The other day I was discussing the edible lawn/Buckhorn Plantain with one of the Noble Rot chefs, and he was saying that the kitchen staff didn’t feel that the greens were as tasty this year as last, perhaps, he mused, for want of cold. I wondered back to him if they had tried them cooked, and he said they hadn’t. I returned to my planting, and he shortly disappeared down the hatch with some harvest, then not a minute later bounded back up with a plateful of sautéed lawn. Chefs are great that way; they don’t sit around just wondering about food – they make it!
So here’s the verdict. First of all, the plantain was sautéed in nice olive oil with garlic and lemon, so it took all of those flavors wonderfully. It was tasty, chewy, maybe a bit fibrous, but not unpleasantly so. My chef friend Patrick commented that it was chlorophilly, but that doesn’t mean much to my middle-school palette, so I’ll leave that one for the cognoscenti. I do think the greens would be just perfect as a bed for a couple over-easy fried eggs, providing an appropriate bit of resistance to an otherwise too-soft egginess, and the plantain’s luscious deep green, a delicious color counterpoint to white and yellow.
So there you have it from, not a Michelin-starred chef but from a humble tiller of the earth, who likes his greens toothy and a bit textured. Let me know if you find other ways you like this crop.