The dandelion challenge
Now's the time to jump on this super – and super plentiful – food

I make a point to eat a dandelion every day. The whole plant is edible, from the sunny top to the deep taproot, and all the stem, stalk and leaf in between. And there are ways to eat it that won’t contort your face with bitterness, but rather turn your frown upside down, inside out, round and round. Yes, dandelions can taste good and be part of a delicious meal. They’re one of the most all-around healthy foods you can eat, rich in vitamins, fiber and many other nutrients.

The sunny flowers, fried in butter, oil or bacon, taste like extra floral artichokes. The buds have a meaty chewiness and are slightly sweet, with a sunny floral taste that’s a lot like a dandelion flower smells. Like summer.

The hollow flower stalks make great cocktail straws, bitters included. The roots can be roasted until chewy, crunchy or browned like coffee. The leaves are most of the plant. Raw and cooked, I have found ways to get hooked.

Native to northern Europe, dandelions specialize in colonizing disturbed areas, which humans specialize in creating. They have followed humans and their disturbances around the world, colonizing every continent except Antarctica. And while often labeled as weeds, they don’t hang out where they don’t belong.

In this little old-growth forest near my house, where most of the plants and animals living there or passing through are native species and the ecosystem is roughly intact, there are no dandelions, except alongside the one trail. And you sure don’t want to eat those.

The best dandelion habitat is unsprayed, overgrown lawn, which is about as disturbed as a piece of land can get. Dandelions want to help steer the ecosystem toward diversity. And they can provide a diversity of nutrients and flavors to your diet. When you go out hunting, look for a place that wouldn’t have yellow snow in winter, if you know what I mean. Whether it’s the root, leaf, stalk or flower you seek, harvest them as cleanly as possible, bringing as little dirt home as possible.

In winter, it will be more challenging to eat dandelions on the daily. It will involve more tea, and roots, if you can jump on them before the plant flowers. That stuff needs to be gathered now, in these days of summertime, when the living is easy and the buds are open and high. Eat them fresh, stock them up for later. Blanch and freeze. Dry the leaves and roots. Add flowers to a jar of pickled cucumbers for some quick pickled buds.

They will close up but get chewy and tangy. Add leaves to sardine salad. Make dandelion-infused oil, dandelion wine, dandelion BBQ, curry, potato salad, smoothie, olives and cheese in a rolled-up leaf, a tapestry of daring dandelion tapas.

Here are some do-it-yourself dandelion cookery ideas, one for every day of the week.

Sunday: Fried flowers - In a cast iron or omelet pan, fry flowers with the yellow sides in butter, oil or bacon, with garlic, salt, pepper and whatever else you can think of. 

Monday: Raw leaves with grapefruit - Wash, dry and chop a bunch of raw leaves. Add onion and garlic. Dress with olive oil and lemon juice, and season with salt or copious amounts of feta, or both. Toss with peeled, cut or separated grapefruit flesh. 

Tuesday: Radikia, the famous Greek dandelion dish - Blanch leaves in salted, boiling water for about 60 seconds. Transfer immediately to cold water to chill. Then drain, squeeze and chop the dandelion. Dress with lemon juice, salt and olive oil.

Wednesday: Namul - This is a Korean-style way to prepare dandelions. Blanch leaves as above, dress with a sauce made of minced garlic, sesame oil, cider vinegar, chile powder, a pinch of sugar and fish sauce or anchovy paste, and salt to taste.

Thursday: Roasted Roots - Excavate the root as gently as you can, loosening it as deeply as possible, ideally before it has flowered, after which the root can get woody. Scrub it clean and chop it, and roast slowly at 275 degrees until dark brown. Serve with salt, honey, chocolate or as a coffee-flavored tea. 

Friday: Stalking bitter bubbles - Go into the yard and pick the longest dandelion flower stalks you can. Pop off the flowers. Mix gin `n juice or tonic. Insert straw. Serve.

Saturday: Ramen - Tampopo means dandelion in Japanese. It’s also the name of a movie heroine, a hapless maker of mediocre ramen, in “Tampopo,” a masterful Japanese comedy from 1985. The heroes attempt to teach Tampopo how to make ramen but can’t. Drama and hilarity ensue. I only found out about it when I searched for dandelion ramen, to see if I invented it. But no. I am not the first person to add dandelion to a high-end ramen, like Nongshim or Sapporo Ichiban brands, with an egg cracked toward the end. Use any part of the plant, including leaves, even roots. As long as it’s clean, add it to the pot.

by Jeffrey Mannix

The crime fiction genre is exploding and giving unheard-of opportunities to first-time authors and veteran novelists alike, encouraging police procedural serials hoping for name recognition.

The results, at least in this moment, are multi-book contracts and big advances to established authors by publishing conglomerates. Debut writers, on the other hand, receive modest exposure with little to no advances. But they do get first-rate editing and dust cover design, and an outfield of sales reps and publicists sending out fulsome blurbs and advance-reader copies to a small army of reviewers like me. 

But young writers with first books now have at least a modicum of hope of securing an agent with a cold call and a barely edited typescript, who can then pitch the big publishing houses with product they had never before dared to recruit. 

In my experience, offshore and small publishers have been and are still discovering and publishing great crime fiction writers and genuinely literary crime fiction. Early crime fiction in the United States began as episodics in pulp magazines, then progressed to back-pocket paperbacks with lurid cover art sold in drug stores and newsstands. All the while, European and British publishers had been featuring true literary writers for decades with fictions that still set the standard for noir literature. 

Currently in the United States, one small New York publisher has run alongside the big American crime imprints with early and steadfast dedication to exceptional crime fiction. Soho Press has fed “Murder Ink” with a steady supply of outstanding mysteries over the years and now gives us a June 6 release, “A Disappearance in Fiji,” a debut by a young Fijian-born woman, Nilima Rao.

“A Disappearance in Fiji” is an easy, warm read that quickly establishes a charm and a hint of starchy humor to this far-away island. This palliates the debauchery behind a system fed lavishly by wealthy Brit-owned sugarcane plantations labored over by families tricked into indentured servitude and overseen like slaves.

With subtleties beyond Rao’s years, the reader gets to stroll along with a proper 25-year-old rookie Indian police sergeant by the name of Akal Singh. The year is 1914, and Singh is on punishment duty for a nameless error he made policing in Hong Kong and is expecting to restore his status after a few days accompanying the Indian Delegation for India’s Relations with Fiji. He has come to review the Indian indentured servitude program and to perfunctorily look into missionary Father Hughes’ reported kidnapping of an indentured woman named Kunti at the Nabanigei plantation.    

The British believed they controlled this primitive and warring archipelago, and the examination of the Nabanigei plantation was intended only to show British hegemony and provide make-work for the delegation of low-level bureaucrats. But Sergeant Singh is Indian, not British, and is young and aspires to higher ranks, so this overland visit was to be thoroughly investigated.

Rao obviously spent years researching and writing this book. And Soho Crime noticeably spent time and talent editing Rao’s lovely voice and unadorned storyline.

Singh is indefatigable in his investigation, probing and digging deeper into every clue, causing supervisors to chafe dumbstruck over Singh’s unveilings.

And we have a story rich with place, culture, pathos and profound suspense amid a country unaccustomed to presumptuous civil servants. 

You won’t forget this book, and remember to ask Maria’s Bookshop for your “Murder Ink” 15%discount. We’ll see awards coming Rao’s way, and I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting her next lovely tapestry.