Weed Cuisine

Famine used to be a serious possibility everywhere. Even wealthy countries could be swept by mass starvation. Japan, set in a zone of earthquakes and violent weather, was particularly vulnerable, especially in the centuries when its government prevented foreign trade.

Effective pesticides, more productive farming techniques and modern trade and transportation have just about eliminated famine from the world. It mostly remains a problem in places of poor transport and precarious climate, such as the arid Sahel zone of Africa.

When starvation was a regular visitor, however, people treasured their traditional famine food lore: the knowledge of which local weeds would keep body and soul together until there was real food again. But as the need for weed cuisine has declined, the knowledge has been fading away. In Japan, where there hasn’t been a famine in more than 50 years, only a few old-timers still know how to gather weeds in the old way, so for Tokyo residents, these weeds have become extremely hard to get. As a result, famine foods became a hot item at high-end Tokyo restaurants about 15 years ago, because they were, paradoxically, the most expensive thing you could order.

One of the pan-Asian famine weeds is also familiar in this country: purslane. In fact, people in a lot of countries eat purslane by choice, cooked or in salad.

Its Arabic name is al-hamqa, which means “the foolish plant” because it tends to grow in dry stream beds where it gets washed away at the first rain. But it’s not so stupid. It hedges its bets with its seeds; 50% of them germinate the first year, 40% the next and 10% the third year. It’s ready for flood, drought, famine, anything.