Real-life Silverweed Cuisine
Silverweed cuisine from around the world
For convenience, here is an index of my Silverweed related content.
Someone has asked about Silverweed cuisine in Scotland, and after some quick research I discovered that there’s a rich tradition for it in Europe too. I’ll make a follow up post for that region too.
A few posts ago, I talked about my culinary baby steps in preparing Silverweed (Argentina anserina, syn. Potentilla anserina) for consumption. In this post, I will gather up real-life Silverweed recipes from around the world. In some cases, I will use my own experience to create recipes based on descriptions. After each descriptive section, there will be a “recipe card” which could - if you dare - be used to recreate the described dish. Let me know if you try any!
Asia
The majority of these dishes hail from Asia, and in particular, China. There may be bias in this because there are so many more people in China and it is considered a relatively “advanced” population.
China
According to one article, the north west province of Qinghai has a rich tradition of harvesting wild Silverweed and preparing them in stir fries and congee.
A stir fry is really just a method of frying vegetables and or meat together in a hot frying pan (or more traditionally, a wok) with oil - most western people are familiar with this cooking method. It is very flexible and can accommodate many forms of vegetables and meat. This particular article refers to stir frying Silverweed with noodles and ghee (a form of clarified butter) to remove what I assume is any residual bitter tannin taste. Google Translate has its gaps!
Congee is essentially “rice porridge”; rice is cooked in lots of water until the grains begin to break down into a pudding of porridge-like consistency. It is often given to sick people as it is easy to digest. The Silverweed roots are said to lend the congee a sweet taste.
The Chinese Wikipedia entry on Silverweed states that it is also used to make wine but unfortunately does not have a citation. The roots are high in carbohydrates so should be easy to ferment. Please get in touch if you manage to make some Silverweed Wine!
You can also consume Silverweed as a “nutrient health powder”, presumably added to any food stuffs like cereal or smoothies, as mentioned in a Chinese patent. In a similar vein, some researchers replaced 5% of the wheat flour in a bread recipe with Silverweed powder with no discernible change in texture.
Articles that refer to Silverweed based foods are often frustratingly vague on details, but I stumbled upon one piece that gives some simple concrete recipes. I’ve tidied up the Google Translations using my own experience and common sense, but credit belongs to the original website for the Silverweed Congee and Silverweed Rice recipes.
Silverweed Congee
Put Silverweed roots and rice into a pot at a ratio of 1:4.
Mix with a handful of jujube fruit, raisins, wolfberry, longan, lotus seeds, etc.
These ingredients can be bought from an Asian store, usually dried and need rehydrating in water for half an hour before use.
Add water into the pot so that the water level is at least three times the height of the dry ingredients.
Bring the mixture to boil, and simmer for 40 minutes, stirring every few minutes and adding water if needed.
Silverweed Rice
Soak Silverweed roots in warm water for 60 minutes
Combine rice and roots into the pot at a ratio of 4:1 and boil as usual
Silverweed Chinese Soup
Chinese Soup is basically broth, so do not be alarmed if the liquid is very thin. I’ve prepared Chinese soup many times in my life, so this recipe is mine. It is a very good recipe for using old vegetables.
Boil a piece of meat (tastier if the meat is on the bone) in a deep pot with plenty of water, after several minutes of roiling boil, turn off the heat and skim off any impurities from the top.
Add your silverweed roots, and any other ingredients you desire, such as goji berries, an old apple from your fruit bowl, old vegetables from your fridge, heating the whole batch to boil before covering with a lid and reducing the heat to the lowest setting for at least an hour.
Next time you make the soup, adjust the recipe according to taste.
Tibet
In modern day Tibet, Silverweed is known as droma and is still occasionally consumed. An excellent article from the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine has the details, and I’ll quote them because I can not do a better job
[droma] are collected mainly in autumn when […] their taste is sweeter and the size is bigger. They are boiled in water until they become soft, the volume of the water has to be two times the volume of the rhizomes and, having taken a sweet taste at the end of the cooking, may be drunk. Melted butter is poured on the cooked rhizomes, the mixing is cooked again for a few minutes, and droma marku, “melted butter with Potentilla rhizomes”, is ready. This food may also be consumed with yoghurt and/or parched barley flour.
So far, so delicious.
Droma marku, Melted butter with Silverweed roots
Boil Silverweed roots in water, with the water being twice the volume of the roots, until the roots are soft.
Set aside the sweetened water for drinking
Pour melted butter over the softened roots and cook for a few minutes
Optionally add yoghurt or barley flour made from roasted barley grains
Nepal
There’s a tantalising Nepalese dish made with
wheat, rice, cheese, roots of [Silverweed], bamboo shoots, peas, mutton, and salt.
from the same article about Tibetan Silverweed use, but there are so many variations of recipes you could make with these ingredients.
Northwest America
Northwest Native American peoples would steam (actually pit-cook) their gathered Silverweed roots. There is an excellent article which discusses how this people group used Silverweed root at length. To quote the authors,
[Silverweed] roots were usually eaten as an accompaniment to other foods, such as dried salmon. Sometimes they were cooked in a “stew” [consisting of] clover “roots”, fermented dog-salmon eggs, […] oil, sugar (recent), and, optionally silverweed roots […] and flour. Often, however, the “roots” were served whole and cold and were eaten with fingers. Almost always they were dipped in a condiment of oil […] and sometimes “roots” were sprinkled with sugar before being eaten.
I’ve elided some of the more elusive ingredients, but interesting to me is steamed Silverweed roots dipped in oil as a side to a meat dish
Steamed Silverweed Side Dish
Steam your silverweed roots until they are so enough to pierce with a fork
Cool silverweed roots
Serve silverweed roots with a bowl of olive oil and a bowl of sugar, for dipping, as a side to some fish jerky.
Closing Remarks
It’s unlikely that I’ve gathered all the recipes to Silverweed in this page, but it’s nice to see them all in one place.
Let me know if you’ve heard/tried another recipe, or tried any of the recipes suggested here!