Eat Your Weeds

My pre-1990s cookbooks are nervous about the stuff--when they mention it at all. “If you haven’t had the arugula experience,” warns an early 1980s “Fanny Farmer Cookbook,” “you might be put off.”

But when I first encountered the deliciously bitter, nutty salad green in a restaurant, I was so taken with its taste that from then on I ordered it every time I had the chance. Sometimes it was the main ingredient of a salad; more often it was combined with radicchio and a bit of Parmigiano Reggiano. Trattoria chefs offered it grilled or slightly wilted on pizza and in pastas, in much the same way that they had been using chard.

I’d been growing chard in my winter garden along with lettuces for years, and while it’s not the most popular vegetable with children, its versatility made it an easy substitute for spinach in recipes for soups, savory pies, stews and the like. So when I found arugula seeds offered in a specialty seed catalog, logic told me that, like chard, it would be a hardy plant. After planting a patch, my theory was confirmed by a vigorous row of leafy plants that thrived where little else would grow. Arugula, it turns out, is too easy to grow. It’s basically a weed, a member of the mustard family, and was first gathered wild in Italy by my ever-resourceful ancestors, who made a cuisine out of scrounging. In France it’s called roquette, and in England, salad rocket. It’s also known, under variant spellings, as “rugula” and “arugola.”

You’d think I’d be happy with a garden full of arugula, but even I needed help consuming my harvest. I couldn’t unload it like I could my surplus tomatoes. Friends would sniff the saw-toothed leaves, then tentatively tear a bit and taste. “No, thanks,” they’d say. Without takers, I tried persuading my family to eat more of the stuff, but given the scarcity of arugula recipes in my cookbooks, I had little success. And I found it was too bitter to substitute for spinach. More contemporary Italian cookbooks allowed for the occasional half-cup to be added to pasta and vegetable dishes, but for the most part it was cited as a salad green--not the solution for making a dent in the flourishing crop now reseeding itself in my backyard.

Then one night in desperation before a dinner party, I tossed an unconscionable amount of arugula with a dressing made of pumpkin seed oil and balsamic vinegar and added fat shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano. I had hoped that maybe a third would be eaten; I noticed an hour later that the platter was completely empty, and one of the guests was wiping a lone leaf along the bottom.

I’d stumbled onto a flavor combination that was irresistible. It’s often noted by cookbook writers that nut oils like hazlenut and walnut--and pumpkin, apparently--enhance the flavor of, well, nuts. And there’s no green with a nuttier taste than arugula.

Look for arugula at farmers markets during the height of Southern California’s salad-green season (now through early summer). Or plant it in your own garden--and stand back.

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Desperate Gardener’s Arugula Salad

Serves 8 to 12

4 bunches arugula (about 12 cups)

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1/3 cup pumpkin seed oil (or substitute walnut or hazelnut oil)

3 ounces aged Parmigiano Reggiano

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Wash the arugula thoroughly, in two or three changes of water if necessary. Spin dry thoroughly. Place arugula in a large shallow dish or serving platter (not a salad bowl) and chill leaves until just before serving. Combine oil, vinegar, salt and pepper; adjust seasonings to taste. Pour over arugula. Using the large-hole part of a hand grater, slice Parmigiano Reggiano directly over the serving dish. Toss to coat leaves and distribute cheese. Serve.

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Food stylist, Christine Anthony-Masterson