Dandelions

My grandmother, Tassoula, would delight her grown sons and embarrass to death her daughters in law with her wrinkled black apron full of freshly plucked dandelions every time their families visited the family farm from the city.

Tassoula was a diminutive tower of a woman who without schooling and without a husband (he died when he was 38 year old) put her boys through the university by sheer will and frugality sacrificing one boy to tend the family business and sending the rest to the city nursing her wish to see them prosper in white collar professions. A doctor (he died young), an engineer, a chemist, a diplomat, a forester (my dad). They stayed in the city and married fully middle class urbanized women of self-importance who for the most part looked down on their husbands and dreaded the required visits to the ancestral homestead and Tassoula’s rustic table. Nevertheless, they brought the dandelions home and boiled them to make a rural side dish not available in the city markets at the time; strain, salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon. The dark green water smelled like a dark, earthy green tea served hot with salt and drunk in the kitchen as soon as it was cool enough to sip.

Forward a few decades, Tassoula had died of pneumonia, the forester of a stroke and the daughter in law, my mother, had a daughter in law of her own. She, more urban and sophisticated, a professional with gourmet, international taste living in England, shuttered when her mother in law went to visit and set out to gather dandelions at the town green. On her knees with a big paper sack to the mirth of Briton passers-by she tugged wild dandelions to fill the sack and bring them to the kitchen and boil for dinner. “You foreigners” still eating weeds, they would mutter.

How time can change the rules and resurrect forgotten delicacies… Forward a few more decades; the first world rediscovers the virtue of organic produce and traditional foods. Only now, when dandelions become chic again, the town green is mowed and the road sides are paved. Dandelions have to be grown meticulously in small artisanal farms and are sold at high-end groceries for $5 a tiny, dainty bunch enough for an elegant side dish. They are chopped in salads or gently steamed in stainless steal heavy pots. Their broth is light green and tastes at best like diluted Japanese green tea good only for the sink.