Winter Wild Edible Pesto
Big handful of wild edibles (Abundant in August during winter I used storksbill, hedge mustard & chickweed)
Storksbill, Hedge mustard & Chickweed
Juice of 1 lime
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp mineral rich cider vinegar (recipe below)
1 tsp wild salt and pepper (recipe below)
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup almonds
Pesto ingredients & finished Pesto
Place the wild edibles in a high speed blender or small food processor. Add all the other ingredients.
Turn the blender on low and use the tamper to push the ingredients onto the blade. When it has reached the desired consistency, smooth or chunky transfer to a container. label and voila Enjoy!!
To make a Herbal Vinegar
Place chopped up plant material loosely packed in a jar. (like the weight of a fairy sitting on it☺). Chopping it helps release the goodies. Some examples to use singly or in combination are comfrey, plantain, herb robert, nasturtium seeds, oxtongue, rosemary.
Fill the jar with apple cidar vinegar, completely covering the plants, let it sit a little while to let the air bubbles release and use a chop stick to poke & release any you see under the leaves. Cap the jar (placing some plastic cut to fit and overlap the jar to stop the vinegar dissolving a metal lid and contaminating your vinegar. This won’t happen to a plastic lid. Leave for 6 weeks in a cool location.
Label with the name, date and your intentions for the vinegar (think of Masaru Emoto and his work on the memory of water – good intentions create beautiful water crystals).
After two to six weeks (depending how long you can wait) strain off the vinegar into a bottle and use to give extra depth to salad dressings, soups, pestos or sweeten it with honey and use as a daily tonic taken by the spoonful etc.
Wild Salt & Pepper; Herbal Vinegars
Wild Salt and Pepper Mix
The leaves of kawakawa Macropiper excelsum become even more spicy and peppery when dried. So it makes sense to mix it with salt and create our very own unique wild New Zealand salt and pepper mix!
200gm coarse Malborough sea salt
2 Tbsp dried kawakawa leaves
2 Tbsp dried nasturtium leaves
1 Tbsp native black harakeke or flax seeds
Use a coffee grinder to turn the dried leaves of kawakawa, nasturtium and harakeke into a powder.
Grind the salt in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle until smooth, mix in the kawakawa, nasturtium and harakeke powders.
Store in a dry glass jar with a tight fitting lid and label.
Recipe from “Find it Eat it” by Michael Daly, Publishers: New Holland (NZ) Ltd
