Pillaging Nature: Garlic Mustard
Garlic mustard is a popular wild edible plant for a few reasons. It's basically impossible to mistake for anything else. It's invasive everywhere in the USA, so you can feel good about tearing out every plant you see. It's one of the first plants up in spring, often beating dandelions to the punch.
When I tried garlic mustard a few years ago, I thought it was gross and wrote it off. Over this latest interminable winter, some reading made me wonder if I did it wrong. In Minnesota, garlic mustard is typically biennial, growing as a basal rosette for one year, then sending up flowering stalks the second year. For most plants with this growth pattern, the first-year leaves are the tenderest, tastiest part. Many people recommend collecting first-year leaves from garlic mustard, and that’s what I tried a few years ago. But there’s disagreement about which part of garlic mustard is the best, and I've now read more experienced foragers who suggest the young stalks of the second-year plant make for the better food. That's what I tried this week, and this batch of stalks, at least, was much better than the basal leaves I tried before.
I found garlic mustard growing just outside my front door, a dozen stalks standing shoulder to shoulder against a textured background like in a Wes Anderson movie. It took about two minutes to harvest five ounces, which made for three ounces of picked and prepared leaves and stalks. (The leaf petioles are tough, and the base of the stalks, even above the snap point, are fibrous. I worried the food processor wouldn't chop those parts, so I picked off the leaves and snapped off the bottom inch or so of stalk.)
We made a quick and easy pesto:
3oz garlic mustard leaves and stalks
1.5oz lightly toasted walnuts
1.5oz parmesan
1/4 cup olive oil
pinch of salt
Process the greens, nuts, and cheese until smooth. Remove to a bowl and stir in olive oil until you have the consistency you want. I used about a quarter cup. Stir in salt to taste.
(Options: include a big clove of garlic in the food processor. Or include a few grinds of black pepper. Or finish by stirring in some lemon zest and juice.)
We used the pesto for a pizza, topped with mozzarella, halved kalamata olives, and a mess of thinly sliced red onions. The pesto has a strong flavor that's nothing like basil. More like an intense arugula. It doesn't taste much of garlic, but it does have the kind of bite I associate with garlic.
I wanted to taste the greens, so didn't include garlic in the pesto. That would be a great match of flavors, though, so next time I'll probably put some garlic in. As for the pizza, something about the kalamata olives made a big difference. The bites without an olive were OK, but a little one-note bitter. The bites with an olive really sang-- I don't know if it's the saltiness, the vinegar, the fat, but the olives made the pesto taste grrrreat.
We also tried a pizza with sliced tomatoes instead of olives. That one wasn't very good. Where the olives balanced the pesto and made it better, the tomatoes somehow flattened it out, and made it taste like grass. On the tomato pizza, the best bites were the pure pesto bites, whereas those were the worst bites on the olive pizza. Cooking is crazy!
When I tried garlic mustard a few years ago, I thought it was gross and wrote it off. Over this latest interminable winter, some reading made me wonder if I did it wrong. In Minnesota, garlic mustard is typically biennial, growing as a basal rosette for one year, then sending up flowering stalks the second year. For most plants with this growth pattern, the first-year leaves are the tenderest, tastiest part. Many people recommend collecting first-year leaves from garlic mustard, and that’s what I tried a few years ago. But there’s disagreement about which part of garlic mustard is the best, and I've now read more experienced foragers who suggest the young stalks of the second-year plant make for the better food. That's what I tried this week, and this batch of stalks, at least, was much better than the basal leaves I tried before.
I found garlic mustard growing just outside my front door, a dozen stalks standing shoulder to shoulder against a textured background like in a Wes Anderson movie. It took about two minutes to harvest five ounces, which made for three ounces of picked and prepared leaves and stalks. (The leaf petioles are tough, and the base of the stalks, even above the snap point, are fibrous. I worried the food processor wouldn't chop those parts, so I picked off the leaves and snapped off the bottom inch or so of stalk.)
We made a quick and easy pesto:
3oz garlic mustard leaves and stalks
1.5oz lightly toasted walnuts
1.5oz parmesan
1/4 cup olive oil
pinch of salt
Process the greens, nuts, and cheese until smooth. Remove to a bowl and stir in olive oil until you have the consistency you want. I used about a quarter cup. Stir in salt to taste.
(Options: include a big clove of garlic in the food processor. Or include a few grinds of black pepper. Or finish by stirring in some lemon zest and juice.)
We used the pesto for a pizza, topped with mozzarella, halved kalamata olives, and a mess of thinly sliced red onions. The pesto has a strong flavor that's nothing like basil. More like an intense arugula. It doesn't taste much of garlic, but it does have the kind of bite I associate with garlic.
I wanted to taste the greens, so didn't include garlic in the pesto. That would be a great match of flavors, though, so next time I'll probably put some garlic in. As for the pizza, something about the kalamata olives made a big difference. The bites without an olive were OK, but a little one-note bitter. The bites with an olive really sang-- I don't know if it's the saltiness, the vinegar, the fat, but the olives made the pesto taste grrrreat.
We also tried a pizza with sliced tomatoes instead of olives. That one wasn't very good. Where the olives balanced the pesto and made it better, the tomatoes somehow flattened it out, and made it taste like grass. On the tomato pizza, the best bites were the pure pesto bites, whereas those were the worst bites on the olive pizza. Cooking is crazy!