Wild greens salad
Wild greens are a nutritious and popular ingredient in traditional Greek cuisine. The edible wild herbs are very often served in the trapeza of Mount Athos either as an individual boiled salad, or as an accompaniment to fish and seafood. They grow everywhere throughout Greece and of course they are not absent from the blessed place of Mount Athos. Monks who know where to look and can identify the types of herbs, collect them and then cook them in the monastery kitchens. The most common of these are radishes, rhizomes, endives, burdock root and many others. Read the monks recipe for boiled salad greens and learn how to clean them, how to wash them and how to keep them green.
First, we clean the greens very thoroughly. We remove the blackened and dry leaves and cut the thick and hard stalks.
Then, we wash the greens very well in the kitchen sink to wash off the many soils.
Then, we fill a large basin with plenty of water and dip the greens in it. We mix the greens with our hands in the water so that they continue to be rinsed.
It will take about 5 water changes until there is no trace of dirt at the bottom of the basin.
In the last rinse, we add a few drops of vinegar to the water to remove any living organisms hidden inside the leaves.
We let the greens drain and collect enough water to boil in a large pot.
As soon as the water boils, salt it and pour in the greens, pressing them down with a slotted spoon.
We boil the greens for about 10-15 minutes depending on how soft you want them.
We strain the greens and serve on a plate only what we are going to consume.
We add plenty of lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper and they are ready.
We keep the rest in a food container in the refrigerator and keep them for up to three days.
If you want your greens to stay green and not turn black, then when they are ready, we put them in a bowl of ice water to stop the boiling. But this way you lose the opportunity to eat them hot.
To prevent the greens from turning black, you should also add lemon only to the ones you will eat and at the last time.
The stalks that we remove from the greens are not thrown away but used in vegetables broths.
