Something I viewed as bizarre at the time…
I was 14 and on a school exchange visit. The girl I was twinned with was called Rose-Noelle and she lived in a tiny village called Méru, about 30 kilometres outside Paris. The house was a small, detached building surrounded with a garden and high wire fences which had honeysuckle weaving up through the wires. It also had a couple of veg patches and wooden shutters at the windows.
I loved those shutters – the glazed windows opened inwards so the wooden shutters could be fixed together in the middle and pushed outwards from the bottom with a strut that held them open at an angle from the window. This let in the warm morning breeze, but shaded the bedroom from full sun, allowing strips of sunshine to shimmer on the floor.
The morning started with her father grinding fresh coffee beans, and the aroma drifted up the winding stairs to the bedrooms pulling us downstairs sleepily to dunk crisp tartines slathered with apricot jam into our bowls of thick coffee. I was living the dream.
That was until lunch time…
Rose-Noelle’s family had a sit-down lunch every day which always included a salad course that was served before the steak, green beans and frîtes. They mixed up their own salad dressing by mixing a vinegar with oil and adding garlic and honey; there were no bottled sauces in the house: this was the first unusual thing. But something strange occurred each lunch time which I felt was bizarre the first time I saw it happen, and I only just about got used to it by the time I flew home.
Each lunchtime, as her mother chopped the lettuce and chives, her father went outside to the garden and picked dandelion leaves, brought them into the kitchen, washed them, chopped them up and scattered them through the green salad.
I was horrified! At home my mother relentlessly dug up dandelions as an invasive weed and threw them on the compost heap. For all I knew these weeds were toxic.
Because I am British, I didn’t make a fuss but ate my salad as if I considered it to be absolutely normal to be eating weeds. And somehow, I had to admit, it gave the lettuce a piquancy that was appetising.
It was only years later that I realised why they did this.
The main reason for them was possibly the taste, as the bitterness of the dark leaves did add something extra to the flavour. But of course, traditionally, it was done as a sort of ‘apéritif dinatoire’ to stimulate the appetite.
The dandelion leaves would be serving two, three purposes;
- Improving the taste
- Supplying minerals and nutrients
- Stimulating digestive juices
Stimulating digestive juices is important at the beginning of the meal, as by the time that the meat is served the stomach and small intestines would be geared up, ready and able to receive the protein and fat, to efficiently digest and assimilate them.
This means that digestion would be improved, and indigestion avoided.
So, if you get indigestion often, find a way to incorporate a dandelion leaf or two into a small amount of food at the beginning of a heavy meal. You may just find that your gut works better…
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