Dandelion, pictured above, is a wild veggie classic, but sadly not held in very high esteem in Finland. I think it tastes a lot like arugula. We ate the leaves almost every day in salads with a vinaigrette sauce.

Greater plantain is widely know in Finland to be a plant with medicinal properties. I remember my parents making a plantain poultice to treat a cut I got at the cottage when I was a child. The leaves are also a great, milder tasting addition to salads.

Fireweed is a delicious wild vegetable that can be used like asparagus or water spinach. It’s best used when the stalks are between 10 and 20 centimeters. We ate it on two separate occasions. The first time we steamed them and ate with olive oil and salt, and the second time I fried them in a pan and added garlic and soy sauce.

Lady’s mantle is a family of plants of which all the species are edible. The umbrella-like leaves were quite mild tasting, and we used them in salads with a vinaigrette sauce. Supposedly they go well in soups too.

Winter cress (Barbarea vulgaris) is an excellent but little known wild veggie. It’s name probably comes from the fact that its rosette stays green all through the winter. Its buds and uppermost leaves are used like broccoli. We fried them in oil together with some fireweed. This is what the buds looked like when I picked them:

Most of the wild veggies are best eaten in early spring, because their taste gets more bitter into the summer. It’s a short, very special season, which makes me think about the time before greenhouses and imported vegetables. Last spring we made a nettle casserole and a goutweed soup, this spring it was mostly salads. Also, check out the pesto Goddess of Cake made from goutweed.

Before gathering wild veggies, you’ll need a guide or a guidebook. For use in the Nordic countries, I recommend the book by Pelle Holmberg, Marie-Louise Eklöf and Anders Pedersen called Mauste- ja terveyskasvit luonnossa (2009), or Vanliga vilda växter till mat, krydda, hälso- och kroppsvård (2007) in Swedish. It has great photos of the plants, making it easy to identify them, and also  information about their medicinal properties.

Why call it a temptation, you might ask. There’s a Swedish (non-vegetarian) dish called Janssons frestelse, which is a bit similar to this dish, and the name translates as Jansson’s Temptation.

• 7 potatoes, chopped into sticks
• 4 onions, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 2 liters of fresh nettles (or more)
• 3 tablespoons capers (or more)
• 2 dl oat cream
• dry bread crumbs
• salt
• black pepper
• margarine

First, we chopped potatoes into sticks, and sliced the onions. We fried the onion over medium heat until translucent, and removed it from heat. Then we boiled the nettles in lightly salted water for a couple of minutes, and drained them. Now, we crushed the garlic, chopped the nettles, and fried them lightly on medium heat.

Next, we oiled a 28 x 19 cm baking pan, and started adding layers of potatoes, onions, nettles, and capers, in this order. After each full round we added salt, pepper and bread crumbs. We finished with an extra layer of potatoes, poured in the cream evenly, sprinkled the bread crumbs, and added a few dollops of margarine.

The temptation was baked in 200 degrees Celsius until the potatoes were cooked. In our oven this took 55 minutes. If the potatoes start to burn but are not yet cooked, cover the pan with aluminum foil.

We ate the temptation together with some pan-fried tofu.

Note: When gathering nettles, try to pick up only smallish ones – they shouldn’t be more than 20 cm high. The stalks and leaves of the younger nettles are still soft, and better for cooking.

Wild vegetables should never be picked from road banks or anywhere close to heavy traffic. It’s also important to know exactly what you’re looking for – we were happy to have the advice from Heikki’s mom, who’s been trying to root up the goutweed from her allotment garden for the last few decades!

Here’s what we had in our soup:

• 5 dl goutweed (lightly packed), rinsed and chopped
• 5 dl veggie stock
• 2/3 dl semi-dry white wine (we had Portuguese vinho verde)
• 2 onions, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1 dl fresh bread crumbs (the insides of a baguette, for example)
• oat cream and chives

I first fried the onion and the garlic in the oil on medium heat for about 12 minutes, until they started to turn golden but not yet brown. Then I added the white wine, and let it come to a brisk boil. I added the veggie stock and goutweed, heated the soup until it was boiling again, and simmered it for one minute. Now, I removed the pot from heat, added the bread crumbs, and used our immersion blender to purée the soup.

After plating the soup, I drizzled our portions with a little oat cream and sprinkled with chives.

Fresh goutweed leaves.