What to do with Purslane
July 31, 2013
A few random ideas….
Wash well and throw into salad. They add a crisp, juicy, slightly lemony touch.
Use the leaves instead of lettuce to make sandwiches more interesting.
Make a Moroccan salad
Chop and steam the purslane for about 20 minutes until it's wilted and tender. (If you throw a whole clove of garlic in for each cup of purslane, it will steam as well.)
Drain the purslane, mash the garlic into the (much reduced) vegetable, and season it with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Stir in a bit of olive oil and serve with olives. If you have some preserved lemons, a bit of the chopped skin is a nice addition.
Make a Turkish Salad
Wash the purslane and pick off the leaves.
Mix enough yogurt to cover the leaves with a clove or two of minced garlic, some salt and maybe some urfa or maras pepper flakes.
Make verdolagas with salsa verde tacos.
Begin by putting 4 tomatillos into a blender with 1 small green chile, half a small onion and a clove of garlic. Whirl them into a thin liquid.
Take a big heap of purslane, wash it well, chop it into 2 or 3 inch pieces and boil it for about 10 minutes. Drain.
Slick a skillet with oil and add the salsa verde. Bring it to a boil, turn the heat down and add the purslane. Salt and pepper to taste. (Diana Kennedy adds cumin as well.) Cook it down until it’s thickened.
Add some queso fresco if you have it.
Serve wrapped into warm tortillas.
Or try this even easier version: Steam the purslane, drain it, then put it in an oil-slicked pan with minced garlic, a chopped onion, a chopped tomato and a chile pepper. Stir in some crumbled queso fresco. Now stir in a couple of beaten eggs and scramble them very loosely. Fold into tortillas and eat.
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another Turkish way of cooking purslane:
saute brunoise onions in olive oil, preferable evoo. add a handful, or less depending on the amount of purslane, of rice, keep stirring till the rice sort of becomes translucent. add some water and salt and simmer till the rice is cooked. the water should evaporate, then add the washed purslane and cook stirring till all the greens has wilted. it doesn’t take long. take of the heat, add some crushed garlic, diced spring onions and, if you like, some chili pepper flakes.
instead of rice one can use bulghur, which makes the whole dish more earthy. and one should be careful not to use too much rice/bulgur, as they multiply like hell and purslane shrinks to nothing.
we transfer the dish to a serving plate and let it cool to room temperature before eating. it can be eaten the next day, even the day after that as well, but I always prefer my “zeytinyagli” (olive oil dishes) at room temperature.