamination) and avoid rights-of-way that may have been sprayed with herbicides. The best time to forage is in the spring because all these greens need to be harvested when they are young or, if they are perennial plants, when they are producing new shoots and leaves. Very young plants or shoots are tender enough to be used raw in salads, but completely mature leaves are tough and bitter or acrid. Between the newest young shoots and the tough mature leaves is an in-between stage when the leaves are great cooked and used in soups or sauces; as fillings for a frittata, calzone, or torta; and as a topping on pizzas. They can also be blanched and made into nests that can be filled with cheese or eggs.

Growing a Misticanza Garden

The most common way to enjoy wild greens is in a misticanza, the Italian term for a combination of a variety of young, tender, and sweet leaves. Its French counterpart is called mesclun. However, in today’s restaurant vernacular, either mixture may in fact be just a mixed green salad containing many different lettuces and edible flowers—a far cry from freshly harvested young leaves in a combination of tastes and textures. According to Anna Del Conte in Gastronomy of Italy, “Roman gastronomes think a classic misticanza should include 21 different types of wild greens.… These include: arugula, sorrel, mint, radichella—a kind of dandelion—lamb’s lettuce, purslane, and other local edible weeds.” Some of us think that’s a bit extreme and settle for half a dozen or so.

The techniques for growing both an Italian misticanza and a French mesclun are identical. As few of us have all sorts of wild greens growing near our home, fortunately, there are prepackaged combinations of seeds for a traditional Italian misticanza available from specialty seed companies. For instance, Johnny’s Selected Seeds (www.johnnyseeds.com) offers quite a selection of chicories and lettuces. Or you can mix your own combination of plants in which different tastes—for example, spicy, nutty, sweet, mild, and bitter—or different textures play off one another. As a note: Most of the seeds for the greens available from specialty growers are semi-domesticated; therefore, the plants will be more tender and succulent compared with foraged plants such as wild dandelion or chicory.

Growing a misticanza garden is easy and quick and is a rewarding way to start growing your own salad greens. Unlike large lettuces grown in rows in a traditional vegetable garden, you sow misticanza greens in a small patch and harvest them when the plants are very young (or if they are perennials, using only the newest shoots and leaves). One thing to keep in mind when choosing plants for your misticanza plot is to plant perennials in a separate location, for they will quickly outgrow the baby greens bed. Harvest your greens by plucking their young leaves as they are produced. An easy mix of plants for misticanza that is easy to start and maintain with the “cut-and-come-again” method of harvesting would consist of several baby lettuces of your choice, such as looseleaf ‘Lollo Rossa’ and the tender, small-leafed ‘Biondo Liscio,’ minutina; and two of the cutting chicories, ‘Ceriolo’ and ‘Catalogna Fras-tagliata.’ Another tasty blend is cress, arugula, the Catalonian cutting chicories ‘Dentarella’ and ‘Spadona,’ and several sweet baby lettuces such as baby romaine and salad bowl.

A misticanza bed can be grown in the spring or early fall. Choose a well-drained site that receives at least six hours of midday sun. Mark out an area about 10 feet by 4 feet (3 m by 1.2 m)—a generous space for a small family. Dig the area well and cover the bed with compost and manure to a depth of 3–4 inches (8–10 cm). Sprinkle the bed with a pound (454 g) or so of blood meal or hoof and horn meal and work all the amendments into the soil. Rake the bed smooth to remove clods and rocks, and you are ready to plant.

Gudi Riter steps away from her recipe testing to plant a small bed of baby salad greens, often called misticanza or mesclun, in my front garden. First (ABOVE LEFT) the soil is prepared by applying four inches of compost, and a few cups of blood and bone meal, and working them into the soil with a spading fork. Once the soil is light and fluffy and the nutrients are incorporated, the seeds from a prepackaged mesclun mix are sprinkled lightly over the soil so that the seeds average ½ inch apart. A half inch or so of light soil or compost is then sprinkled over the bed and the seeds and the compost are patted down to assure that the seeds are in contact with the soil. A label that includes the name of the seed mix and the date is pushed into the soil. The seeds are than gently watered in with a watering can until the soil is thoroughly moist. A piece of floating row cover is then applied to prevent critters from destroying the bed. To make sure the row cover won’t blow away, and critters can’t get in under it, the row cover is secured tightly by putting bricks or such at the corners, and along the edges if bird problems are severe.

Mix the seeds in a small bowl if you are making your own misticanza mix. Sprinkle the seeds over the bed as you would grass seeds—try to space them about ½ inch (13 mm) apart. Sprinkle fluffy soil or compost over the bed, pat it down, and water the bed in well, being careful not to wash away the seeds. If you have problems with birds or there are many cats in the neighborhood, cover the bed with a floating row cover or bird netting. Anchor stakes in the corners of the beds and tie the netting to them so it is a few inches off the ground. Secure the sides of the row cover or netting with scrap lumber or bricks.

Keep the soil moist until seedlings emerge in seven to ten days. Pull any weeds, but no thinning is necessary. Keep the bed fairly moist, and, depending on the weather, you will have harvestable misticanza greens in six to eight weeks. Either pick individual leaves by hand or take kitchen shears and cut across the bed about an inch (2.5 cm) above the crowns of the plants. Cut only the amount you want at each harvest. If the weather is favorable, in the 40º–70ºF/4.4º–21.1ºC range, and you keep the bed moist and apply a little fish emulsion fertilizer, the greens will regrow and you can harvest misticanza again in a few weeks.

Garden Blanching Vegetables

Another aspect of Italian gardening that deserves special attention is garden blanching vegetables, sometimes referred to as “forcing.”

Garden blanching vegetables (as opposed to kitchen blanching vegetables in a pot of boiling water) is a technique whereby light is excluded from all or part of the growing vegetable to mitigate its strong taste. Vegetables that have been blanched are lighter in color and in most cases more tender than non-blanched ones. Vegetables most commonly blanched are asparagus, cardoon, cauliflower, celery, dandelions, some lettuces, and the chicories, including Belgian endive (Witloof chicory), radicchio, escarole, and curly endive (frisée).

We can trace the concept of blanching back several centuries to the time when vegetables were more closely related to their primitive ancestors—which meant they were often tough, stringy, and bitter. Blanching made them both less strong tasting and more tender. Nowadays, most modern varieties are more refined and seldom need blanching, and because forced vegetables are less nutritious and take more hand labor, they are generally less favored. So why blanch vegetables? Basically, because some vegetables have yet to be completely civilized. Cardoon, some radicchios, escarole, dandelions, and some heirloom varieties of celery and cauliflower are all preferable blanched, and Belgian endive can be eaten no other way. And sometimes gardener-cooks blanch vegetables simply to alter the taste for a treat. Thus, for elegant salads, one might blanch endive to make its curly leaves light green and sweet in the center, or dandelion leaves to make them creamy colored, tender, and less bitter.

The blanching process consists of blocking light from the part of the vegetable you plan to eat, be it leaf, stem, or shoot. The blockage keeps chlorophyll from forming, and the vegetable part will therefore be white, very pale, or, in the case of red vegetables, pink. In most cases blanched vegetables are more tender than nonblanched ones.

A few general principles cover most blanching techniques. First, you must be careful to prevent the vegetable from rotting, since the process can create fungus problems. Select only unbruised, healthy plants and make sure not to keep the plants too moist. Such vegetables as cardoon and celery need air circulation around the stalks. Make sure you blanch only a few plants at a time and stagger your harvest because most vegetables are fragile and keep poorly once they have been blanched. Thus, you would not blanch your whole crop of cardoon, escarole, or endive at one time. After you harvest your blanched vegetables, keep them in a dark place, or they will turn green again and lose the very properties you worked to achieve.

Let’s go through the blanching process in detail first with a vegetable that must be blanched to be edible—Belgian endive.

In the fall cut off the tops of the plants to within an inch (2.5 cm) of the crown and dig up the roots. Once the plants are out of the ground, cut back the roots to 8–10 inches (20–25 cm). Bury the roots in a bucket in about a foot (0.3 m) of damp sand, packing them fairly close together. Store the roots in a dark cellar where it stays between 40º and 50ºF/4.4º and 10ºC. Check occasionally to make sure the sand stays moist; water sparingly when it gets dry. Within a month or so the crowns will start to resprout and produce “chicons” (the forced shoots), which you harvest when they get to be 4 or 5 inches (10 or 13 cm) tall. (The newest varieties maintain a tight head without being held in place by sand. Old varieties must have 4 or 5 inches (10 or 13 cm) of damp sand packed around the new shoots to hold them in a tight chicon.) The plants usually resprout at least once, and sometimes you can harvest them a third or fourth time. Some of the “forcing” radicchios can be blanched in the same way. In mild-winter areas both types of chicories can be blanched in the garden. Start the plants in midsummer, cut them back to the crown in early fall, build a temporary wooden box around the bed, and blanch them by covering the garden bed with 6–8 inches (15–20 cm) of sand.

To blanch celery, the stems are kept from sunlight for a few weeks. Here traditional terra cotta forms are used, but a wrapping of black plastic would also work. Cardoons are blanched in a similar manner. Curly endive can be blanched by being held in a tight head with a rubber band or string. This method also works for escarole, dandelions, and cauliflower. Heading chicories grow in loose heads when young. Once mature, some of the older varieties must be cut back at the crown. They will soon start to resprout and form a tight head.

The preferred way to blanch cardoon stalks is to wrap the stalks with burlap or straw, surround the bundles with black plastic, and then tie them with string.

To blanch cauliflower, after the curds start to show through the leaves, gather the leaves and tie them up with soft string or plastic strips to cover the emerging head. Other vegetables can be blanched in a somewhat similar way. Blanch dandelions by loosely tying up the leaves and covering the plant with a flowerpot for a week or so, or cover the bed with 4 or 5 inches (10 or 13 cm) of sand. The flowerpot process also works well with some of the leaf chicories and is occasionally used for romaine lettuce.

Serve these blanched vegetables with ceremony and give them special treatment. Most are quite mild and are best featured with light sauces and, because they are so tender, short cooking times.