Cattail hearts: the 'caviar of wild plants'

Last year, I was able to tell two of my most foodie friends about a food neither of them had eaten — and in fact, hadn't even thought about eating.

We were getting our produce all summer from "our" farmer, Cheryl Williams of Shani's Farm and Cheryl often put unusual little additions into our veg basket. One week, there were lovely crisp green stalks — something I had never seen and could not recognize.

Fortunately, Cheryl had put a little note with them to tell us what they were and some suggestions for serving. When I was telling my friends about them later, I said, "You may know them as bulrushes."

In Cheryl's note, they were called hearts of cattails which made them sound quite elegant. In a note to my friend, I said, "I cooked some last night — sliced as I would a leek. I sautéed them and added some carrots and asparagus (both parboiled) and some herbs for a vegetable mélange. They were really good and you could definitely get a distinctive taste."

When I did a bit of research, I found that cattails had been discovered. The Globe and Mail did a piece about them, headlined Cattails have foodies wild over ‘nature’s supermarket’

. . .cattails – you may know of them as bulrushes – have been appearing on highbrow menus across the globe. At Rene Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagen, diners were presented with whole raw cattail stalks, their tender hearts exposed and ready for hand-held munching. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles “culinary think tank” the Amalur Project served its cooked cattails with yogurt and a fine powder of rye and cumin at its four-week-long spring pop-up series.

They've come even further than that. Gourmet Sauvage in Quebec has made them fancy and has even pickled them.

Gourmet Sauvage says this about cattails:

Cattail hearts are the caviar of our wild plants....remindful of hearts of palm, but with a more delicate taste and a finer texture! They're like a combination of tender zucchini and cucumbers, adding a refreshing texture and flavor to salads.

Mix them with pungent mustard greens to balance their mildness. Added to soup towards the end of cooking, they retain a refreshing crunchiness. They're superb in stir-fry dishes. Roll in a thin slice of prosciutto or smoked salmon.

I definitely recommend them. They're tasty and good for you.

Bon appétit!

A Christmas story: the poinsettia saga

About 20 years ago, our single Christmas poinsettia was still green and fresh-looking well into the springtime. It was still so lovely in April, I decided it should be saved. I filled some pots with soil and I cut it back quite ruthlessly. I dipped the cuttings into a little rooting hormone and stuck them into the extra pots.

(As always, my reminder: click on the photos to enlarge.)

They lived and grew. Every spring, I kept cutting back, adding new pots, looking for nooks and crannies in the house where they could reside all winter. For the first few years, I followed book rules and covered them every night so they'd have a period of complete darkness. I used dark garbage bags. Then, for awhile, I started stashing them under the table and hung blankets around the sides to block any light. I got tired of that though so I began to treat them like all the other plants. It's been many years since I've worried about them getting light overnight.

After they're cut back, I put them outdoors for the summer. They love being outdoors and stay out well into October. They grow lush and green and they thrive. All these photos were taken this past summer so some of these are just a few months old.

Many pots of poinsettias moved to Ottawa with us in the mid '90s, in the moving truck, and lived happily there in two different houses. After a few years, we all moved back to Halifax – toddler, cats and about 20 poinsettias.

Many of the plants produce red bracts for Christmas. They're not at all like the big gaudy ones you see in the stores which look unnatural to me now but that's because these ones look so natural.

There are 17 plants at this point – there have been more and there have been fewer. In the photo below, the one in the top left corner is the Mother of them all. Her main stem is woody, like a small tree trunk. Long may she live.

Below are some of the red bracts that were produced last year although this picture is at the end of the winter when they've become scraggly and are ready to be cut back and ready to enjoy another long summer outdoors.