That's not a weed, that's a $10 salad
SASHA CHAPMAN

schapman@globeandmail.com

July 19, 2008

I've been eating a lot of weeds lately. Not out of my own garden, mind you, but out of everyone else's. Last week, I encountered a salad of lamb's quarters at the Inn at Manitou's serene dining room on Manitouwabing Lake, north of Toronto. The salad came as a surprise: The succulent leaves had a fleshy, almost creamy texture - a nice change from the ubiquitous frisée and baby lettuces. Though the lamb's quarters leaves are familiar to gardeners, it's rare to encounter them on a salad plate outside Iceland.

Purslane, better known as a weed in North American plant books, is hardy enough to grow up between cracks in our city's neglected sidewalks. But in the Middle East, its lemony flavour makes it an obvious ingredient for tabbouleh. In summer, it appears in omelettes with pesto and tomato at Yasi's Place, a café and brunch spot near the Junction. "I grew up eating it in Turkey," owner Yasemin Zorlutuna says. "It was practically a staple."

Which got me thinking: One culture's weed is another culture's comfort food.

Take callaloo, or pigweed, as a lot of Ontario farmers call it, a leafy green that has been showing up on the menus at the Gladstone Hotel and JK Wine Bar over the past couple of weeks. Though often used as fodder for livestock, this member of the amaranth family is beloved by immigrants from the Caribbean.

"A lot of people ate it back home, but don't realize how easy it is to grow here," says Anan Lololi, a Guyanese expatriate and executive director of the Afri-Can FoodBasket, an organization that helps underprivileged communities grow their own food.

Mr. Lololi says the weed, which is typically sold at Caribbean and Asian markets around the city, is usually more expensive than spinach (about $3 a pound) and often imported from Asia.

Which seems strange, since many of our fields in Southern Ontario are carpeted in wild amaranth. Many farmers spend hours pulling up the indigenous weed.

According to weed and foraging expert Dagmar Baur, callaloo yields more protein, calcium and vitamin C than nutrient-packed spinach and beets. It must be collected on herbicide- and pesticide-free land, though: On its website, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture warns: "Pigweed species occasionally accumulate nitrates in the stem and branches in concentrations high enough to poison livestock." Yum.

Gavin Dandy, the farm manager at Everdale farm and learning centre, sometimes brings organically grown callaloo to the Evergreen Brick Works Farmers Market. Everdale has fields of pigweed, but Mr. Dandy generally includes only the young leaves in bags of salad mix. "Most buyers don't know what it is," he says.

Mark Trealout, the farmer in the Kawarthas who supplies the Gladstone and JK Wine Bar with callaloo and other edible weeds, says his pigweed ended up in the pig trough until a Barbadian visitor saw it and began raving about it.

Rhonda Teitel-Payne, who heads up the urban agriculture program at The Stop Community Centre, tells a similar story: She dutifully pulled up callaloo to make way for other foods at the Earlscourt community gardens until Herman Plunkett, a Jamaican-Canadian neighbour and self-appointed guardian of the garden, caught her in the act.

Mr. Plunkett has since held workshops at The Stop, showing staff and clients how to cook callaloo with saltfish, and how to peel the stalks to braise them. "It now has a place of honour in the garden," Ms. Teitel-Payne says.

Those who didn't grow up eating the weed for Sunday lunch generally cook it like spinach: Marc Breton, the chef at the Gladstone, says all it needs is a quick stir-fry in olive oil and garlic with a pinch of chili peppers.

It took decades for supermarkets to begin stocking dandelion leaves, a weed that was once eaten almost exclusively by our city's Greek and Italian immigrants. Now, it's stocked regularly at my local grocery store.

Will callaloo be the next dandelion? Mr. Dandy is not so sure. As much as he would like to sell bushels of callaloo at the markets, for now, his harvest remains small, tailored to a handful of buyers who know and love the green.

"Otherwise, you're just sitting there with a table full of weeds."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.200807...ertainment/Ontario/#

quote:

Anan Lololi, a Guyanese expatriate

funny name