Plantas silvestres comestibles. Parte 2

There was a time when the consumption of edible wild plants was common in the rural world, and even today there are still people who collect them. We cannot forget that the human species appeared 150 thousand years ago and agriculture is only 10 thousand years old. But plant collecting never left our lives until very recently and our grandparents and great-grandparents, those who lived in the countryside, knew a lot about this. In this second chapter we travel to Valdemanco, a town of 900 inhabitants in the Sierra Norte of Madrid located 64 km from the capital. There, Teófila Díaz García, a resident of the town and expert collector, will tell us about some of the plants that we can find in the area.

We are in Valdemanco. These are the lupies... that are raised here, in the bushes, they are climbers, luckily some climb very high, but well... they are very good to eat, very tender and they have some recipes. Here I have a little bunch... and look, you see, here they can be cut perfectly... I'm right next to where they are. Look, I have a little bunch. Well, these are very long... so, you have to look for the ends, which are what are most tender, because what is hard is... if it bends like this and doesn't click, it is hard, but if you cut a little higher, which is already softer, because it clicks better.

And then, well, look, this in the past... when people lived worse than they do today... well, they made it, they put potatoes to cook... and then, when the potato was cooked, they put them in the pot... they put them in the asparagus, then they sautéed some garlic with a little paprika, when everything was already cooked, and it was a recipe. They really were great, they ate very well. And, well, then they have the recipe that you fry them... you fry them very slowly, very slowly, and when they are done... with oil, of course, when they are done, you beat the eggs and make an omelet.

Another recipe is... you cook them, because these tend to be a little bitter, you cook them and remove the water, and after removing the water, you put them back in the pan, with a little oil, and you make the omelet, and now the That bitterness they have is gone. And they are great. Well, those three recipes, more or less, are the ones that lupios have. Javier Tardío, researcher at the Madrid Institute of Rural, Agricultural and Food Research and Development, and Laura Aceituno, researcher at the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge related to Biodiversity, are part of a multidisciplinary group that studies everything related to edible wild plants. .

In its methodology, field work is an essential part, interviews with people from different towns who keep the tradition of collecting alive and still know which plants can be eaten, which ones cannot, the ways to cook them and the most appropriate time. to go out and look for them. Look at this… this is a bush of walnut asparagus. Let's get it! -Look, these threads have to be removed... -Ah!, they're removed... -The threads have to be removed from these... these threads... and if you pick them up like that, they're tender, you don't have to remove the leaf, if you catch them more long ones must be removed, for example... you cut it here because it is already harder and has a longer blade, well we would remove this one... we cut it higher here... we remove the threads... and, then, this is already used .

To make tortillas, the same as the others, but these are not bitter. These are not bitter. But to become... they become the same as the others in everything. Cooking them is not worth it and throwing away the water, because they do not make them bitter, just fry them... or if it is with potatoes, it goes like this in a stew with cooked potatoes, well... when the potato is already more well cooked, it takes very little time, you add them and , then, a little refried oil with some garlic... or there are those who also added lard... and the stew was already seasoned.

And this is how they were spent before and this is how they are spent now. -But which ones did you like more… these or those? -They all like them, but these are not bitter. In other words, here they are edible and people pick them... when they go to asparagus they pick... the walnut and the lupio. What happens is that... well, some have one way of doing things and others another. And if you put them together, then they are less bitter, because these already take away more bitterness from those. We could say that in most cases, most species have stopped being collected and consumed.

It is only maintained with a few species that, probably, are those that have greater gastronomic interest, such as wild asparagus, cardillos, collarejas... and some other species, depending on the regions. But we have also seen, we have carried out studies... that, even in those most emblematic species, which are still preserved, the collection has decreased considerably, by 50% or even more, in recent years, compared to what was done 30 years ago. , 40 or 50 years. Here, in the Sierra Norte, which is a region north of Madrid, is where I did my doctoral thesis on Ethnobotany and Agroecology, which was directed by Javier Tardió and Manuel Pardo.

And, well, we collected... by interviewing older people like Teófila, all the traditional knowledge about the uses of plants, both wild and cultivated plants. And a very important part of the edible wild plants, of which there is a great wealth in this area. As Laura Aceituno thanks, in her doctoral thesis, available on the Internet: "This work is a tribute to the mountain grandparents." "They opened the doors of their houses and orchards to me, and by the light of the fire or under the shade of a tree, they told me about their way of relating to plants and working in the fields." All these wild plants that can be collected and eaten, when they are most available is now in spring, and right at this time, here in the Mediterranean areas, the gardens are... they have pulled out the last collards, cabbages, turnips... and no There is nothing left in the garden, and also the pantry, after all winter, was emptier, so, just... it is a time when it was necessary to pick vegetables from the field.

There were beans, chard, carrots, cabbage... well, all those kinds of vegetables, red cabbage... and all those kinds of vegetables are grown and that is what is most used. From the countryside, the cardillo, the asparagus... And, well, all these plants... for example, here we have the corujas... or the watercress, they are highly valued plants, they are plants that were eaten every year, even now, when there are no necessity, people continue to pick them because they seem very tasty. Then there were other plants that were consumed only in times of scarcity, when there was famine, as was the case after the war... such as acorns or wild apples, and now no one consumes them.

And then there were plants... that were eaten to kill hunger and thirst when they were in the fields doing agricultural work or with the livestock, and children also used to eat them as candy, because they were always in the field. Like, for example, the churrero junco... that we have here, that in this lower part, white, if you chew it... you get the sweetness out of it, and with this you killed your thirst and the hunger bug when you were in it for a long time. field. These are the watercress. This plant is very good in salad… with tomato, and it has properties, it is a diuretic.

And the other, this is the coruja, here we call it... it has three names, it has coruja, chervil, chickweed... anyway, around here the name we give it most is "la coruja." This is eaten in a salad, too, like watercress, add some garlic and it is wonderful. Here are the salads we eat the most. Plants that live... in waterlogged places and in water, such as corujas, care must be taken that the water is clean and not contaminated, or places where livestock go to drink, because there may be contamination from... for example, the planarian... of sheep, the hepatic fasciola, and you can catch parasites.

So, all these things, to collect wild edible plants, you have to take them into account. My teeth came out in the field. So I've known plants since I was born, because I went to the countryside... with sheep, because we had sheep, which was what people lived off of here, cows, sheep, goats and all that. So, since we were in the countryside, we knew what corujas were, because our parents told us, of course, and they were used at home, and from there I already know what corujas, watercresses are... and many plants, which have many properties… in fact, we made a book and they are there.

Gathering, which, furthermore, we assume has been one of the first human forms of supply, refers very specifically to the collection of plants, that is, uncultivated plants, supposedly wild plants. But, since the Neolithic, that is, after the emergence of plant planting and harvesting techniques, we clearly continued to take advantage of, so to speak, the entire environment in which people have lived. And in a complementary way, particularly for plants that had, at the same time, an edible and hygienic use, and also a medical one, let's put it this way, this practice has continued over time. Look, for example, in my house, I have two granddaughters, one 20 and the other 15, and they already know corujas and cresses because, of course, we use them at home and they already know what they are, because if not they They wouldn't know at all.

And the rest is the same, because at home they are spending it, they are working in the kitchen and they are learning it. But there is something more to all this. It's not just about collecting food from the fields and eating it. There is a deeper dimension that transcends Science. As the authors of the book "Wild Foods of Madrid" state, there is something ancestral in this practice that makes us feel part of Nature itself again. Still, since the 19th century, that is, since the Industrial Revolution, the countryside continued to be, particularly from hygienic perspectives, it continued to be not only a place of recreation, but also a place of supply of that set of traditional plants that provided a double effect.

On the one hand, indeed, the benefits that are derived from its ingestion, for different types of diseases or pathologies, but also, properly speaking, as a restorative leisure of what urban life was like. This aspect of leisure... of healthy leisure, of sanitized leisure, still continues, and is very important. That is to say, sometimes, the act of going to look for the plants is not only about collecting them, but about the time allocated to them... we would say, to escape from noise and urban pollution. For this we would have to go to our ancestors. Actually, humans, our ancestors, were gatherers… hunter-gatherers.

So, that taste for collecting plants, I believe, has endured and we have it in our genes. Going now... in contact with nature, to collect plants that we then use to eat, in the first place is a satisfaction, you have to have knowledge, as we have said before, you have to know about the countryside... country people know , knows its environment and enjoys it, and urbanites who live in cities and then go to the countryside also enjoy getting to know the plants and collecting the plants. The field is like a big garden. The garden is domesticated nature, well... the field is undomesticated, and it is enjoyed there, apart from doing physical exercise, taking in the air, memorizing the plants and the shape of the plants that we have to collect.

It is a very healthy exercise and it puts us in contact with nature, which we cannot do without in any way, although it seems to be a current cliché that we are only going to be able to survive in the city, we have to be in contact with nature, and if there is ever no nature, man will disappear, as is logical. Edible wild plants, which have often been considered "weeds", today have a lot to contribute.