My grandmother used to point out dandelion to me when we'd go on walks around the neighborhood, she explained that she used to eat them a lot as a girl but she warned me not to eat the ones she was pointing at because dogs pee on them and cars belch their exhaust on them. I remember thinking that maybe the dogs were more courteous in her day and that perhaps there were no cars. My grandmother thought the whole world was little more than a big pile of germs. So it was extra weird for me to think that she grew up on weeds.
Dente di Leone, "Teeth of the Lion" is what the Italians call dandelions, and you can see the English word in that delightful phrase. Lions Teeth has a way of catching the imagination especially considering Italy is a country without lions. Fangs are such fierce imagery. Italians should have been given the task of labeling the universe.
In the summer of 1993 I found myself driving a small truck thru the Californian desert en route to Las Vegas for a friends wedding. The truck was completely innocent of air conditioning and entertainment was provided via the AM radio. Somewhere out there, though I can hardly believe it, was a Greek restaurant, the whole experience seems more like a heat-stroke hallucination or mirage to me now. So unlikely a place and for no reason at all the food they served was remarkably good. Half dazed I ordered their dandelion salad. It was a family run affair with an old looking man and his wife and two daughters, I was the only one there and we all watched eachother nervously as if we were expecting a gunfight at any moment. The finished plate was passed thru each of their hands first the father, handed it to his wife and nodded his head towards me and she summoned one of the girls who took the plate and gave it to her sister who finally delivered it to me, no more than ten feet away, with a cheerful though nervous smile.
Suspicions slowly melted away when I tasted it and then with quickening pace, devoured it, within a few minutes they were seen smiling and nodding and I smiled back with little green flecks between my teeth. I have still never had a more quenching sensation than that salad, the heat and dust from the road had nearly done me in yet this salad was some kind of corpse reviver. Later I learned that it is packed firm with potassium and a handful of other vitamins and minerals.
I like to wait for a heat wave to sweep thru and make this salad as an afternoon lunch with good crusty bread. I have replicated it totally from memory from that peculiar restaurant out in the middle of nowhere that oppressively hot summer day.
I blanch the dandelion greens in plenty of well salted water for several minutes until the thickest stem is soft and tender then I drain them and let them cool. I squeeze out as much water as I can and lay them on paper towels while I get everything else ready. Then I assemble the leaves onto a chilled plate and top the heap with thinly sliced onion, rough chopped kalamata olives, the best feta I can afford, fiery hot Calabrian chile peppers, I anoint everything with a squeeze of at least half a lemon and plenty of the best extra virgin olive oil I can get my hands on. Lastly, I scatter a pinch of dried oregano and a few twists of black pepper.
I like to twirl the strands of dandelions with a fork as if it's strings of spaghetti, catching all the condiments along the way, that way every bite has a little taste of everything.
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