As you may or may not know, I am Greek. And although I love cooking different dishes such as miso, curries and stews, sometimes I crave a good traditional Greek food.
And I am quite lucky to be a forager because wild greens are a staple in Greek cuisine. In this recipe I used dandelions I gathered yesterday, but you can also add nettles, chickweed, ground elder, sea beet and any other wild greenery you find.
The goal of this dish is to provide fresh, zingy tastes and for that reason there is minimal cooking, which also helps keep the vitamins and other nutritional elements intact.
As stated above, I used dandelion leaves for this dish and as I really like them even if they are bitter, I didn’t boil them before hand, I just added them raw in the pan. If you don’t like bitter tastes then you should boil them for 10 mins first, discard the water and then use them.
Ingredients for two bowls
- 2 large handfuls of dandelion greens or any other greens (you can use spinach too)
- 2 cans chickpeas
- 1,5 tsp cumin powder
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- lemon juice to taste
- 2 tbs kalamata olives paste (optional)
- crumbled feta (for the vegan version of this dish just omit the feta)
- olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic
Instructions
Chop up garlic finely. Place olive oil, cumin and smoked paprika in a pan and heat on medium heat until they start being fragrant. Add the garlic and stir for 1 min. Add the greens and, if fresh, wait until they are wilted, mixing as to not burn the spices on the bottom.
Once greens are wilted add the strained chickpeas and mix until they are warm. You don’t need to cook this dish further. Add the feta, the olive paste and the salt (in that order as to not be left with an overly salty dish) and garnish with some olive oil and a drizzle of lemon juice.
Enjoy warm!
(Fer)mental Greens 