The ecological crisis is a crisis of disconnection: we only preserve what we love. To renew an intimate link with our territory, we must learn to know it, to name it and to cook it. First of a series of five texts on the edible fauna and flora of Quebec.
You gently detach the flower-firecracker from its stem. You hold it upside down, pinching its base between your thumb and forefinger. You prepare the collision surface — your left fist — by holding it at chest height, as if watching the time on your wrist. Then, the flower suddenly becoming an Olympic diver, and your left fist a swimming pool, you impose the ultimate dive on it, hoping to succeed in your mission: to explode the little balloon-flower with a dry and surprising noise. POW! You laugh, and you repeat the operation with another petal firecracker.
You were just 6 years old, you didn’t know that this flower was called swollen campion and even less that it was eaten. It was your first contact with a “weed” and you were going to spend your life rubbing shoulders with hundreds of them without really knowing their name or their usefulness, until the day when, in a trendy restaurant in Montreal, you were served a soup of nettle, dandelion, ground ivy and potato, with a garnish of wild mustard flowers and… campion grass. That day, you realized that weeds were actually delicious herbs, and your outlook on nature — and food — changed.
Quebec is home to amazing edible flora. All around, hundreds of varieties of plants that we have been taught to hate and to uproot, because they are “unclean” and “harm” to so-called ornamental or market garden plants (which in truth are less well suited to their environment), just waiting to be transformed into salads or soups.
From the first spring sweetness until the end of autumn, in town or in the countryside, daisy, fat pullet, wood sorrel, comfrey, plantain, mouse-eared chickweed, chickweed, nettle, dandelion, ground ivy, impatiens, scarlet knotweed, amaranth, milkweed, chicory, purslane, neglected mallow, yarrow, mugwort and other culinary marvels will gladly complement your recipes.
Reconnect with plants
Michel Lambert, author of the very extensive History of family cooking in Quebec, reports that “historically, the first peoples present in the territory were especially familiar with small fruits, seeds and roots, avoiding the consumption of wild greenery since it was often too bitter and especially useful in the manufacture of medicines” . Lambert recalls that it was not until the arrival of the first European settlers and their culinary traditions that the indigenous aromatic leaves were used in cooking. Then, following human immigration, plant species from all over the world were introduced and naturalized in the country, participating in the creation of an incredible plant pantry, which the last decades have, according to the historian, pushed us to be consigned to oblivion.
It is true that Quebec families maintained an intimate relationship with their nurturing territory (which they knew inside out) until the massive industrialization of food production and the multiplication of supermarkets, starting in the 1950s. Over time and hindsight, we have been able to observe a clear correlation between the industrialization of food and the loss of food knowledge. There would have been no harm in acquiring industrial food if its activities had first taken into account the health of ecosystems and, ultimately, ours. Unfortunately, history has done well to show us that our methods of food production, combined with the free international market, have not only participated in the rapid degradation of natural environments and the health of everything, but they have also almost entirely disconnected from our nurturing territory by plunging us into a disturbing indifference towards it.
And this is where the “weeds” come into play. Because they are everywhere and free, because they carry with them the history of our country, because their flavors express the beauty of our landscapes and because they are perfectly adapted to their (our) environment, plants edible wildlife could become liaisons between us and the world to be preserved.
Good news, more and more of us want to reconnect with the world by eating what grows around us. The resounding success of the book Forest, written by Gérald Le Gal and his daughter Ariane Paré-Le Gal, bears witness to this enthusiasm. For those who wish to maintain this intimate link with their territory in order to better understand it and better protect it, cooking “weeds” is a real tribute to the territory and a gesture of benevolence towards the living.
Besides, it might be time to change the qualifier to describe them.