If it grows together, it goes together. Even the weeds in your lawn go with the vegetables in your garden. Here, a variety of tomatoes and tomatillos, herbs, chilies, and your backyard chicken simmer away. When everything has sufficiently married, and the tomatoes have begun to break down, a tangle of purslane, a common weed you may find in your lawn, is chopped into 4-inch sections and dropped into the stew. Put a lid over the pot and let the purslane steam until tender. The stew can be served as is with tortillas or with brown rice.
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Mmm, that’s interesting. It had been a very long while since I saw weeds in a recipe. I remember by grandma would use the weeds from her vegetable garden to make some sort of soup, but I can’t remember either the weed or the soup.
This stew could also be served with BIG SPOONS! What a gorgeous pot that is.
Yesterday we roasted and stuffed some poblanos from Nichols Bros and also some vivid red peppers Bruce grew, which have to be the best pepper I’ve ever worked with for this purpose: nice mid-thickness skin, blackens beautifully, slices and stuffs like a dream.
I want to grow some next year. Bruce, can you remind me which type they are?
They are ‘Carmen’ from Johnny’s Seeds.
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-6674-carmen-f1.aspx
Probably the best producer, and healthiest plants, on my roof this year.
Thanks all! Tuscan Foodie, you’ll have to find out the weed and soup that your Grandma made. It’s funny, when I showed this picture to my Mexican friends they said, “oh, verdolagas, looks good” but when I pulled the purslane up and tried to get my dad to eat some he said, “I’m not going to eat those weeds.” Point being, the weed that your Grandma cooked with may have a common equivalent here in the States and it may have 3 different names.
Those Carmen peppers look almost like piquillos! Bruce, those rooster spurs having been growing like mad on my balcony too. They’re tiny but they pack a punch and are great in just about everything. Probably going to make a chili paste with them. Those peppers would be great stuffed! http://thepleasanthouse.com/recipes/stuffed-peppers/
Keep on growing!
Unfortunately I have no way to ask her…and my mother doesn’t remember. I will dig into my recipe books and see what I come out with.
I have plenty of purslane so I’m thinking that I need to try this. What does it taste like, though? I’m imagining it to be sharp and lemony, kind of sorrel-ish. Am I close?
By the way, I found your blog via your trashpicking comments on apartment therapy–I was about to post the same tips re: taking a drawer, etc.! Have gotten many cool things (a 1912 sewing machine with a wooden cabinet and wrought iron base) from the curb over the years.
Hi Kim,
Purslane is not really sour. I’d describe it as vegetaly and mineraly, slightly spinach-like.
Sent from my iPhone
Cool… thank you for straightening out my assumptions.
Kim, there is a bit of a sorrel tinge but definitely not as sour. btw, after that apartmenttherapy comment I remembered something else that I garbage-picked. A nice stack of euro and English Pound coins! About 20 pounds and 20 Euros!