The Forager's Cookbook: Identify & Prepare Edible Weeds & Wild Plants

Alexanders

Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) is a tall biennial (two-year lifespan) member of the Apiaceae (carrot family). Historically, it spread from the Mediterranean and made the switch from wild-gathered plant to garden crop, and back to wild. It was both food and medicine in Classical and medieval times. Losing out to celery as a salad crop from the 16th century, it is making a comeback as a winter-foraged wild food. The best eating is when leaves and buds are young and tender; the inner stem and roots can be braised or sautéed.

Apiaceae

(Umbelliferae)

Carrot family

Biennial. Dies back completely in summer, and reappears in autumn with lush light green growth.

Edible parts: Young leaves in winter; buds, flowers, stems and roots in spring; seeds in late summer.

Distinguishing features: Alexanders has smooth shiny three-lobed leaves; smooth, hairless and hollow flower stalk; grows to over 1m (3.3ft), with umbels of small yellow flowers appearing in spring, followed by large seeds, which ripen to black.

In the eastern half of North America the related golden alexanders (Zizea aurea) is an abundant native plant of woodlands. Named for German botanist Johann Baptist Ziz and aurea (golden), it is a perennial and smaller than alexanders, with more slender flowers and less blowsy leaves that go purple.

Golden alexanders is edible in the same way as alexanders, but some foragers urge caution in eating its roots.

Caution: Avoid large quantities during pregnancy

What kind of a weed is alexanders?

Geoffrey Grigson, writing in 1955, says alexanders is happiest and most frequent by the sea. He’s right, and sturdy stands of this vigorous and stately umbellifer proliferate in sheltered cliff and roadsides near eastern and southern coasts of Britain and Ireland, often on small islands. It is a scarce coastal species in parts of North America.

It also seems to be pressing inland, at least in our part of East Anglia, thriving in hedgerows some 55km (35 miles) from the Norfolk coast, and in gardens. The picture opposite shows alexanders by our garden shed. We sowed a few seeds in our garden some years ago, and it’s now a winter weed with us.

Look at the rootstock, spreading as wide as a fist with a taproot several feet deep (see p17), and the chest-high mass of stems and broad leaves, and you see why it can crowd out even its cousin hogweed. Alexanders is a biennial, and the first year of its life is spent building up that stealthy root system; the second year is given over to flowering, setting seed and then dying.

Our region is more or less at the northern edge of its wild-growing range. If it is spreading inland at a measurable rate it is also moving ever earlier in its growing habits. In a 17th-century herbal like that of John Parkinson (1640), alexanders is said to flower in June and July; we often have plants blooming in March.

It is an early responder to climate change, giving it competitive advantages over other plants and a nudge to us. In winter and early spring there isn’t a wealth of plants to gather, and foragers are taking the culinary hint. Alexanders is robust and can fill the ‘hunger gap’.

The history of alexanders

The scientific and common names are clearly Mediterranean. Archaeological finds suggest it was cultivated in Iron Age Greece (c1300–700BC), and the earliest written reference is in Theophrastus, the Greek ‘father of botany’ (c371–c287BC).

Its roots and shoots had become a popular potherb and vegetable by the time of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. The English name Alexanders could be for the emperor, or indeed for the port in Egypt that he founded and which bore his name.

The plant’s Greek name hipposelinon means ‘horse parsley or celery’, while Columella, the Roman agricultural writer (AD4–70), knew alexanders as ‘myrrh of Achaea’, the then Latin name for Greece. A contemporary of Columella, the natural history writer Pliny (AD23/24–79), called it olusatrum, or ‘black (pot)herb’, the species name Linnaeus would choose for it in the mid-18th century. Pliny thought it a herb of exceptionally remarkable nature, and noted another name, zmyrnium, a reference to myrrh, the reputed taste of the plant’s juice.

Ripe seeds of alexanders; right: flower buds, showing the characteristic striped leaf bases that enclose them until they emerge

Its certain aromatic or pungent flavor … would be too strong for modern tastes.

– Pratt (1866)

… a timely potherb.

– Lawson (1618)

[broth of alexanders] … which although it be a little bitter, yet it is both wholsome, and pleasing to a great many, by reason of the aromaticall or spicie taste, warming and comforting the stomack, and helping it digest the many waterish and flegmaticke meates [that] are in those times [spring] much eaten.

– Parkinson (1629)

The myrrh reference has followed the plant in its modern generic form Smyrnium. Some people do find the taste and scent myrrh-like, especially of the flower stalk, though others get more lovage in it; an old common name is black lovage.

There are as yet no British archaeological records of alexanders before the Roman invasion in AD43, but in 1911 seeds were found in a Roman-era well near Chepstow.

The consensus is that alexanders was among the plants that accompanied the Roman imperial takeover of Western Europe and North Africa. Some say the Romans used it as fodder for their horses as well as a boiled vegetable, a broth or the seeds as a condiment.

As both food and medicine alexanders continued to be a widely grown monastic plant in medieval times. Many scattered inland sightings of it in Britain relate to sites of kitchen gardens of former monastic houses.

By the time of the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s and 1540s, wild celery (Apium graveolens) was starting to be transformed by Italian agronomists into the blanched cultivated salad plant we know today.

Around Europe celery’s milder taste came to be favored over the stronger charms of alexanders, which lost popularity. In our own times alexanders is being newly appraised as a forageable weed.

Herbal & other uses of alexanders

Alexanders was classified as ’hot and dry in the third degree’, and its actions were accordingly forceful. It was found to work strongly on the urinary and digestive systems, especially the seeds.

The English writer William Salmon (1710) summed up: alexanders effectually provokes Urine, helps the Strangury, and prevails against Gravel and Tartarous Matter in Reins and Bladder. In modern terms, he was calling it a diuretic, which cleared the urinary system, including kidney and bladder stones.

Roman writers knew alexanders as an emmenagogue, a herb to promote menstruation. Salmon confirmed that the plant powerfully provokes the Terms; it also expels the Birth (afterbirth). That is, it was and is a powerful uterine tonic, and should still be treated with caution during pregnancy.

Medieval root broths, made up of alexanders, celery, fennel and parsley, were used as purgatives for sluggish stomachs in the spring.

Alexanders was an ’official’ herb of the apothecaries in the first London Pharmacopoeia (1618). But by Salmon’s herbal nearly a century later it had gone; he noted The Shops [ie apothecaries] keep nothing of this plant.

It was sliding out of favor in both medicine and cooking, though there are records of alexanders root sold for urinary problems in Covent Garden market in the late 18th century.

Of course, it does not follow that because alexanders has gone out of fashion it is no longer useful as a backyard medicine. The virtues the old herbalists championed remain valid, and clinical experimentation is opening up some intriguing new possibilities.

One is alexanders’ essential oil. Italian researchers in 2014 found that oil from the flowers induces apoptosis, or cell death, in human colon carcinoma cells. A 2017 finding is that this oil may be effective against the protozoal parasite causing African trypanosomiasis.

How to eat alexanders

Alexanders is also there to be eaten! It has a strong taste for our bland modern palates, which will usually prefer celery and parsnip to alexanders and lovage.

We find alexander leaves have a strong celery taste, and, like celery, quickly become stringy, so are best used young and in moderation. We use the taste to good effect to flavor salt (see p20).

Once the plant produces flower buds, the flavor of these and the stems is much milder and more floral. Larger stems need peeling. The flower buds and young stalks are tasty cooked with broccoli. They can also be used in sweet dishes and combine well with rhubarb or angelica.

The roots can be cooked like parsnips but usually have a stronger taste.

The simplest recipe of all is to collect the black seeds, and dry and grind them, either manually in a pepper mill or electrically in a coffee mill. Treat the seeds as a black pepper-like condiment and invite them onto your table; the urban forager John Rensten (2016) uses the seeds to replace pepper in his wild chai recipe.

Alexanders roots: first year plants on the left, a second year plant, before flowering, on the right.

Alexanders Tempura

Alexanders makes great tempura. You can use the leaf stalks during autumn and winter before they get too fibrous, soaking them to make them curl beautifully, or use the peeled flower stems cut into rings in spring. Both are delicious, but with subtle differences in flavor.

For the alexanders leaf stalks, cut them into roughly 8cm (3in) lengths and cut two or three slits about a centimeter (½in) into each end. Discard any that seem too stringy. Leave in cold water overnight or until the ends have curled as much as you want them to.

Pick the alexanders flower stalks while the plant is in bud, before the flowers open. Peel to remove the stringy bits and cut them into rings.

For the tempura batter, mix equal parts flour and cornstarch and mix with cold water to the thickness of cream, just thick enough to thinly coat the alexanders when they are dipped into it.

Roll the alexanders in flour, then dip into the batter. Shake off excess batter, and deep fry in vegetable oil until golden.

Variations: You can use use sparkling water instead of plain water in the tempura batter.

Alexanders Salt

This method can be used for many of the weeds in this book. We’ve used it most often with alexanders, nettle and ground elder.

The initial step is to dry your herb, then powder it – a clean coffee grinder works well. The powder can be sieved to remove any larger bits that didn’t get powdered. The herb powders can be used as they are, to add to recipes or sprinkle on food, or made into this flavored salt.

Mix 1 part ground dried alexanders tops

with 4 parts coarse salt (we used grey French sea salt)

and 1 part water, adding just enough to moisten the other ingredients.

Leave to sit for half an hour or so, then spread out on a tray in a dehydrator or a cool oven to dry, crumbling it with your fingers from time to time as it dries so that you don’t get big clumps of salt.

Store in an airtight jar.

Alexanders & Red Cabbage Slaw

This is a wonderful winter salad. Alexanders comes into its own when there isn’t much fresh greenery to be found. We usually blanch the alexanders to tone down the taste a little, but if your leaves are very young and tender and you like the flavor, use them raw.

For 4 to 6 people.

Blanch a few handfuls of alexanders leaves in boiling water for about a minute. Older leaves may need a little longer. Taste to check. Drain and drop immediately into cold water.

Mix together in a bowl: 1 cup chopped blanched alexanders, 4 cups finely mandolined red cabbage and 1 finely sliced apple, cut into slivers.

Toss with about 4 tablespoons of dressing – use your favorite, or our recipe below.

Top with a handful of toasted pumpkin seeds, and serve with more on the side.

Dressing (put in a jam jar and shake):

188ml (¾ cup) rapeseed oil

60ml (¼ cup) white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon orange zest

3 tablespoons orange juice

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Alexanders Stems

Alexanders flower stems are best harvested just before the flowers open. They need to be peeled, and are then very tender and succulent. The flavor is less like celery than the leaves and more fragrant, like angelica.

They can be used in either sweet or savory dishes, including the tempura on p18. Try simply braising them with a little garlic and oil. They make a tasty syrup with sugar and lemon juice.

The stems combine very well with rhubarb. Peel the alexanders stems and remove any stringy bits from the rhubarb. Cut into chunks and place in a baking dish.

Sprinkle with brown sugar or coconut blossom sugar, cover with a lid or foil, and bake at 175C/350F for about an hour or until they are tender. They are delicious as is, or add a crumble topping.

Alexanders Roots

Like many wild plants, the flavor of alexanders root is quite variable, with some being much stronger than others. Alexanders is biennial, flowering and seeding in its second year and then dying. The green parts of the first-year plants die back completely in summer when the older plants die, but then emerge again in the autumn or winter when new seedlings also emerge. Roots are best dug in spring, before the older plants start to flower. Winter roots that we have eaten tend to be more bitter and strongly flavored than spring roots.

Golden alexanders (see p14) is a perennial North American relative of alexanders, so its growing pattern differs. It is also edible though some foragers advise against eating its roots.

The roots are whitish cream, with a thin light brown to black skin. The skin can easily be scraped off, but doesn’t seem to affect the taste if left on. Remove any whiskery rootlets from the taproot, and scrub them well. We parboil the roots first to reduce any bitterness, before they are sautéed or roasted. The flavor is pleasantly starchy, a bit like parsnip.

Blackberry

We use the name blackberry (Rubus fruticosus agg.) in this book but might have opted for the everyday name bramble. Sometimes for fun we tongue-twistingly combine the words as ‘blamble’. It’s an aggregate term for an aggregate subject, the king of weeds, whose tasty berries tempt us to put up with its rampant ways. Going brambling is one of the few remaining communal or family foraging activities that draw us into the wild.

Rosaceae

Rose family

Perennial.

Edible parts: The ripe fruit in late summer; young shoots anytime but mainly in spring; leaves for tea, mainly in summer.

Distinguishing features:

One of the easier wild weeds to identify: universally common, forming an impenetrable rambling, thorny bush with white/pink flowers, then fruit that turns from green to red to black (often all on the same stem at once); rough, mostly evergreen leaves and notorious curved spines that have injured many a gardener or gatherer.

Similar related edible species: Dewberry (Rubus caesius) is less common but has blackberry-like fruit with fewer and larger drupelets with a bluish-black bloom; deciduous wild raspberry (R. idaeus) has sweet red berries in summer.

Caution: The only caution is to avoid injury from the spines while picking.

What kind of a weed is blackberry?

There are one-word answers to this question. We like rumbustious (British) or rambunctious (American), but can easily add unstoppable, fierce, adaptable, hardy, remarkable …

Blackberry is arguably the king of weeds. Consider its many survival attributes, its essential weedness:

1. Blackberry is actually not a single wild species; botanically, it is an aggregate of over 330 microspecies.

These are so challenging to tell apart, even with microscopes, that blackberry geeks – these people do exist – have their own word for what they do: batology (from old Greek baton, for blackberry).

Luckily you don’t have to be a batologist because for practical purposes all the Rubus species are safe and tasty to eat and use.

2. In addition to normal sexual reproduction, blackberry infant plants can develop asexually. Small, random mutations are sometimes passed on unchanged (the process is called apomixis) into plants that are slightly different; these are the microspecies.

Rubus types, including raspberry, are able to switch between apomictic and sexual reproductive methods as the environment dictates.

3. Rubus also displays rampant hybridization, evident in modern crossed commercial varieties like tayberry, boysenberry and youngberry, as well as the older loganberry.

4. The fruit is ‘pippy’, with sturdy seeds that can pass through the stomach unharmed, whether of a bird, a wild animal or your own, thus spreading far and wide.

5. The fruit will ripen even in the rain.

6. Seed production is prolific: one elmleaf blackberry (R. ulmifolius) studied over several years produced 170,000 seeds in a poor year and 400,000 in a favorable one.

7. Seed survival time is long, with a seed bank of up to a hundred years.

8. First-year growth sees the young stems (canes) spreading vigorously, up to 10cm (4.5in) of growth a week in optimal conditions. The thin, light green spears sometimes arch through and over foliage nearby.

In our garden we observed one such spear, which reached 6m (20ft) before it landed. Who says there are no lianas in temperate Europe?

9. When the tip reaches ground it transforms from shoot to root, and starts a new base for future spreading. Unchecked, the result is thickets of dominant blackberry colonies.

Bees adore blackberry flowers

As white as snaw. But snaw it’s not.

As red as blood. But blood it’s not.

As black as ink. But ink it’s not.

Answer: bramble.

– Scottish riddle, Milliken & Bridgewater (2013)

It would seem then that the [blackberry as] polyploid, with its marked capacity for vegetative increase, might be regarded as the provision for a successful present, whilst multiplication by seed is the insurance for a successful