Citizen Invasivore: Your Recipes
Land
Blue Plate Special: Garlic Mustard
It’s spring, and garlic mustard is sprouting up all over the East. Time to get out the food processor and pesto the invader. Alliaria petiolata Native range: Europe, Asia, Northwest Africa Invasive range: Much of the Lower 48, Alaska, and Canada. (See map.) Habitat: Moist, shaded soil of floodplains, forests, roadsides, edges of woods, [...]
EAT ME!
Burdock
Native to the Old World, burdock’s introduction to North America was noted in 1672 by John Josselyn, a sharp-eyed English visitor, who used Gerard’s Herbal: The Historie of Plants of 1597 as a field guide. . . .
EAT ME!
Purslane
George Washington ate weeds. That is, he ate what he thought of as garden vegetables: Martha’s Booke of Cookery and Book of Sweetmeats, includes a handwritten recipe for Pickled Purslane. The manuscript . . .
EAT ME!
Japanese Knotweed
It’s the 1880s. Frederick Law Olmstead, who, in his thirties, co-designed a little patch of ground in New York called Central Park, in his forties sells Boston on the Emerald Necklace, a whole new…
EAT ME!
Curly Dock
Stare out across the empty lots and fields on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, and you will see scattered clumps of dark green leaves towering above the grass. In spring the…
EAT ME!
Sea
Wakame
Undaria pinnatifida Native range: Japan Sea Invasive range: Southern California, San Francisco Bay, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Argentina Habitat: Opportunistic seaweed, can be found on hard substrates including rocky reefs, pylons, buoys, boat hulls, and abalone and bivalve shells. Description: Golden brown seaweed, growing up to nine feet. Forms thick canopy. Reproductive sporophyll in [...]
EAT ME!
Asian Shore Crab
The first sighting of the Asian shore crab in the United States was at Townsend Inlet, Cape May County, New Jersey, in 1988. Though the source is unknown . . .
EAT ME!
Periwinkle
The common periwinkle, which first appeared in New England in the 1860s, is now found along the coast wherever there’s hard substrate–rocks, riprap, broken concrete, or docks–from Labrador to . . .
EAT ME!
Lionfish
Some say it started in 1992 in Miami when Hurricane Andrew smashed an aquarium tank. Don’t blame the weather, others say; in the mid-nineties, disappointed yet softhearted hobbyists…
EAT ME!
Green Crab
Since the green crab was first recorded off southern Massachusetts in 1817, it has been hard to ignore. A few minutes of rock-flipping in Maine can turn up dozens of them, brandishing their claws as they retreat…
EAT ME!
Fresh
Bullfrog
“They live in a wide variety of habitats, colonize new ones readily, and eat everything that fits into their mouths,” says Dr. Peter Moyle of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC-Davis…
EAT ME!
Northern Snakehead
His sister was ailing, and the man in Maryland remembered that, back home in Hong Kong, there was a fish that was considered a delicacy and a restorative. He would make a fish soup…
EAT ME!
Common Carp
For a bottom-feeder, what is the good life? The common carp isn’t very demanding: any body of water that’s sluggish and murky will do. One catching sewage or…
EAT ME!
Nutria
Nutria, also known as coypu and river rat, is native to temperate and subtropical South America. It has been introduced to Europe, Asia, and Africa, mainly for fur farming. These voracious. . .
EAT ME!
Asian Carp
They can swim up the Mississippi River. They can fly over a fishing boat, ten feet in the air, hitting fishermen with the force of a bowling ball. They won’t take bait from hook, and they’re bony––what’s to like…
EAT ME!
Field Notes
Pathways to Invasion
How do invasive species enter North America? We bring them in. Our ancestors.The early colonists, brought pigs, which they let range free, and seeds to plant as crops. Others just hitched a ride: on their shoes, in fodder, on animals, on boat hulls, and stowed among ballast cobbles. Our tax dollars at work. Since the [...]
EAT ME!
Malicious but Delicious
What should we eat to save local ecosystems and the future of civilization? Frank Bruni discusses a recent event in Austin, Texas, that served up feral hogs, tiger prawns, and Himalayan blackberries, in the New York Times.
EAT ME!
New Requirements for Ballast Water
In a good move for our coastlines, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued new guidelines on ballast water. Incoming ships must continue dumping their ballast 200 miles from the U.S. shoreline, but they also must treat ballast water with ultraviolet light or chemicals to reduce the risk of transporting new invaders to the coast. Many [...]
EAT ME!
Eat the Invaders in Cape Breton
Steve Sutherland interviews Joe Roman about eating Maritime invaders on CBC Radio.
EAT ME!
Invasive Species Cook-off in Oregon
Earlier this year, the Institute for Applied Ecology held a cook-off for invaders in Corvalis. Dave Budeau won with his pulled smoked nutria. Read more about the event and the institute here.
EAT ME!
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Los Angeles
Hadn’t been to your wonderful site for awhile. Tried dandelion flowers dipped in milk, then in flour and grated cheese and fried like zucchini blossoms; best early in the season, as they get bitter as summer takes over.
Portugal
I have recently learned about your “Eat the Invaders” initiative and was delighted to see how it seems to be working. I had myself flirted with the idea of doing something along those lines, and I have assembled a list of invasive exotic plant species in Portugal, with data on their edibility and potential medicinal uses. Not a lot of them are clear gourmet material, but I will give some of those a try (also, Portugal has less of an invasive species abundance on offer than the USA).
Having lived in the US for nearly 9 years (Boston), I got acquainted with some of the ecological issues in the country, and one of the items I was fascinated with was the problem with sea lamprey in the Great Lakes. Sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) is a regional specialty in the north of Portugal, where its scarcity makes the prices soar to pretty high values, especially considering the economic reality here. It is also very tasty. It made me wonder why nobody seems to be eating them there. Do you have any idea about that? Could it be that there’s something about the environmental conditions around there that make them less suitable for eating, or is it that people dread the animal?
I would be happy to start an import route from the US into here. Thank you for your work and good luck for the project(s).
ETI responds: Thank you for your note. I suspect the reason we don’t eat lampreys is purely cultural. Our parents didn’t eat them, so neither do we. That having been said, I’d be happy to work with you on this. We have lampreys here in Vermont (that may be native, as it turns out). But the government uses poisons to kill them–to protect more highly valued game fish. The poison kills the lampreys and rare native salamanders. A bad deal all around.
Yes, it was my impression as well that lamprey control is done mostly through poisoning. And it does sound like a bad deal. As for cultural issues around eating them, that’s probably the same with every invader. One way around it could be to catch the fish and sell it in the portuguese communities in New England (New Bedford, Fall River, Providence, Newark, etc).
Let me add to my earlier note that lamprey is not eaten exclusively in Portugal. I’m more familiar with it here, but it is also found at
least in Spain and France as well. It can be cooked fresh or it can be canned. Here are a couple of examples from French online stores:
Millesimes Gourmet
Lafitte
As you can see, the price is not unattractive.
You can also find some ecological and nutritional information about the lamprey in this short presentation.
It’s possible that, being a very fatty fish, there are some concerns with the accumulation of mercury and certain fat-soluble water pollutants.
More information on sea lampreys in the Great Lakes.
Catalina Island Conservancy
Fennel, Foeniculum vulgare, is highly invasive in much of the United States and Canada. The Catalina Habitat Improvement and Restoration Program (CHIRP) of the Catalina Island Conservancy has developed this recipe for baking with the tender stems and green seeds of fennel.
Killer Fennel/Fennel Killer Molasses Cookies
Step 1: Collect and candy fennel.
Tender fennel stems and green immature seeds can be candied and used with this recipe. Tender fennel stems can be collected from plants when they are in the “bolting” phase as long as stems snap easily when bent. Stems should be peeled and chopped finely. Stems have a much milder anise (licorice) flavor than seeds. Add approx 1/2 cup sugar to 2 cups chopped fennel stems in a sauce pan and add just enough water to cover mixture. Simmer sugar and water until the majority of the liquid has evaporated and mixture is thick enough to not drip from a spoon. If using fennel seeds, add the same ratio of sugar to seeds but use 1/4 as much of the candied fennel in the final cookie recipe.
Step 2: Prepare cookie dough – makes approx 5 dozen cookies
Ingredients
3/4 cup margarine, melted
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups candied fennel
1/2 tsp ground cloves
Directions
In a medium bowl, mix together the melted margarine, 1 cup sugar, and egg until smooth. Stir in the molasses. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and cloves; blend into the molasses mixture and candied fennel. Cover and chill dough for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spread dough on smooth, floured surface and roll fairly thin with rolling pin.
Cookies should be approx 3 inches in diameter.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Candied fennel burns easily so be sure to check cookies at 6 to 8 minutes and remove if they appear to be burning.
Publisher/Editor
HerpDigest: http://www.herpdigest.org
I would like to nominate red-eared sliders, Trachemys scripta elegans, for Eat the Invaders. Found all over the globe, they are Norway rat of the turtle world. Originally this harmless little green turtle was sold everywhere, supposedly doomed to die. But they didn’t, some grew and people released them. The IUCN now considers that to be among the 100 worst invasive species. I am working on a film about them in Central Park, and I’ve even seen pictures of them basking in the holy turtle temples in Bangladesh.
They are edible as adults. Turtle soup? Here’s a Creole turtle soup recipe, from New Orleans. Be sure to only use red-eared sliders, not native turtles. Sliders are native to the Mississippi River basin, but invasive in Europe, Asia, Africa, and much of the US, including New Mexico, the Northeast, and Florida. (See the USGS map here.)
I just love your basic idea. It’s shock value to make people think. And who knows may trigger and industry or two.
Well…from what I have seen the red-eared have cross-bred with the native yellow-eared sliders and it’s hard to tell what you have any more. On Staten Island it has to be mostly cross-breeds at this point. Of course, most of SI is a superfund site, so you wouldn’t want to eat any of them, but it’s an interesting point. There are a number of species that cross-breed and the cross-breeds will win out eventually from what I can see (just look at what we call “the things that should not be” in the local non-migrating duck and fowl populations – wild and released fowl interbreed like crazy, and the prodigy seem to “rule the roust,” pushing out native species and creating their own new urban “cultures.”
Not sure where I’m going with this, and I love the idea that harvesting invasives can help balance things, but maybe we should face the fact that many animals and plants are doing exactly what humans do — adapt.
Michigan has a severe mute swan problem and is in the process of eradicating. I haven’t seen much aside from swan burgers for recipes. Seems like there could be more options for such a large bird (as long as they’re not too toxic). I would love to see some ideas, and perhaps if we can kill them for sustainability, the eradication will become less controversial?
Research Fish Biologist
USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center
Missouri
You have sure done a bang-up, professional job on this informative website. In addition to Fajitas, your viewers might be interested in treating the “flying carp wings” described in the video like buffalo chicken wings. Simply fry with something that gives a crispy coating and dunk in hotwing sauce. I have not done that myself for a long time, simply because it is such a caloric presentation. But if you like buffalo chicken wings, you will love the carp wings. And the meat to bone ratio is a lot better, too.
Nearly any way you like to cook fish, silver carp will be good eating. About the only way I don’t really like AC is oven-fried. We eat a lot of oven-fried panfish (crappie, bluegill, redear sunfish, etc.) at our house, because it is quick and easy and low calorie, and because I have a pond outside my door, so we have the fish at hand. They are light and flaky that way. Asian carps are too meaty and dense for that method. Just about any other way works well. They are very versatile fish in the kitchen.
On your site, I think there could be more space given to education to attempt to avert the potential downsides of “invasivory.” And there ARE downsides. In the case of the Asian carp, managers have decided that harvest is an appropriate strategy for control, but it might not be for all species. There are cases where the risks probably outweigh the benefits, and in some cases, for example certain crabs in California, or lampreys in the Great Lakes, where harvest is discouraged and commercial harvest outlawed. You have done a great job of discussing the problematic nature of these invasive species, and that goes a long way toward the goals of controlling, rather than spreading, invasive species. But I think there is room for more caution about unintentionally or intentionally introducing these unwanted species to new locations. People who transport invasive plants could also easily distribute the seeds of the plants, and often unintentionally. The same goes for undesirable animal species–if you move them around to eat them, try not to let them escape and populate new areas. For something like crayfish, which are normally cooked just before eating, this is a real possibility. Furthermore, if people are making use of these organisms, even if only a few people are using them, it does provide an incentive for people to establish new populations in previously uninvaded places. For an invasive species, you can have many enemies, but you only need one friend, intentional or unintentional, to be transported and released elsewhere.
If we like the invasive organism, it is not invasive. Non-native trouts are not usually considered invasion. But love is in the eye of the beholder. It only takes one person to move an organism, even though the vast majority of the populace wishes it would go away.
So it makes sense to me that your site would include substantial caution to the public to avoid transfer of undesirable species to new places. I’m also a bit concerned about livelihoods and economies becoming wrapped up in species that we want to go away. In most cases, it’s a nonissue, because the species are not going away no matter what we want. But if new mousetraps are invented, it might be difficult to deploy them, if it means that a portion of the populace will lose income, even if deployment has big economic and environmental benefits.
Windy Acres, Charlotte, VT
Dandelion Wine
Day 1: Collecting and Preparing the Wine
We make wine from 5 gallons of dandelion heads, which is quite a task. Sanborn is right about avoiding the green parts, but I would not be too anal about it, so just avoid the stems. (The green parts introduce pectin into the wine, which makes it difficult to clear.)
We add lemon or orange juice to lower the Ph and have had great success with the small frozen cans. Another approach is to add a few scoops of black tea, which introduces tannin. We like to use wine yeast rather then baker’s yeast as it is adapted to higher alcohol percentages. On sugar, the golden rule is 2.5 kilograms for ten liters of wine (or about ten pounds of sugar for five gallons of wine). So 5 gallons of dandelions need ten pounds of sugar. (Sanborn’s recipe would be sweeter than we prefer.) We boil two or three gallons of water and steep a tea from the flowers. After the solution has cooled to lukewarm, we add the yeast, tea, and lemon juice and let it ferment. We cover the bucket with a cloth to allow the maximum exchange of oxygen.
Day 7 to Day 28: Fermentation
After a week, poor the mixture though a colander into a 5-gallon carboy. Add sugar water to the halfway point in the carboy, desolving as much of the sugar as you can. All the sugar will eventually be added, but you want to do this in stages to prevent too much action in your carboy, which could result in overflowing. At this time, you want to close your bottle off with a waterlock to prevent oxygen entering and allowing carbon dioxide to leave. (You now want an anaerobic environment for the yeast.) Once the bottle is full, leave it for about two or three weeks, then remove the deposits on the bottom.
Month 1 through Year 2: Aging the Wine
Leave the bottle standing at room temperature for about 12 to 18 months, racking it every time there is a significant deposit layer. When the water lock does not show any action and the wine is clear, bottle it up and let it sit for another year to ripen.