A fresh spring salad
Springtime is here! Sort of! Although the weather has been decidedly un-springlike for the last couple weeks (gray, rainy, and generally yucky), there have been occasional patches of sunshine and happiness and I have tried my best to make the most of them. A couple of weeks ago it was particularly nice around here so I decided to take a brief trip into the nearby woods on a culinary adventure. As always, my first thoughts were directed to my readers and their entertainment, so I made sure to document the trip for posterity. It is with that in mind that I bring to you part two in my "Highlights of Swiss Cooking."
Bear's Garlic Salad
Step 1:
Go to a nearby wooded area. It doesn't have to be a particularly large place, but it probably has to be in Europe somewhere and it helps it's only lightly wooded so that the underbrush gets direct sunlight. I chose the small wooded area on the northeast side of EPFL.
Step 2:
Look for a patch of ail des ours -- bear's garlic. Here is what one looks like:
Step 3:
Collect a whole bunch of bear's garlic. Wikipedia claims that there are other leafy green plants that look very similar but are actually poisonous, thus one should be careful in attempting to identify bear's garlic. On the other hand, the smell is so strong and so distinctive that it would really take a concerted lack of effort to accidentally mistake this for something else.
Step 4:
Take the bear's garlic home, clean it up and then go get some other salad like ingredients. As the bear's garlic will form the base of the salad, you probably don't need to add any onions or garlic to the salad itself. I decided on going simple: strawberries, parmesan, and a simple balsamic vinaigrette. I probably would have thrown in some nuts or maybe poppy seeds (my Mom makes a really good poppy seed dressing that would have been perfect), but the cost of these things in this country is absolutely obscene.
Step 5:
Make a salad.
Fig. 3: The finished salad. Always use your best plastic serving dishes for a salad of this quality -- no sense in getting cheap now.
Related note: why is it called bear's garlic? Allegedly, this is due to the European brown bear's well-known love of digging up the bulbs and enjoying them as a post-hibernation snack. Linguistically speaking, I find this a little odd. Although I am not an ursine-behavioral expert, my numerous field studies have indicated to me that bears are nothing if not extremely lazy. By this logic, I am guessing that bears probably eat pretty much anything edible that grows in any abundance anywhere near anywhere that bears live. So, why aren't there a bunch of other things that are similarly named? Shouldn't there be bear's berries? bear's peas? bear's lilies? bear's nuts? Anyway, I did not find this "just-so story" explanation particularly compelling, but I guess it will have to stand until further evidence comes to light.
Along those lines, do yourself a favor and check out this absolutely insanely over-informative article about the plant. The author agrees with me that the etymology of the name is suspect, but he also notes that the link with bears occurs in almost every European language. He then goes on some loosely related tangents which you should really read yourself, but here are the highlights:
Bear's Garlic Salad
Step 1:
Go to a nearby wooded area. It doesn't have to be a particularly large place, but it probably has to be in Europe somewhere and it helps it's only lightly wooded so that the underbrush gets direct sunlight. I chose the small wooded area on the northeast side of EPFL.
Step 2:
Look for a patch of ail des ours -- bear's garlic. Here is what one looks like:
Fig. 1: A patch of ail des ours near EPFL. The Sorge creek runs right through campus, and around its banks are some well-kept woods that are great for jogging, walking, and picking ail des ours.
If you chose your wooded area well, you will have absolutely no problem finding this. It seems to grow almost everywhere you look and even if you aren't looking for it, it's easy to find as the pungent garlic/onion smell makes it instantly recognizable. The first time I saw it, I was jogging through some woodlands and as I passed a big patch of the stuff, it smelled like someone was cutting onions or something. Definitely not something you forget.
Step 3:
Collect a whole bunch of bear's garlic. Wikipedia claims that there are other leafy green plants that look very similar but are actually poisonous, thus one should be careful in attempting to identify bear's garlic. On the other hand, the smell is so strong and so distinctive that it would really take a concerted lack of effort to accidentally mistake this for something else.
Fig. 2: A bag of bear's garlic. I think that the smaller, thinner leaves are more flavorful, but unfortunately they are also harder too pick. As each single leave has to be picked individually, it is much easier to fill a bag with big, floppy leaves than the smaller more pungent ones. As always, life is unfair in this regard.
Step 4:
Take the bear's garlic home, clean it up and then go get some other salad like ingredients. As the bear's garlic will form the base of the salad, you probably don't need to add any onions or garlic to the salad itself. I decided on going simple: strawberries, parmesan, and a simple balsamic vinaigrette. I probably would have thrown in some nuts or maybe poppy seeds (my Mom makes a really good poppy seed dressing that would have been perfect), but the cost of these things in this country is absolutely obscene.
Step 5:
Make a salad.
Fig. 3: The finished salad. Always use your best plastic serving dishes for a salad of this quality -- no sense in getting cheap now.
Still have leftover bear's garlic? Like, 3/4 of a big bag's worth? Well, fortunately, it has many other uses. If you own a food processor, you can make pesto by just substituting it for the basil -- you know, if you have to make substitutions for basil, what with your life currently being a basil-less living death. Less depressingly, you can slice it up fine and toss it on top of pasta, omelettes, or risotto. Happy eating!
Related note: why is it called bear's garlic? Allegedly, this is due to the European brown bear's well-known love of digging up the bulbs and enjoying them as a post-hibernation snack. Linguistically speaking, I find this a little odd. Although I am not an ursine-behavioral expert, my numerous field studies have indicated to me that bears are nothing if not extremely lazy. By this logic, I am guessing that bears probably eat pretty much anything edible that grows in any abundance anywhere near anywhere that bears live. So, why aren't there a bunch of other things that are similarly named? Shouldn't there be bear's berries? bear's peas? bear's lilies? bear's nuts? Anyway, I did not find this "just-so story" explanation particularly compelling, but I guess it will have to stand until further evidence comes to light.
Along those lines, do yourself a favor and check out this absolutely insanely over-informative article about the plant. The author agrees with me that the etymology of the name is suspect, but he also notes that the link with bears occurs in almost every European language. He then goes on some loosely related tangents which you should really read yourself, but here are the highlights:
The [word for bear] is a euphemism originally signifying justandthe brown one, being derived from an Proto-Indo-European root bʰerbrown... It appears that the Germanic peoples avoided uttering thetruename of the bear, fearing that the invocation of the name might make the dangerous animal appear.
The true Proto-Indo-European name of the bear is h₂rtḱos, probably meaningI leave you with that.destroyer
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