“My bells, steppe flowers” ​​- who doesn’t know this?
Did you know that among the bells there is one species that is officially bred as a vegetable plant, and several species that are eaten, so to speak, unofficially?
When starting to write about another family of plants, you naturally look through the literature so as not to miss anything important.

I open the multi-volume publication “Plant Resources of the USSR” on the bellflower family and begin to look through one in a row
genus, second, third and further in a row are edible, the rest are almost all medicinal.
Thank God that no one except specialists reads this book, otherwise they would have eaten everything long ago, not to mention the fact that the entire bellflower family is rich in ornamental plants,
which are already being intensively exterminated. In Western Europe, rapunzel bell is grown as a vegetable plant.

The word “Rapunzel” itself is of Latin origin. “Rapa” in Latin corresponds to our “turnip”, even the sound is similar. And “rapunculus” - in the same Latin - a small turnip, namely
This is what the Latin name sounds like - Campanula rapunculus, that is, bell-turnip.

Rapunzel does not grow wild in central Russia, but it is found in Moldova, on the Dnieper, in the lower reaches of the Don, in the Crimea and in the Caucasus. Its root is thick, spindle-shaped, its stem is up to a meter high, usually not branched, its inflorescence is long
narrow panicle. The flowers are pale blue, often white. The lower leaves are oblong-obovate, narrowed into a petiole, with wavy edges. Flowering continues in three stages.

First, a panicle of bluish-white flowers blooms. After the first row of flowers has faded, lateral branches appear from the pedicels, on which new flowers also appear in a brush. This process is then repeated again. The young leaves and roots of this bell are eaten. The leaves are used in salads and soups. The root is sweet and is eaten with oil and vinegar. The juice of the aerial part is used medicinally to remove warts and to increase milk production.

The Brothers Grimm have a fairy tale that annoyed me as a child. The fairy tale is called “Rapunzel”. It begins with the fact that one woman, expecting a child, looked into the garden at an unusually appetizing rapunzel growing there. The owner of the garden was a witch. This woman’s husband climbed into the witch’s garden twice to get rapunzel and finally got caught. For plucking Rapunzel, the witch took the woman's child away.
She named the girl Rapunzel, and the girl grew up to be the most beautiful in the world. In the notes to the fairy tale, the translator, without hesitation, wrote: “Rapunzel is an edible plant, a root vegetable.” I honestly heard something like a turnip in this “root vegetable”. The beauty called the turnip couldn’t fit into my head, and I couldn’t stand this fairy tale.

As an adult I came acrossbell rapunzel.

There are three rapunzels in German, all of which are edible.
- One of the plants belongs to the valerian family, has bright greenery, but is very inconspicuous, I know it well, I grew it myself. Now it has appeared in stores under the name corn salad. Its taste is neutral, and the appearance of the flowering plant is very inconspicuous.
- The second plant of the bellflower family is quite cute, but I only recently learned that it is eaten at all, though from a German book. But look how the fairy tale changes if the witch had a Rapunzel bell growing in her garden. Then the girl could really be beautiful, and her luxurious braids, which are mentioned in the fairy tale, probably curled like the delicate petals of a white bell. Here
you and the root vegetable. It would be nice if some artist read this book and made it into a fairy tale
real drawings of a girl with bells. In all publications of the Brothers Grimm, which
I came across this tale either not illustrated at all, or they depict a view of a tower in which
Rapunzel sits, from afar. Apparently, artists are also confused by the “root vegetable”.

But let's return to our bells. We have a lot of very
close view – rapunzel bell (C. rapunculoides).

It grows on the edges of forests, in bushes, on fallow lands, sometimes on cliffs of river banks, in gardens and abandoned
parks. The flowers are quite large, up to 3 cm long, light lilac. Stems and leaves are rough with short hairs. The leaves are unevenly serrated along the edges, the lower ones are oblong-heart-shaped, with petioles, the upper ones are sessile, oblong-lanceolate. The brush is single-sided. The root is spindle-shaped, light-colored, the rhizome is creeping, with shoots.

This type of bells reproduces well by pieces of rhizome and on arable land, flower beds, and beds it can turn into a rather annoying weed, especially since when weeding the stem easily comes off and the plant quickly grows back. Moreover, the root may end up in a completely different place, and not under the shoot that you tore off. Only a thin rope of rhizome leads to the shoot from the root; the stem ends at the bottom with a bunch of thin roots, and the turnip root itself grows calmly 3–4 cm from the stem.
This way the plant is protected from weeding and from animals that are not averse to eating the succulent root.

The bell is also one of the first edible plants. It grows back early. You can eat greens and roots. The leaves contain vitamins C and E. The leaves are considered a wound healing agent and are also used for coughs. I didn’t like the leaves, perhaps I tried them too late, but the root after boiling is sweetish and tastes very much like young corn, so it should be eaten with butter and salt.

Typically each plant has only one large root. Having dug it up, leave the little thing to grow further. The root is covered with a thick skin, which must be removed after cooking. But keep in mind that the bell has a double skin. The topmost layer is easily removed, but do not think that lightly scraping the boiled root is enough. The very strong, almost transparent skin is retained, and in order to remove it, you either need to carefully cut the root lengthwise, or, if the root is thin, simply remove the skin like a stocking. After that you can eat the root. If you dig it up when the greens have already grown, there will be almost no sugar left and the root will taste more like potatoes.

They also eat several other types of bells, but I just feel sorry for them, they are so beautiful. Although I will talk about those of them that are often planted in flower beds in the garden in the corresponding chapter. Perhaps exotic lovers will want to try them, especially since many species are used in medicine as a sedative, contain quite rare vitamins, for example E, and have an anti-ulcer effect.

N. G. Zamyatina. Robinson's Kitchen. Recipes for dishes made from wild plants and flowers"

LUNGWORT

In the still transparent leafless forests, mostly broad-leaved - under oaks, lindens, maples, in alder forests, in ravines - noticeable flowers bloom from afar. Half of the flowers on the same plant are blue or lilac, the rest of the flowers and buds are pink. The flowers are about 1 cm in diameter, with a green bell-shaped cup, a corolla with a long tube and five petals, also forming a wide bell. The inflorescence is a curl; in plants just beginning to bloom, it is curled up, like a snail shell. Stems with sessile lanceolate leaves, the whole plant is slightly bristly. At the beginning of flowering, the stalks of lungwort are very short, about 8 cm, then with further flowering and with fruits they stretch out and sometimes reach a height of 30 cm. Here is our most common plant - Lungwort obscure (Pulmonaria obscura). Remember where you saw it and what the flowering stems look like.


Now there are no basal leaves on the lungwort, and that is what interests us. But they will appear only after flowering, which lasts about two weeks, depending on the weather. The leaves of this type of lungwort are heart-ovate, pointed at the end, with long narrow-winged petioles, very dark in color and bristly. Lungwort is a rhizomatous perennial and often forms large thickets. For the first acquaintance with it, it is better, for control, to find a faded stem. It still retains the leaves and calyxes of the former flowers. This is where your early spring observations will come in handy.

The leaves of the lungwort begin to grow at the end of April - in May. The first leaves will appear at the very base of the peduncle, then the rhizome will begin to grow, and the leaves will “crawl” away from the peduncle. As new leaves bloom, old ones gradually die off. By autumn, next year's flower shoot will be completely ready in the renewal bud at the end of the rhizome. After fruiting, the peduncle dies, and the part of the rhizome on which it grew lives for another four to six years, but without leaves, which develop only on its young part. In our country, lungwort leaves die off during the winter, but in places with mild winters - in Crimea, the Caucasus, Western Europe– lungwort overwinters with leaves.

The color of lungwort flowers is interesting. As I already mentioned, they come in two colors. What does this plant do? Firstly, the color contrast makes the plant more noticeable, and secondly, the color “tells” insects which flowers to land on. The coloring of lungwort flowers is provided by plant dyes anthocyanins, which react to changes in the acidity of the environment in the same way as the litmus paper familiar to you from a school chemistry course. Anthocyanins are red in an acidic environment, blue in an alkaline environment.


The reaction of the cell sap of unpollinated lungwort flowers that secrete nectar is acidic, which is why they are pink. After pollination, nectar is not released, and the reaction of the cell sap becomes neutral or alkaline, and the flowers turn lilac or blue. For the insect, this is a signal - don’t go into the blue flowers! By the way, lighter pink flowers are more noticeable against the dark background of last year's foliage and leaves of the plant. The fruit of the lungwort consists of four nuts with white appendages. These appendages contain a lot of protein and fat. They serve as bait for ants, who carry seeds throughout the forest and sow them in new places. But in shady forests, rhizomes remain the main method of reproduction.

Lungwort is a relatively new name for this plant; back in 1909 it had the official name the same as in Latin - pulmonary. In folk medicine, the plant collected before flowering was used as a mucous and emollient for colds and scrofula. It is still used for the same purposes, for example, in Germany, where it is sold in pharmacies. [club72856084|Dry herb is brewed in the amount of 2 teaspoons per 150 ml of boiling water, left for 10 minutes]. This amount of infusion should be drunk per day, preferably warm and with honey. Lungwort contains vitamin C, carotene and rutin, which strengthens the walls of capillaries.

In England, lungwort was at one time bred as a salad plant. They eat it in the same way in the Caucasus. Soft lungwort leaves make a very good soup, puree, you can even make small cabbage rolls, but they need to be stewed in a sour sauce - sour cream or tomato. Because lungwort grows new leaves throughout the summer, it is a long-lasting plant. You can always find a few young, soft leaves on each plant. Old leaves are tougher and not as tasty, but they are also suitable for mashed potatoes and caviar, they just need to be minced or rubbed through a sieve. Lungwort does not have a particularly pronounced taste, but as a neutral plant in soups and salads with the addition of something sour or spicy, it is very good.


It is easy to grow lungwort somewhere under apple trees in the corner of the plot, where it will delight you with early flowers in the spring, and in the summer it will be quite useful for soup. Other types of lungwort, differing in flower color and leaf shape, are also edible. Now its numerous types and varieties have appeared on sale.

In nettle, the stinging hair looks like a medical ampoule installed in a “cup holder” of small cells. The ampoule itself is a very large cell (a hair is visible to the naked eye), the thin upper end of which is impregnated with silicon salts. At the very tip of the cell, the membrane is very thin; there is, as it were, an “incision” on it, which we make on the ampoule when we are going to open it. At the slightest touch the head is round
the hair breaks off, and the sharp edges of the hair pierce the skin, while all its contents pour out of the cell into the wound. This is how a disposable nettle syringe works.

For 1 gram of nettle weight there are up to one hundred stinging cells. Their juice contains histamine, which causes tissue inflammation, choline and caustic formic acid. The burn of common nettle is unpleasant, but at least not life-threatening. Burns of tropical relatives of our nettles sometimes lead to serious consequences.

Tropical trees, Laportea, are especially notorious. The burn of Laportea is so intense that it can cause the death of a child. The burn of a large tropical tree, Laportea gigantea, causes especially severe pain. The pain from it can cause fainting and is felt for several months, especially if water gets on the burned area. One of the types of Laportea, Laportea tuberifera ( Laportea bulbifera), grows wild in the Far East. The nettle genus contains about 50 species, of which ten grow here. The Asian species looks unusual - hemp nettle (

Try cooking delicious dishes from cultural and wild plants. These dishes will enrich your body with the missing carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and other beneficial substances.

To prepare them, you need to have patience and a desire to feed your family delicious food.

I've been cooking for several years now delicious dishes from cultural and wild plants and all the dishes delight my family, friends and acquaintances. All plants must be collected while they have tender leaves or sprouts. If you want to use cultivated and wild plants for food all summer, then you need to cut off the overgrown parts so that new young shoots will grow again and tender leaves will appear.

SALADS

Salad dressing . 50 grams of vegetable oil (preferably olive), 50 grams of 4% apple cider vinegar, salt, ground black pepper and sugar to taste. Mix everything and use for dressing salads and vinaigrettes.

Spring salad. Place a bunch of young dandelion leaves in salted cold water for 30 minutes to remove the bitterness. Pour boiling water over young leaves of coltsfoot and nettle and chop. Add chopped sorrel, green onions, dill, radishes.

I take the quantity arbitrarily, try to take about 1-2 handfuls for the first time. If the sorrel is no longer young, then it is better to abandon it. Chop 1-2 boiled eggs. Mix all the chopped ingredients, add a chopped bunch of young dandelion leaves.

Salt and pepper to taste. Finally, add sour cream or homemade mayonnaise. Fans of vegetable oil can add olive oil; I would recommend adding a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. The salad can be decorated with lungwort flowers. Beautiful and tasty. Bon appetit!

Green salad . Boil 1-2 eggs, cool. Chop the green onions (base), add salt and mix with a spoon, you can even grind until the juice appears. Salt can be replaced with soy sauce. Add chopped parsley, dill and tender leaves to the onion. Add scalded and chopped young nettle sprouts.

Peel the eggs, cut into cubes, put in the salad. Cut the radish into strips or pass through a coarse grater. Mix the salad, season with sour cream. Greens must be taken in the same proportion.

Vitamin clover salad . Prepared greens: stinging nettle, onion (you can use any one), about 50 grams of sorrel sorrel and unopened buds of meadow clover, finely chop, add salt (instead of salt, sometimes I put a little bouillon cube or dry chicken broth). Lightly grind everything with a wooden spoon and season with sour cream or mayonnaise.

Carrot salad with nettles . 50 grams of carrots through a grater, add 20 grams of washed and chopped nettles, crushed garlic and 10 walnut kernels. Season with mayonnaise with the addition of lemon juice; mayonnaise can be replaced with sour cream. Decorate with sprigs of greenery.

Dandelion leaf salad. Rinse 75 grams of young dandelion leaves well in running water and place in salt water for 30 minutes. Place in a colander, drain and chop. Add 5 grams of grated horseradish, 10 grams of sour cream with lemon juice, mix everything. Garnish the salad with a boiled egg and cut into slices.

Dream salad . Scald 70 g of dream with boiling water several times. Chop and mix with 20 g of washed and chopped young oxalis leaves. Season with vegetable oil.

Salad of young shoots of wild garlic . Place well-washed wild garlic leaves in boiling water for 2-3 minutes and allow the water to drain. Boil the meat separately. 40 grams of boiled meat, cut into strips, are placed in a salad bowl. Prepared wild garlic sprinkled with apple cider vinegar is placed on top of the meat. Add salt to taste.

SOUPS

Vitamin soup . Place chopped potatoes and onions into boiling water. Cook until done, add salt and pepper to taste, and you can add a bouillon cube. While the potatoes are cooking, prepare the green plants: pour boiling water over the nettles and chop them. To prevent the nettle from burning, I wear gloves.

We also chop the young leaves of sorrel, sorrel, and radishes and add them to the nettles. Add chopped herbs to the prepared broth and bring to a boil. While our soup is boiling, beat 2-3 raw eggs in a separate bowl. Add in a thin stream to the boiling soup, stirring constantly.

After boiling, cover with a lid, turn off the heat and leave for another 10-15 minutes. Before serving, add chopped dill and parsley to a bowl of soup and season with sour cream. Bon appetit!

Cabbage soup with sorrel and clover . Place chopped potatoes in 300 grams of boiling meat broth and cook until the potatoes are ready, add salt and spices to taste. Sauté one grated carrot and finely chopped onion in butter.

Add chopped sorrel and clover leaves to the vegetables. Mix the herbs and vegetables well and add to the broth. Boil. Then cover with a lid and turn off the heat. The cabbage soup is ready. Serve with sour cream and chopped parsley.

Spring okroshka . 30 grams of boiled potatoes, 25-6-30 grams of boiled meat, cut into cubes, as for a salad. Chop 20g of green onions (learn about the benefits of green onions) and watercress leaves and 8g of dill. Grind 20g of cucumber grass with salt (salt to taste) until juice appears.

Finely chop the white of one egg, grind the yolk with 10g of sour cream, 4g of ready-made mustard and dilute with kvass (350 grams). Add crushed cucumber grass and chopped produce to the mixture with kvass and mix gently. Serve with sour cream.

Homemade Botvinya . Simmer 30 grams of young nettles and spinach. Separately, simmer 50 grams of sorrel. Add everything together to 300 grams of bread kvass, add salt and sugar. Serve botvinya with boiled fish, cucumbers and lettuce.

Cream soup with oat root . Prepare broth from 5 grams of meat, salt and spices. Boil 50 grams of oat root vegetables in salted water and rub through a sieve. Place the resulting mass in the broth and bring to a boil. Add dill and sour cream to the prepared puree soup.

SECOND COURSESA

Pilaf with nettles. Collect only emerging young leaves and sprouts of nettle. Rinse thoroughly in several waters. do not drain the water, but collect the nettles themselves so that the sand remains at the bottom. When processing nettles, use gloves; they will protect you from burns.

Peel 1-2 medium onions and chop thinly. Pour about 0.5-1 cup of vegetable oil into a cast iron pot, add onion and fry. While the onion is frying, grate 2-3 carrots using a coarse grater or finely chop them with a knife.

Place in onion (), add 0.5 cups of water and simmer covered over low heat for 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile, chop the nettles and add to the stewed vegetables. You can add a bouillon cube or salt to taste.

While all this is stewing, rinse 1-2 cups of rice (any kind, even steamed) and carefully place it on the vegetables and nettles with a slotted spoon or spoon. Level the surface ( do not mix!) and add water (can be cold or boiling water).

Pour enough water to cover the rice by 4 centimeters. Over medium heat, quickly bring to a boil. After boiling, taste the salt and add as needed. When the water on the surface of the rice has evaporated, carefully turn the top layer of rice over with a slotted spoon or spoon, reduce the heat, and cover tightly with a lid to prevent air from entering. You can also cover the lid with a napkin.

Reduce heat to low and leave for another 10-15 minutes. After this, turn off the heat and leave for 5-10 minutes for the rice to swell. Before serving, mix thoroughly and serve sprinkled with herbs on top. Mix carefully, do not touch the burnt part. This also happens.

GREEN PUREE. Fry 2-3 heads of finely chopped onion in vegetable oil. Prepare green herbs. Take equal quantities (about 20 grams) of leaves of young honey, plantain, hogweed, mallow, sorrel or sorrel, add a little green onion and rinse everything thoroughly.

Pass through a meat grinder, add a little dried flour, salt, spices if desired (you can add a bouillon cube). Transfer the resulting green mass into a frying pan and simmer for about 10 minutes, covered, over low heat after boiling. The puree is ready.

Millet balls with nettles . Cook viscous millet porridge, add scalded and chopped nettles. Put salt, one egg, you can put a tablespoon of mayonnaise or sour cream. Form into balls and fry on both sides in a small amount of vegetable oil. Bring until ready in the microwave.

Omelet with nettles . Finely chop the well-washed nettle shoots and place them in a frying pan with heated vegetable oil. Mix well and pour in the egg mixture. Cover with a lid and bring to readiness over low heat. Salt and pepper to taste.

Omelette with sorrel . Fry the onions in vegetable or butter, add scalded and chopped sorrel. Mix quickly and pour in the egg mixture. Salt to taste. Bring to readiness over low heat.

My favorite pasties . There has not yet been a single person who, having tasted my pasties with grass, did not say that they were very tasty. Try it too, maybe your family will also admire their taste.

First, let's prepare the dough. The dough is prepared from water, salt and flour; add a pinch of soda to the flour. Knead the dough and leave for 20-30 minutes, covered with a towel. The dough should look like dumplings.

Prepare the filling. Wash 500 grams of young nettle leaves (I process them with gloves on), place in a colander to drain, and chop. Wash and chop dandelion leaves (about a handful). Add 500 grams of washed and chopped honey leaves. In a large frying pan, fry 2-3 chopped onions in vegetable oil.

When the onions turn golden, add the prepared green herbs. Add salt and pepper to taste (you can add a bouillon cube). Stir for 2-3 minutes, close the lid, turn off the heat and leave for 10 minutes. The filling for the chebureks is ready. Transfer to a plate to cool.

Make a sausage from the dough, cut into pieces of the desired size, about the size of a fist. Roll out a not very thin round flatbread (like dumplings or manti), put the filling on half of the flatbread, smooth it out, pour in a little of the resulting juice, cover with the other half, press lightly, then run the edge of the plate along the semicircle.

Bake 2 pieces in a dry frying pan. Place the finished chebureks on a plate in a heap, crosswise, two at a time, brushing each cheburek with melted butter. Fans of fried chebureks can fry them in vegetable oil. Bon appetit!

Green dumplings . Have you tried dumplings made from green plants? Let's try! I won’t describe the dough, since the dough is ordinary dumpling dough. But the filling is unusual.

For the filling you will need 2-3 boiled eggs and all the greens that you picked from your garden, field or forest. I take the quantity arbitrarily, but for the first time, if you have never made dumplings like this, take a bunch of each herb.

Take a bunch of honey (), tender shoots of nettles, sorrel, green onions and about half a bunch of dandelion leaves. Place the dandelion in salt water for 20 minutes and then scald with boiling water to remove the bitterness.

Chop everything, add chopped eggs, add half a bouillon cube and stir. Add salt if necessary. The filling is ready. Make dumplings or dumplings, boil in water with salt or a bouillon cube and serve as a second course without broth with sour cream. If you have high acidity, then do not add sorrel or add less bunch.

This filling can also be used to make pies. In this case, you can add boiled rice to this filling. And remember: the greens must be very young. If the leaves have already become coarse, then the green herbs need to be boiled or simmered a little.

Fried dandelion rosettes . Collect dandelion rosettes and keep them in the shade so that the insects run away. Place in cold water for 20 minutes. Boil in salted water, let drain. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and fry. Separately prepare pieces of fried or stewed meat. Mix fried dandelion rosettes and prepared meat. Serve hot.

Read about the beneficial properties of dandelion.

DESSERT

Delicious dandelion jam

Dandelion jam promotes weight loss and cleansing of the body.

First way . Collect 100 dandelion flowers. As they are collected, flower baskets should be laid out in a thin layer on newspaper to remove insects from the flowers. Wash the collected baskets thoroughly in several waters to remove soil. Soak in plenty of cold water to remove bitterness. After an hour, place the flowers in a colander to drain.

Prepare syrup. One kilogram of sugar is taken per liter of water. For 100 dandelion flowers, take 2-2.5 liters of water and, accordingly, 2-2.5 kg of sugar. Place the flowers in an enamel bowl in which the jam will be cooked.

Carefully pour in the hot syrup and leave until completely cool. You can close it with a lid. Place the cooled “half-jam” on the fire and bring to a boil. Cool again at room temperature.

The second time, bring to a boil, chop and add 2-3 lemons to the jam and, skimming off the foam, boil the jam for another 10-15 minutes. That's it, the jam is ready.

Place the hot jam into clean jars, scalded with boiling water, and close with regular lids.

Second way making jam from dandelion flower baskets. Process the dandelions as in the first case, then add 2-2.5 liters of water, bring to a boil, boil for 5 minutes. Drain the water from the dandelions into an enamel pan, squeeze out the water in which they were boiled from the dandelions and add to the pan. Measure the amount of liquid formed.

Add one kilogram of sugar per liter of liquid. Boil the resulting mixture for 5 minutes. Add 2-3 lemons, cut into pieces or you can squeeze the juice. Boil for another 5-10 minutes. Just like in the first case, pour it hot into jars, close with regular lids, and store.

I recently read that instead of lemons, you can put finely chopped sorrel in jam. I want to try it this year. I will definitely write about the results.

Candied roots of calamus, burdock, dandelion, elecampane and ginger

In late autumn, thick parts of the roots of calamus, burdock, dandelion, and elecampane are collected, and delicious candied fruits can be made from ginger root now, since ginger root is on sale. Burdock roots must be in the first year of ripening (burdock does not bloom in the first year, blooms in the second year of its life, then dies).

One kilogram of any roots is thoroughly washed, thin roots are removed, and cut into circles. Place the prepared roots in boiling water and boil for 10-15 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the roots to a colander to drain.

Boil syrup from one glass of water and one kilogram of sugar. Place the roots into the prepared syrup and cook for 30 minutes. Leave the finished candied fruits in the syrup for some time. Remove with a slotted spoon and dry in the oven or air.

Candied roots of calamus, burdock, dandelion, elecampane and ginger will help not only with sore throats, flu and colds, but can also prevent them.

TEA, DRINKS AND KVASS

Strawberry tea. Rinse the porcelain teapot with boiling water. Add 10 grams of strawberry leaves to a mixture of dried St. John's wort and mint leaves (2 grams each) and pour into a heated kettle. Pour 200 grams of boiling water and let it brew for 7-10 minutes, covering the kettle with a towel. Before serving, pour tea into the bowl and pour it back into the teapot to make the tea stronger.

General strengthening tea . Take 6 grams of rose hips and sea buckthorn, 2 grams of licorice and yarrow herb, add 3 grams of dandelion root. Pour boiling water (200 ml) into this mixture and boil for 10 minutes over medium heat, avoiding boiling. Let it brew for 10 minutes, strain and add 20 grams of honey. The tea is ready to drink.

Multivitamin tea . Mash a teaspoon of rose hips and black currants in a mortar, add 1-2 teaspoons of green tea (black tea lovers can add black tea, not green). Then brew 2 teaspoons of the mixture with 0.5 liters of boiling water. Leave for about 15 minutes. Tea is ready.

Tea sweatshop . Take raspberry fruits, linden inflorescences, black tea in equal quantities. This tea will help with colds. You can't drink before going out.

Soothing tea . Take 2 teaspoons of mint and shamrock, add one teaspoon and one spoon of valerian roots, hops and 3 tbsp. spoons of green tea. Mix everything and put it in a jar. Brew tea at the rate of 1 tsp. mixture per 400 grams of boiling water. Drink in the evening if you have poor sleep.

Drink "Tea balm" . Boiling water is poured halfway into a porcelain teapot and left to warm up. Prepare the following mixture: 5 grams of dried mint, chamomile and premium-grade dry black or green tea. Remove the water from the kettle, add the prepared mixture and brew 200 ml of boiling water, leave for 5-8 minutes and serve.

Drink made from pine needles . Rinse 40 g of pine needles well and put in 215 ml of water, 8 g of sugar, 1 g of lemon zest. Boil everything for 30 minutes, covering it tightly with a lid over medium heat (so that there is no rapid boiling). Strain, cool, add 3 g of lemon juice, stir.

Drink "Nine Forces" . Cut 80 grams of fresh elecampane roots and add 200 ml of water. Boil over low heat for 20 minutes. Add 20 grams of sugar, strain. Strain the resulting broth, add 20 grams of cranberry juice and cool. If more than 20 grams of water has boiled away, then you need to add boiled water to 200 grams and bring to a boil. Cool before serving.

Rhubarb kvass. Finely chop 30 grams of washed rhubarb and add 200 ml of cold water and let it boil. Let the resulting broth brew for 2-3 hours, covered with a lid and a towel. Strain, add 1 gram of yeast diluted in water and 20 grams of sugar, set to ferment. When it stops fermenting, the kvass is ready for use.

Bird cherry kvass . Lightly mash washed and peeled bird cherry berries (50 grams) and pour hot boiled water (320 ml). Bring to a boil, leave for 3 hours, strain. Pour 2 grams of yeast diluted in warm water, 0.2 grams of citric acid and leave to ferment. When the fermentation process is over, the kvass is ready.

Kvass with thyme . Take 200 ml of ready-made kvass, best home-made kvass. Boil 4 g of dried thyme in a small amount of kvass, pour into the kvass, add 10 g of sugar. Leave for 10-12 hours. Drink chilled.

Sea buckthorn fizzy . Take 20 g of chilled sea buckthorn juice, 25 g of chilled egg white, 10 ml of chilled lemon juice, and 10 g of edible ice. Stir everything for about 2 minutes, pour into a tall glass and add 40 ml of sparkling water. Using this technology, you can prepare saline from the juices of blueberries, blueberries, currants, etc.

You can read about the use of sea buckthorn in folk medicine.

If you want to try cooking vegetarian dishes from cultivated and wild plants, you can find recipes for delicious dishes .

Bon appetit!

You can eat everything except the moon and its reflection in the water.

Chinese proverb

Just think, really: what are these women not skilled at!.. My God, what kind of dishes are there in the world! If you start eating, you’ll be full of food.

N.V. Gogol. Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka

Introduction

Dear readers!

This book was first published almost 20 years ago, and the question of where to get it is still raised when meeting with me. I did not expect that the topic of using wild plants for food would remain relevant for so many years. As a rule, such books appear in times of national adversity, when the question of how and what to feed a family without food and money arises. It is not surprising that Robinson was released in the midst of the nineties. Previously, such books appeared only during wars. An example is the wonderful book by Yakov Yakovlevich Nikitinsky, “Surrogates and Unusual in Russia Sources of Food Products of Plant and Animal Origin,” published in Moscow in 1921. Experts consider Nikitinsky the founder of Russian scientific merchandising of food products. The professor used all his colossal experience to help people survive. The book describes many wild food plants and provides recommendations for their use. It tells about eating the meat of those wild animals and birds that have never been eaten in Russia before. I hope we won’t get to the point of finding out the nutritional qualities of crows and gophers, but books like this are still interesting to us. A similar book - “The Most Important Wild Food Plants of the Leningrad Region” - was published in besieged Leningrad in 1942. The best botanists from the world's largest Botanical Institute took part in the creation of this book. These books saved many lives in their time. I don’t count on such an effect, but diversifying our table with wild plants is very useful. Unfortunately, due to the transition to industrial cultivation of food plants, their range has been greatly reduced. Only those that grow quickly and produce a large harvest remain; everything else is firmly forgotten. And in what ends up on our tables, there are fewer and fewer useful substances, since the authors of new varieties first of all pay attention to their yield and shelf life. Meanwhile, all plants, and mostly wild ones, are treasure troves of biologically active substances. And the more diverse their range, the more beneficial our body will receive. Moreover, unlike imported rarities, they do not require acquisition costs. Interestingly, even in Victorian England, the inclusion of wild plants in the diet was a religious tradition.

In certain cases, what was served on the table was not what was obtained by a person’s labor, but what God sent him. Many of these traditions are still preserved there, as evidenced by the extensive range of relevant literature. The settlers brought these traditions to America. And due to the passion for healthy eating, they also pay great attention to the use of local wild plants in cuisine and medicine. Actually, it is difficult to separate them from one another. After all, Hippocrates said that food should be medicine.

First of all, I do not pretend to describe edible plants completely - this is impossible. Even the legendary Kozma Prutkov said: “No one will embrace the immensity.” Unfortunately, after the collapse of the USSR, “Flora of Russia” has not yet been written, so the number of plant species in our country is not yet known exactly. On the territory of the former USSR there are about 20 thousand plant species, of which about 2%, or about 400 species, are poisonous. Let's discard about 20% more medicinal and bitter ones and we get about 16 thousand species. Even if we are pessimistic and assume that only a quarter of the remaining harmless plants are edible, we will get about four thousand species! And if we imagine that only a quarter of them grows here, we will still get at least a thousand species of edible plants.

In addition, I did not want to present useful information in a telegraphic style, as so many authors do, starting with our most popular wonderful book by Koshcheev, “Wild food plants in our diet.” In this book, the author described 96 plants, provided recipes for each of them, and all this on 250 pages. If you discard the illustrations, you get about a page for each plant along with recipes. Mikhailov writes about edible plants in the same way. These books are interesting in their own way, but it seems to me that this is no longer enough.

I tried to select those plants that you simply cannot help but write about when considering the vegetation of central Russia, and tell more about them. Each plant is unusual in its own way, each has a history, often ancient and interesting, biological characteristics, and often medicinal properties. This is what I tried to tell you about. I haven’t written about mushrooms and berries – more than enough has been written on this topic.

Botany, especially applied botany, is a fascinating science, although many are not aware of it. You just need to be able to interest her. For me, the example of an author who knows how to interest will always remain Nikolai Mikhailovich Verzilin, whose books “Travel with House Plants” and “In the Footsteps of Robinson” once in childhood led me to a passion for plants, and then to my specialty. I want to dedicate this book with love and admiration to Nikolai Mikhailovich Verzilin. The title of my book “Robinson’s Kitchen” was also a tribute to grateful memory. Verzilinsky's "Robinson" continues his journey, and we are with him. And since its first readers have long since grown up, our recipes are designed for modern adults.

I remember with great gratitude two people who helped me greatly in the preparation of this book.

This is the artist Maria Nikolaevna Sergeeva, who owns the very idea of ​​​​this book and many of the recipes. Some of them were invented and tested by us together, in others I put her ideas into practice, some recipes are completely hers, and for this I am very grateful to her. I also owe it to Maria Nikolaevna for the fact that under her leadership I received a second specialty - as an artist, and I can illustrate this book myself with original drawings from life.

With great respect, I thank Valentina Mikhailovna Rodionova for her help, who worked in our botanical garden for more than fifty years and provided me with truly invaluable help with her advice and comments, as well as being a “guinea pig” when testing at least half of the recipes offered to you.

Chapter 1
From snow to snow

Wild edible plants

Dear readers, we will begin our hunt for wild edible plants as soon as the snow melts.

“The snow is already melting, streams are flowing, spring is blowing through the window” - who hasn’t known these lines since childhood. Previously, this was the most difficult time for a peasant family - winter supplies were coming to an end, but they still had to live to see the first greenery. And the body of a modern city dweller suffers from a lack of vitamins. This manifests itself in the so-called spring fatigue. Drowsiness, irritability and easy fatigue are caused by a lack of vitamins and lack of sunlight. You need to get out into the fresh air as soon as possible. And at the same time, ask what “vitamins” can already be found in thawed patches. Remember them, you can return to them in October or even November, just before the snowfall, since the very first greens have remained green under the snow since the fall. As soon as the snow has melted, she begins to grow. Many of these plants live so short that in one summer they manage to bloom twice and produce seeds, and even leave new green rosettes for the winter for next spring. What plants are in such a hurry? The most ordinary and familiar.

Surepka

One of the first things that catch your eye in garden beds, fields and other areas dug up in August-September are the bright green, shiny rosettes of colza leaves ( Barbarea vulgaris). You can also find cress in meadows and wet lowlands, but always in open areas with not very thick grass.

The colza leaf is shaped like a teaspoon, the handle of which is decorated with two or three pairs of scallops. It is these shiny “spoons” that are collected for salad. Their taste is reminiscent of mustard, slightly hot, so it is better to mix it with other early plants in a salad. This bitterness disappears when cooked, which is why colza is also used instead of cabbage in soup or as a side dish for meat, but in this case it is not cooked for very long, otherwise the colza loses its taste.

In Russian, the ancient prefix “su-” denoted similarity with something, but not complete: twilight is not darkness, sandy loam is not sand, and rapeseed is not turnip. By the way, Dahl’s information about rapeseed comes under the word “surepa (colza).” And it turns out that “surepa” is something like a turnip.

Indeed, the chemical composition of these plants is similar, but cress, in addition to vitamins, mustard oil and other substances needed by the body, contains compounds that strengthen the walls of blood vessels and lower blood pressure.

Mustard essential oil has a pungent taste and enhances the secretion and formation of bile, stimulates intestinal activity and the production of gastric juice. However, because of this, rapeseed is contraindicated for inflammatory bowel diseases and stomach ulcers. A large amount of vitamin C allows the use of rapeseed as an antiscorbutic agent. Crescent seeds were used in folk medicine as a laxative, and the flowers were used to dye silk yellow.

Of course, you should eat rapeseed when it is very young, before flowering, while its stems and leaves are still tender. However, in one English book I came across an original recipe for colza inflorescences fried in dough. Upon practical testing, it turned out that they need to be taken at the very beginning of flowering, when the lower flowers have not yet begun to crumble, otherwise what we, botanists, call the axis of the inflorescence, but “in human terms” - the stem becomes inedible.

I tried a completely unimaginable recipe - pancakes with only petals, which I got in large quantities because for the previous recipe I collected fading colza. They tasted like cabbage, but the color was very beautiful - dazzling yellow. So don’t despair if, when you read this book, the cress has already faded in your garden.

There is another plant with a similar name - rapeseed or field cabbage (Brassica campestris). It differs from the colza in having hairy stems, paler flowers, large irregular leaf teeth and fruits: the pods of the colza are smooth, narrow with a long thin spout, while the pods of the colza are short, plump, often flat on top and shaggy.

Field cabbage is also edible, but it is an annual plant and appears much later. Its leaves are rarely eaten, although they also contain large amounts of ascorbic acid (vitamin C). But the roots of rapeseed are even used in India as an antiscorbutic remedy.

However, this is not what rapeseed is famous for. Its seeds contain up to 40% fatty oil, for which it is specially cultivated in our country, Asian countries, and Brazil. The oil is used for food and for technical purposes.

In clean places - fallow fields, places of various earthworks, rapeseed can quickly form huge homogeneous thickets, from which it is quite possible, without any hassle, to prepare a sufficient amount of seeds for processing, which, by the way, was used in the old days in the Caucasus and Krasnodar Territory. The oil turns out thick, dark with a somewhat specific taste and smell, like all cabbage vegetables. This oil is much richer in so-called unsaturated fatty acids than the famous flaxseed oil. These substances regulate cholesterol metabolism in the body and have an antisclerotic effect. So it’s not in vain that our common Russian weed is grown in distant Brazil.

Shepherd's Purse

Crescent is far from the only plant that has emerged from under the snow. In the same places you can find other rosettes of leaves - gray, rough. The leaves in them are a little similar to the leaves of the colza, but the terminal lobe is not round, but pointed. Botanists call such a leaf plow-shaped. Some rosettes already have a small stem with sessile lanceolate leaves and tiny white flowers emerging from the middle.

This is how the well-known shepherd’s purse went under the snow in the fall ( Capsella bursa-pastoris). This is also a very short-lived plant. During the summer, the shepherd's purse manages to produce seeds at least twice. True, the summer generation almost does not form rosettes - it needs a long day to flower.

The shepherd's purse was named so in ancient Rome - its fruits look like a bag tied at the top with a string. Latin capsella literally translated as handbag - shepherd's bag. And the seeds in this bag are flat and round, like coins.

In our country, shepherd's purse is known mainly as a medicinal plant. It is used not only here, but is also included in the pharmacopoeias of the Netherlands, Germany, and Yugoslavia. (Pharmacopoeia is like the basic law for pharmacists and doctors, into which only the most proven and frequently used drugs are included.)

An extract from the aerial part of the shepherd's purse lowers blood pressure, enhances intestinal activity, increases blood clotting, and is used in gynecology. A decoction and infusion are recommended in folk medicine as a hemostatic agent for nervous diseases, dysentery, and gastritis. As you can see, the plant is by no means useless.

However, let's return to its use in food. Shepherd's purse leaves are eaten raw in salads, boiled in soups and borscht, even salted. Interestingly, shepherd's purse is widely used as a vegetable in Chinese cuisine; moreover, it was brought by the Chinese to Taiwan. And it is grown there as a "magnificent spinach plant" (quoted from the book "Edible Plants of Southeast Asia", published in Hong Kong), and this is in Taiwan, covered with tropical rainforest, where sugar cane and other tropical crops grow! And we calmly walk by and don’t even think that this plant can be eaten. Meanwhile, our supplies of shepherd's purse are unlimited; you can hardly walk through the village or even the city in the spring without encountering one.

Shepherd's Purse

Yarutka

Yarutku ( Thlaspi awense) can also be found without much difficulty in the nearest dug up area, lawn or path, as long as the soil is not covered with solid turf. This is another plant of the cabbage family, or, as they are also called, cruciferous. And they were named so because all representatives of this family always have four petals, so the flower looks like a cross. When the yarutka blooms, the crosses will be white. The rosettes of leaves of the yarutka are bright green, shiny, unlike its two previously described relatives, the leaves are entire, with a smooth or slightly wavy edge, petiolate, oval-oblong.

The most characteristic thing in the appearance of the yarutka, like the shepherd's purse, is its fruit. They are large, flat, almost round with a heart-shaped notch at the top, flat, with a wide “wing” along the edge, the seeds are small and shiny. But fruits and flowers will appear much later, but for now, a reliable sign that allows you to distinguish the yarutka from all its neighbors will be the garlicky smell of the leaves.

Yarushnik in the Vologda province during the time of Pushkin was called barley or oatmeal baked bread or pie. Isn't this where the yarutka comes from? After all, all its fruits are round, similar to a loaf, and even filled with seeds. Here is another version of the origin of the name of this plant:

The plant is associated with the sun -
Yar, yarutka, sun potion.
Grass - God forbid rootlessness,
Helps with infertility,
Returns strength, rage,
The gloom will dissipate from the soul.

T. Smertina. "Yarilovo Potion"

Although yarutka is not used in scientific medicine, moreover, it is considered an impurity in the raw materials of shepherd's purse, however, as can be seen from the verses, traditional medicine has not passed yarutka by. It is used for scurvy as a diuretic and hemostatic agent. It is considered one of the most reliable means of restoring male power. Externally used for purulent wounds and ulcers.

Young leaves of yarutka are used for food. Boiled, they are slightly bitter, but fresh are very good in salads.

wild radish

Along with the rosettes of colza, jarutka and shepherd's purse, there are rosettes similar to colza, differing from it in the pink petiole and midrib of the leaf. The leaves in these rosettes are more rugged and covered with harsh hairs. Such rosettes are more often found in fields, especially grain and potato fields. They belong to wild radishes - Raphanus raphanistrum. They are edible and taste very much like their cultural namesake, the radish.

Wild radish can be used in a salad if mixed with neutral herbs, but it is not suitable for heat treatment - it remains bitter even after cooking.

Wild radish is a very fast growing weed. It seems that bread has just been sown or potatoes have been planted, and the wild radish has not only sprouted again after plowing, but has also managed to overtake the main crop, outgrown it and spread its yellow crosses in the sun. They are much larger than those of the cress - about 1 cm in diameter. The whole plant is hard-hairy, the pod is constricted, the seeds are round, dark, they are sometimes found in buckwheat and millet. Those round seeds that are larger belong to vetch - mouse peas, they are about 2-3 mm in diameter, and the smaller and also round ones belong to wild radish. Sometimes there is almost a quarter of the whole grain in millet.

1 – field lily; 2 – wild radish

It seems that radish should be considered a harmful weed, but it is a very good early honey plant, one of the first to provide abundant honey and pollen not only to domestic bees, but also to numerous other pollinators - wild bees, wasps, bumblebees, which are very important for many plants. Destroy all the radishes, and the pollinating insects will die, and in the end you and I will be left without a harvest.

Impatiens core

This is a very pretty, but little-known cruciferous plant ( Cardamine impatiens), which is sometimes eaten in Transcaucasia. There it grows in a broad-leaved forest, forming decent clumps.

In the middle zone it is often found on relatively clean soil along forest paths, in gardens and parks, but always in shady, damp places. Depending on the soil and humidity, this winter annual can grow from 20 cm to eighty, but always retains small, very characteristically dissected leaves. They are imparipinnate, the individual leaf segments are small, almost square in outline, with large teeth, all of different shapes. The flowers in the raceme are white and extremely small. The fruit is a very thin long pod with tiny light brown seeds. These seeds are so easily transported by rain and melt water that the thickets of the core migrate to a new place every year. The taste completely imitates watercress, except that the leaves of an adult plant are tougher. This plant is worth moving to the dacha so that you can have fresh greens without hassle. Plant it in the dampest and darkest corner and quietly harvest. The greenery goes under the snow and appears immediately after it melts.

Impatiens core

woodlouse

Another plant, no less widespread throughout the globe than the shepherd's purse, is woodlice ( Stellaria media). Just like cress and shepherd's purse, it can sprout and grow at any time of the year, as long as there is no frost. By the way, the British, who do not experience snow in the south of the British Isles, write that it blooms all year round. This also applies to the southern regions of our country.

It is not for nothing that it is called so, it does not tolerate dryness and grows only in damp, often shady places or where it is often watered - in the beds, near the washbasin in the country, by the stream. This plant is small, there is a lot of moisture in it, the stems and leaves are almost transparent.

Woodlice belongs to the carnation family and is, although distant, a relative of those luxurious carnations that we buy for bouquets. Its small creeping stems, like those of carnations, are thickened at the nodes (botany refers to the place where leaves are attached), small oval leaves are located opposite (leaf opposite leaf), the flowers are inconspicuous, white, with five petals, with a notch at the tip, similar to small stars, for which they gave it the Latin name - stellaria, chickweed. That’s what its scientific name is: average chickweed, woodlice chickweed. Woodlice has very interesting pubescence on the stem - one narrow ribbon of hairs along each internode. The thin stems at the nodes can take root and produce new plants, making woodlice a very annoying weed. That's what the British call it: chicken weed. Indeed, chickens and other poultry love its greens and especially the small seeds. And it’s not for nothing that they love it, woodlice grass contains a rather rare vitamin E. It helps preserve youth, improves metabolism, its deficiency causes dry skin, loss of elasticity, the appearance of wrinkles, and in severe cases, infertility. Woodlice increases the egg production of chickens and other poultry. And people use it in folk medicine to treat kidney and liver diseases and diathesis.

According to research by scientists, its extract dilates the blood vessels of the heart, slows down and intensifies its contractions, and gives a slight decrease in blood pressure.

Robinson's kitchen. Recipes for dishes from wild plants and flowers Natalya Georgievna Zamyatina

Dessert

BUNS FROM BEAN FLOUR

Bean flour - 0.5 cups

Wheat flour - 1.5 cups

Kefir - 0.5 cups

Soda - 0.25 tsp.

Salt - 0.25 tsp.

Egg - 1 pc.

Oil for frying

Grind the bean seeds collected in the fall in a coffee mill. Knead the dough, roll out in a layer of about 1 cm, cut out round buns with a glass, fry in oil on both sides under the lid. Serve hot.

VEGETABLE AND GREEN PUDDING WITH CHINA OR VETCH

Unripe china or vetch seeds - 0.75 cups

Greens of spinach herbs (quinoa, mari, amaranth, burdock, etc.) - 100 g

Carrots - 2 pcs. (200 g)

Cauliflower (can be replaced with shepherd's purse - 100 g

Oil - 100 g

Flour - 120 g

Milk - 2 glasses

Eggs - 5 pcs.

Salt, pepper - to taste

Dill or parsley - to taste

Ground crackers - for shape

Mix flour with butter, lightly fry, add milk and, while stirring, cook a thick dough that comes away from the walls of the pan. Cool slightly, beat in the yolks one at a time, then the whipped whites. Divide the dough into three parts. Chop the carrots and simmer with a spoonful of butter.

Place carrots, parsley and peas in one third of the dough. Secondly, ground or finely chopped spinach herbs and pepper. In the third boiled cabbage or shepherd's purse. Grease molds or cups with butter and sprinkle with breadcrumbs to the extent of 0.67 volumes, fill with dough, laying it in layers (carrots in the middle). Place the molds in a large saucepan with water, the water level should not exceed 0.33 of the molds. Cover the pan with a lid and cook from the moment it boils for 20 minutes. Place the finished pudding on plates, turning the molds over. Serve with sour cream or fresh tomatoes.

FILLING FOR PIES AND COOKIES FROM ENOTHERA

Evening primrose seeds - 1 cup

Thick jam or marmalade - 1 cup

Mix evening primrose seeds with jam and mince twice.

COOKIES WITH BURDOR ROOT

Preparation of flour: peel the burdock root, place in boiling water and cook for 45 minutes. When it softens, drain the water and grind in a processor or meat grinder with a fine grid. Spread the resulting mass in a very thin layer on a towel and dry in the sun or in an oven with very low heat. It is convenient to use the “Good Warmth” heater. This may take about 2 days. Remove the dried mass and grind into flour in a coffee mill or processor. Store in an airtight container.

Burdock flour - 50 g

Plain flour - 200 g

Baking powder - 1.5 sachets

(or 1.5 tsp each of soda and citric acid)

Salt - 1 tbsp. l.

Sugar - 1 tbsp. l.

Butter or margarine - 4 tbsp. l.

Milk - 180 ml

Mix all the dry products in a bowl, cut the soft butter into small pieces and rub it with your fingers into the flour mixture until smooth grains form, gather the grains into a pile, make a depression in the center, pour the milk into it and mix, grabbing the mixture from the edges, until a soft dough forms .

Flour the board, roll out the dough to about 6mm, cut the biscuits and place them on a lightly greased sheet. Bake in an oven preheated to 200°C for approximately 15 minutes until golden brown.

TATAKI GOBO - JAPANESE BURDOCK

Burdock root - 500 g

Dashi broth - 500 ml

Sugar - 2 tbsp. l.

Salt - 0.25 tbsp. l.

Soy sauce - 2 tbsp. l.

For the gravy:

Sesame seed - 6 tbsp. l.

fry without oil until golden brown and grind

Rice vinegar (or wine) - 4 tsp.

Sugar - 3 tsp.

Soy sauce - 2 tsp.

Salt - 0.25 tsp.

Thoroughly peel and wash the burdock root, cut into 5 cm pieces.

Boil 1.5 liters of water with 1 tablespoon of vinegar, cook for 10-12 minutes or until the root is soft but not yet spreading. Drain, let drain, and crush the roots with a rolling pin. Cut the pieces lengthwise into 4 pieces each.

Pour broth into a saucepan, add sugar, salt and soy sauce, add chopped burdock and cook for about 20 minutes until almost all the liquid is absorbed and the burdock is completely soft. Mix the gravy, pour it into the burdock and stir thoroughly. Let cool.