Falafels are balls made of soaked and ground chickpeas or broad beans originating from Middle Eastern cuisine. They are usually deep-fried. They can be eaten as a snack or served as part of a meal, for example on pita bread or in a wrap, with vegetables and sauce. Typically falafels are seasoned with parsley, onion, and garlic. All these plants can be replaced with wild counterparts: ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria), crow garlic (Allium vineale), and wild garlic (Allium ursinum).
Category: Breakfast
Blackberries (Rubus ulmifolius) do not need any special introduction. The ones from the wild are similar to those from a supermarket, however, somewhat smaller and they contain more pits. In this recipe, we used blackberries with refreshing apple mint (Mentha x rotundifolia) and nettle (Urtica dioica) and creamy coconut milk. This smoothie is great start of a hot summer day. Nettle can give you nasty stings and there are some preprocessing techniques you can use to neutralize the hairs on the leaves responsible for stinging. First of all its important to use good quality gardening gloves when picking the leaves.
Cleavers (Galium aparine) is known as a sticky plant that might not be pleasant to eat. You can use its leaves and stems to make an infusion for tea or for a smoothie base. It is in the same family as coffee (Rubiaceae). Its roasted seeds can be used as a coffee substitute, they even contain caffeine. For this smoothie for the wild ingredients, we use a cleavers’ (Galium aparine) infusion as a base and sorrel (Rumex acetosa) and Japanese knotweed (read more Reynoutria japonica) as the main aromatics for a pleasant acidic kick. To give the smoothie more body