Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Dark Days Week 18: Dandelion Salad

An old country spring tonic: cut dandelion greens before the plant flowers, eat them with hot bacon dressing over potatoes. Feel revived; spring is really here!

Washing and chopping the dandelion.



First the potatoes (I chopped them and baked them at 375 for 40 minutes, flipping twice, while an apple crisp baked), then the dandelion, then the hot bacon dressing.






Ben calls it "apple pie" (Apple Crisp from More with Less)



Dandelion Salad (from More with Less, with my shortcuts)

Fry 1-3 slices bacon, chopped, in large skillet.

Separately, whisk together until smooth:
4 Tbs. flour
1 tsp. salt
3 Tbs. sugar
3 Tbs. cider vinegar
1 egg
2 c. water or milk

Turn heat low under skillet and pour in the combined liquid, stirring continuously until smooth and thick. (A variation I sometimes do: omit egg from dressing and reduce liquid to 1 1/2 cups; then, put chopped hard boiled eggs on top of the salad.)

I serve the dressing separately from the dandelion; this amount can dress 4-5 cups chopped greens. You can use this as a dressing for any green salad, but I only use it on dandelion.

One final note about this meal: just before I served it to my parents yesterday evening, I realized this was a dark days meal! Everything was local, except for the rolled oats on top of the apple crisp (and the usual salt, sugar, cinnamon, etc.). I was planning to make a different totally local menu today, but I'll save that one for next week.

4 comments:

Christian - Modobject@Home said...

I'm curious to find out where you got your dandelion greens... a local market, gathering them yourself? My deep south roots are thick and strong yet I've never eaten dandelion greens. I wonder why.

The dressing would be good over fresh spinach, I think.

Margo said...

Christian, I got them at a local market. I've never actually cut my own, even when I didn't live in a city as I do now. I think this is a throwback to my grandparents' generation.

And I've had hot bacon dressing on spinach - it IS good!

Simple in France said...

Nice! We've been thinking about harvesting our own greens around here. But we have to be picky about where we get them. We're in apple country and they spray those poor trees constantly with pesticides, so we don't want to take the greens from anywhere near a treated field! Same goes with a cow pasture!

The snow's off though and I've been hiking a lot more. I bet we could find some.

I love your dressing recipe and the way you serve them over potatoes. I'm going to have to try that sometime. I've never seen one quite like that.

Margo said...

SIF, you are so right. Nowadays most everything is sprayed or gets secondhand spray.
I hope you get to find some dandelion and that you like it!