In the first warm days of early spring Caterina’s mother — from the generation that lived through the wars — still roams the fields in search of that wonder of wonders… le verdure di campo (wild “vegetables”).
I bet she does. Read all about it in ItalianNotebook, and you’ll be salivating within seconds, like I was.
But fight the urge to rush out and harvest the roadside verges long enough to read the comment made by Barbara Modica at 2:39 pm on May 24th:
In the spring, there is a weed which resembles a rhubarb plant, except it is smaller, has a green stalk and green leaf shaped and about the same size as rhubarb. My husband’s family (from Sicily) boiled the stems, discard the leaves, then breaded them and fried them in olive oil. They called them gardoni (or something similar to that). Are you familiar with them? They are only edible in the spring, later on turn into a tall plant. We carry on the tradition and our grandchildren love them also.
Any ideas?
I answer Barbara. Are you living in Italy, or at least in the Mediterraena area? If so, your “gardoni†could be cardoni (cardoons), which are the petiols of Cynara cardunculus. They are very bitter, which is why they first need blanching. To identify them, look at the limb of leaves. It is dissected, not entire like rhubarb. When the plant flowers, it gives heads which look like artichoke (which belongs to the same species anyway). The internal part of the heads can be trimmed and eaten.