Sometimes, when shopping at the co-op, I have a bad habit of scooping up some item that is not on my shopping list, simply because it’s pretty (or because I’m hungry). This has happened with loaves of Breadfarm bread, gorgeous French cheeses, bunches of baby beets, and heirloom tomatoes – despite the fact that I have no menu plan for them and I have to haul them up the hill along with everything else I’m buying that day. This time I fell for a bunch of red dandelion greens: they were in big fat fresh bundles and looked so springy, it didn’t matter that I had no idea what to do with them. I went home and rifled through a number of cookbooks, particularly anything by Alice Waters or Deborah Madison, and came up with a few possibilities of what one should do with dandelion.

While the salmon was roasting (not Copper River, but from somewhere nearby – almost as expensive) I tore up the greens and washed them – a really impressive amount of dirt came off. Continue reading →