Chickweed frittata with prosciutto, potatoes and shallots. High protein, gluten-free foraging recipe.

Happy New Year everyone!!

I hope you've had a fantastic holiday season: safe, healthy, fun and full of family and friends. 

For us, Texas has been magnificently warm, with temperatures in the 60s and even into the 70s throughout the month of December. 

As a result, the plants have been seriously confused as to season, with many spring plants sprouting and even flowering. The strangest I've yet seen are violets in flower!

Foraging has been superb, when I can get to it. A major project at work has kept me working late, and sometimes even weekend overtime. 

One of my favorite, generally spring-only ephemeral plants -- chickweed -- has been coming up in large patches or dense matts everywhere. 

Chickweed is delicious, one of the few wild greens that I will eat both fresh or cooked. It has a flavor like spring peas, with a hint of sweet corn and Boston lettuce. When you cook it it becomes slightly herbal, like spring onions. A very versatile plant, no one I know who has tried it has disliked it, making it great for new foragers. 

A quick recipe for today: a decedent frittata. This time I've made it properly, starting everything over the stove and only finishing in the oven. Previously, I've often made frittatas in the oven-only, which saves time and cleanup, but at the cost of flavor. 

This recipe is delicious, easy to do (though somewhat time-consuming), gluten-free, high in protein and great as a main course for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner. 

Chickweed frittata with prosciutto, potatoes and shallots. 

Prep time: 10 minutes, cook time: 45 minutes. Serves 4-8 as a main course. 

6 eggs

4 cups of roughly chopped fresh chickweed

3/4 lb of prosciutto, diced

1/2 lb fingerling potatoes, chopped bite size

3/4 cup of sliced shallots

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1/4 cup heavy cream

5 oz. grated hard cheese (asiago, parmesan, etc.)

1+ sticks of butter

Salt, pepper, ground celery seed

1. Lightly salt 8 cups of water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add your chopped potatoes and reduce heat to a slow boil. Continue until potatoes are soft, then drain.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and heavy cream. Set aside. 
3. In an oven-safe 11" sauté or cast iron pan, melt 1-2 pats of butter over medium-high heat. Add in your sliced shallots. Sprinkle with salt and celery seed and cook, stirring often, until shallots are translucent and beginning to brown. 
4. Add in your garlic, and more butter if needed. Continue to sauté until shallots are fully caramelized. 
5. Add the prosciutto and sauté about 5-7 minutes until the meat has softened. Add in the cooked potatoes, season with ground black pepper and celery seed, and stir. 
6. Working in batches, stir in chickweed. When each batch wilts you can add in more. 
7. The chickweed will release a lot of liquid. Make sure you cook, stirring frequently, until all the liquid has dried. You can increase heat to do so. 
8. Reduce heat to low. Stir for about 10 minutes to allow the temperature to reduce.
9. Add in 4 oz. of your grated cheese, stir to mix until melted. 
10. Slowly pour in your egg and cream mixture. Gently stir the pan, once or twice to allow the eggs to fill in around all the ingredients. 
11. Continue to cook over medium-low heat, without stirring, until the eggs are fully cooked. You can occasionally turn or shimmy the pan over the heat. 
12. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Top the cooked egg mixture with the remaining grated cheese. Bake in the oven for 5 minutes, until cheese melts. Remove from oven. 
    
    
    
13. Raise oven temperature to a broil. Return frittata to the oven, and broil for 3-5 minutes until cheese is browned and bubbly. 

Enjoy! My pictures really don't do this dish justice!

Two chicks quesadillas: vegetarian with chickweed, chickpeas, feta and wild mushrooms

Finished chickweed, chickpea, feta and wild mushroom quesadilla

Like pretty much everyone, I'm sure, one of my goals in the new year is to eat better and hopefully loose weight. The second is hard, but the first is relatively easy, if you devote the time and effort into it, and treat it as an investment in yourself.

Of course, that's easier said than done. 

One problem I've always had was being so busy in the work week that I just get some fast lunch, usually something fried. Then I work late, so I don't feel like cooking when I get home. . . Eating out can quickly get out of control.

Enter the meal prep. I've decided to take time when I can, on the weekends, and make healthy, easy to re-heat meals that I can eat at my desk if I absolutely have to. Last week's mushroom pizza was a good one, and so is this week's chickweed, wild mushroom, chickpea and feta quesadilla, high protein, healthy fat and quality carbs, clocking in at under 400 calories. 

This vegetarian meal can easily be made vegan, if you use vegan cheese, or omit the cheese entirely. 

Chickweed, at the perfect stage for harvest

Chickweed, Stellaria media, is a super nutritious wild plant, which is finding it's way back into cultivation. Eat chickweed for a lot of vitamin C, as well as B vitamins and beta carotene. It's also got more minerals than your average plant, boasting high amounts of calcium, magnesium and potassium.

Because of the CHICKweed and CHICKpeas, I'm calling this the Two Chick Quesadilla!

Sweet potato colcannon with wild greens

Just a quick post today, I mixed this up yesterday with stuff hanging around in my fridge.

Colcannon is an Irish side dish of boiled cabbage or kale mixed into mashed potatoes. But in this wildcrafted take, I used healthier sweet potatoes and foraged greens (in this case, chickweed, but you could try it with lots of things). 

It's really simple, but it's the little additions to the mashed potatoes which make it so good: caramelized onion, lots of garlic and butter, a splash of cream. And of course, your wild greens. 

No recipe really needed: you should play around and find what works for you, but here is what I did:

Foraged Pizza with Chickweed and Caramelized Greenbriar

I was having foraged pizza envy, after seeing a post by @nibblingonnature on Instagram. I realized it had been a long, long time since I last made a foraged pizza. That one had had dryad's saddle on it. It had been amazing and I completely forgot to take pictures or make a post.

Homemade pizza is a Good Friday tradition with my in-laws. As the last Friday in Lent, you can't eat meat. Everyone gets together at my husband's aunt's house, makes a ton of pizzas, with 3-4 toppings, and then stuffs themselves silly. It's a good time, and a great meal. My favorite of those pies is the white pizza with cartelized onions.

They also make another dish which I would share, but it's a family secret. It's called grass pie and it uses a ton of dandelion greens! It's really heavenly.

Of course, having moved away from New Jersey, I didn't get to participate in this year's Good Friday, but I was still craving pizza. A weekend forage netted a bunch of Greenbriar shoots (Latin name: Smilax, also known as catbriar).

The tender new growth of greenbriar is edible

Foraged Chickweed and Mushroom Omelette

A mushroom omelette is one of my favorite ways to eat chickweed, because the flavor how very well with egg and most cheeses, and a light sauté keeps the freshness and crispness of the chickweed but fixes the textural issues of the hairy stems.

I prefer this dish with wild mushrooms, especially oysters, puffballs or milky caps, but I didn't have any of those so I used your basic white buttons. Half of a package will do for one omelette. I used Swiss cheese here, but goat cheese, asiago, Parmesan, and provolone all work.

It's simple to make, healthy and comes together quickly.