First Food -- wild berry canes (shoots)
Back on the West Coast of British Columbia, where i grew up, i was taught to find food in the forest. And i still look for wild food every time i walk in one. One of the most surprising wild foods comes in the early Spring. It is the fresh shoots on the Salmonberry plant. Salmonberries are gorgeous sweet berries, an orange colour, much like a raspberry, but with big lobes like blackberries or logan berries. They grow on the sides of the hills and mountains in dense patches and in May and early June, they are THE delicacy of the West Coast. Every year we would pick buckets of them to eat fresh and make into pies. The reason they are called Salmonberries is that they are the colour of, and resemble in shape, salmon eggs or roe. But they don't taste like fish eggs! You can read more about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_spectabilis
Well, before the berries come out, or indeed, the flowers, the salmonberry plants offer another bounty.-- their fresh green shoots. Like most canes, the plant consists of two types of stems -- old wood and new green shoots. In the early Spring, the shoots are tender and you can pluck them, strip off the outer fibrous skin, and eat them raw. They have a wonderful fresh taste, sort of like a mix between celery and asparagus, with a bit of a citrus bite. Some of the First Nations called them "Firstfood" as they were the first harvestable green thing, coming just before the fiddleheads of ferns and the early nettle and other fresh leaves. My uncle, who had been a forest worker all his life would take me into the woods and show me forestfoods, and my favourite was salmonberry shoots.
Well, before the berries come out, or indeed, the flowers, the salmonberry plants offer another bounty.-- their fresh green shoots. Like most canes, the plant consists of two types of stems -- old wood and new green shoots. In the early Spring, the shoots are tender and you can pluck them, strip off the outer fibrous skin, and eat them raw. They have a wonderful fresh taste, sort of like a mix between celery and asparagus, with a bit of a citrus bite. Some of the First Nations called them "Firstfood" as they were the first harvestable green thing, coming just before the fiddleheads of ferns and the early nettle and other fresh leaves. My uncle, who had been a forest worker all his life would take me into the woods and show me forestfoods, and my favourite was salmonberry shoots.
Here in Norway there are no salmonberries, sadly. But walking in the forest last weekend i started to think about it and realized that, whilst salmonberries are probably the epitome of Firstfood shoots, most wild canes generate early spring new growth and i started to wonder if there were other possibilities. After all, Norway famously has a wide variety of wild berries, from tyttebaer, through to multe, which is probably the closest thing to salmonberries. Again sadly, i've never seen multe growing down here in the SW, though.
I am fortunate in that i work in an Agricultural research park and one of my colleagues in Bioforsk, Age Jorgensen, is an expert on berries. I asked Age about wild canes. In the discussion he suggested something i had never thought of -- what about the fresh shoots of his raspberry plants in the experimental greenhouse? What a great idea! So this afternoon he cut me some fresh green shoots (it is the beginning of May as i write this) and i took them home and experimented on them. This is the result.
I am fortunate in that i work in an Agricultural research park and one of my colleagues in Bioforsk, Age Jorgensen, is an expert on berries. I asked Age about wild canes. In the discussion he suggested something i had never thought of -- what about the fresh shoots of his raspberry plants in the experimental greenhouse? What a great idea! So this afternoon he cut me some fresh green shoots (it is the beginning of May as i write this) and i took them home and experimented on them. This is the result.
When dealing with fresh shoots, you have to get them early! The earlier the better, in fact. Dealing with them is rather like dealing with asparagus. The part you want is the tender part at the top of the stalk. The thicker the stalk is, the more woody it will be and you won't be able to eat it. Age cut me some long green shoots, about a metre or so in length. I took them home and broke them off just like you would break off the bottom of asparagus spears at the point that they snapp off. I discarded the lower more woody parts and took the tops into the house to work on. What you see in the two images above is what i wound up with.
Above you can see the three textures you get. The bottom one is the top of a shoot and is so tender you can eat it raw. It is crispy, juicy and crunchy and has a definite fresh citron hint of flavour. It is very nice. The thicker one above it is a bit more woody, but can be snapped easily. These parts i would cook, as below. And the thin one at the top with the white pith in the middle is inedible -- it is too woody - and must be discarded.
Your first task is to peal the stalks. In the woods i used to just use my fingers. But in the kitchen i used a french peeler just like i would on asparagus. The peel is very fibrous and pretty inedible, although if you were desperate for something green i imagine you could cope(!). What you want to do is to remove all the fibrous outer coating, leaving the juicy green interior. Start by pulling off the stems with leaves - these will also pull off long strings of fiber down the stalk. Then get peeling!
Here (above) is the result. I separated out the very tender ones which could be eaten raw and used them in a salad. I made a kind of Waldorf salad with a cream dressing and walnuts. It was pretty good. And the rest i cooked according to the following recipe.
Blanched Berry Cane Shoots in butter and lemon.
Prepare some salted boiling water. Take your cane stems and plunge them in the boiling water for three minutes. The length of time you need to do this will vary according to the age and fibrousness of your shoots. I did three minutes and it worked fine for most of the shoots although some could have taken another minute or two longer. You do not want to cook them all the way through, though, because you will saute them later. When done plunge immediately in ice cold water to stop them cooking further. Remove them from the water when cold and drain them.
Prepare some salted boiling water. Take your cane stems and plunge them in the boiling water for three minutes. The length of time you need to do this will vary according to the age and fibrousness of your shoots. I did three minutes and it worked fine for most of the shoots although some could have taken another minute or two longer. You do not want to cook them all the way through, though, because you will saute them later. When done plunge immediately in ice cold water to stop them cooking further. Remove them from the water when cold and drain them.
Look kind of like asparagus, don't they? Then put a saute pan on medium heat, melt some butter in it and lay the shoots in the sizzling butter. Sprinkle with lemon zest and after a minute, squeeze over some lemon juice. Let them cook for three more minutes or so and serve warm to plates. They should still be crunchy and retain their bright fresh citrus-y flavour.
And there you have it! Now, you may think that this is a bit fiddly, and i certainly wouldn't want to feed this to a football team. The peeling is the most time-intensive bit. But the fact that it is free food, that it is Firstfood, and that you will be eating the wild bounty of nature makes it worthwhile. The amount above will serve two and took half an hour in total to prepare -- and i was experimenting. It will go faster next time!
When you savour their lemony freshness you can think of those hunter-gatherers who have lived off preserved food all winter, gathering and eating the first green vegetables of the Spring. How important they would be. It is no surprise that these were such significant foods that the Coastal native people's would call them Firstfood and revered them!
Now, what i had were raspberry canes. They are not quite as good as salmonberry shoots. But they're nae bad, as they say in Scotland. And they are only one of many fresh vegetables you can harvest in the land around you in the early Spring. Early dandelion leaves, early nettles, early ground elder or pigweed -- in fact, many 'weeds' are edible (if you are careful in identifying them!) when they first emerge from the ground. Think of fiddleheads -- the early sprouts of ferns -- which are a major industry in eastern Canada. There, you can buy fiddleheads in the freezer section of your supermarket and apparently the New Brunswick the industry generates 2 million dollars a year - you can see more about this here. All it takes is some careful learning, and a sense of adventure and you too can be eating Firstfoods that you harvest yourself from the land around you!
When you savour their lemony freshness you can think of those hunter-gatherers who have lived off preserved food all winter, gathering and eating the first green vegetables of the Spring. How important they would be. It is no surprise that these were such significant foods that the Coastal native people's would call them Firstfood and revered them!
Now, what i had were raspberry canes. They are not quite as good as salmonberry shoots. But they're nae bad, as they say in Scotland. And they are only one of many fresh vegetables you can harvest in the land around you in the early Spring. Early dandelion leaves, early nettles, early ground elder or pigweed -- in fact, many 'weeds' are edible (if you are careful in identifying them!) when they first emerge from the ground. Think of fiddleheads -- the early sprouts of ferns -- which are a major industry in eastern Canada. There, you can buy fiddleheads in the freezer section of your supermarket and apparently the New Brunswick the industry generates 2 million dollars a year - you can see more about this here. All it takes is some careful learning, and a sense of adventure and you too can be eating Firstfoods that you harvest yourself from the land around you!
