Central Park
Sunday, April 13

Central Park provides a great window into the world of wild foods of mid-spring. Making a meal with these plants is simple at this time.

For an appetizer, try simmering field garlic bulbs in diluted vinegar with Italian seasonings to make an outstanding pickle.

It's the peak of the season for wild greens, and we'll be finding great quantities of wild vegetables. Spicy mustard greens, such as garlic mustard, hedge mustard, and poor man's pepper, abound on lawns everywhere.

Offset their flavor in a salad with milder-tasting greens such as violet leaves, Asiatic dayflower, and chickweed, also abundant. With the inclusion of sour greenbrier and sheep sorrel leaves, plus tender, cucumber-flavored cattail shoots, you'll have the best salad you've ever eaten.

And wild mushrooms will provide a gourmet side dish. We might find dryad's saddle, wine-cap stropharia, or chicken mushrooms on this tour.

Burdock root is one of the few wild root vegetables that remains in season throughout the warm weather. Add razor-thin slices to soups or rice.

Pokeweed, another seasonal potherb, is superb boiled in 2 changes of water (it's poisonous raw!) and flavored with tamari soy sauce and garlic lightly browned in olive oil.

And for an exotic dessert, why not stew apples or pears with cinnamon (or wild sassafras), ginger (commercial or wild), and nuts, then add blossoms of the wisteria vine?