The Call of the Wild

Hikers in western Germany's hilly Eifel region should be careful where they walk — that creeping weed underfoot could be a sought-after (and very expensive) delicacy. German epicures are developing an appetite for native herbs and long-forgotten indigenous vegetables. This hunger is triggered by "the appeal of turning something simple and outdated into something special and new," says award-winning chef Dieter Müller, whose three-star restaurant in Bergisch Gladbach's elegant Schlosshotel Lerbach offers such exotic treats as veal filet coated with turnip-rooted chervil and flat-leaf parsley.

The trend has spread quickly from restaurant kitchens to amateur cooks, and local markets are now stocking such heirloom vegetables as swedes (a kind of turnip with a yellowish root and firm flesh), parsnips and turnip tops, and herbs like purslane and sorrel. The new favorite is the white-flowering ramson, also called broad-leaved garlic because of its pungent odor. Its sales are as robust as its flavor. "A few years ago we had a demand of a mere kilo a week," reports Abdessalem Najar, a vegetable and fruit vendor at Cologne's central market. "Now we sell three to five kilos a day." Not bad for a weed that not long ago went largely unnoticed in the woodlands.

The French, too, are rediscovering old-style foods — notably, that Christmas- season staple, the chestnut. At Monaco's Le Louis XV restaurant, chef Franck Cerutti has been dazzling patrons with fresh takes on such down-home dishes as vegetable stew with chestnuts and fennel, and a light blini, the hearty Russian cousin to the crepe, made with freshly ground chestnut flour.

At markets in Germany, the demand for exotic vegetables has sent prices soaring. One kg of ramsons costs j20, twice as much as ordinary garlic. But ramsons are worth it, says Olaf Schnelle, co-founder of the Grimmen-based mail and Internet order firm Essbare Landschaften (Edible Landscapes), which sells 150 different herbs to customers across Europe, because of their special taste — and the fact that they don't linger on the breath. (To judge for yourself, make some pesto using ramsons instead of basil and toss with walnut fettuccini.) The growing interest in local herbs and roots has been cultivated by a general trend toward a vegetarian diet. In 1992, the average German consumed 82 kg of vegetables annually; by the end of 2001 the figure had grown to 92 kg.

Veggie lovers say the wild plants are more nutritious than the commercially grown variety. Nettles, for example, have 40 times more iron than a greenhouse-grown cabbage lettuce, 30 times more vitamin C and 20 times more pro-vitamin A. You may be wondering how anybody could eat nettles. Try this for a healthy salad: steep nettles in cold water for 15 minutes, dry, and mix with a simple dressing made of yogurt, mayonnaise, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It's tasty, crunchy — and doesn't sting at all.