Fat Hen And Crofter Feta Galette

Chenopodium Album or Fat Hen (Lamb's Quarters in the U.S.) is in the same family as spinach - the Chenopodiaceae. It tastes very like spinach...but more of it; spinach plus! It is rampant in my garden - I wish everything else germinated and grew like it! - so instead of fighting it, I decided to eat it! Here follows a recipe for peasant food extraordinaire.

Pick several generous handfuls of Fat Hen. (A few new onions are good too...) Fat Hen is best up to six or seven inches high - bigger and you will just want the leaves. Wash the green and shake excess water off. Remove the tougher stems. Fat Hen, near the tops where the new growth emerges, has a strange grayish, granular coating on the underside of the leaves. You will feel this as you handle them. It is not dirt and you would waste an afternoon trying to "wash it off". It is harmless and is not gritty when you eat it. Now for your galette. (A galette is a rustic, free form pie or tart.)

Fat Hen and Feta Galette

Chop two cups of the Fat Hen. Set aside.

In a bowl, mix together:
2 eggs
1 cup of feta cheese and
1 cup of ricotta cheese.
1/4 cup chopped onion
salt and pepper to taste.

(I make my own fresh soft cheeses and a sharp cottage cheese is one. Store bought feta plus ricotta comes out a close approximation to what I use.)

Stir in the Fat Hen to the cheese and egg mixture.

Next, spoon the thick mixture into the center of a rough ten inch circle of pastry dough. Leave about three inches of dough around the edges, you will fold this up to make your galette.

(My savory pastry dough: 2 cups any flour; 3/4 cup side pork or bacon drippings, or home rendered lard with cracklings still in it.

Mix oil in well. Add 1/4 cup cold water and mix in. If you need to, add more water - just as much as will bind your dough together - You do not want it wet! Roll or press into shape.)

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 -400 degrees F. for 35 to 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Fat Hen, Lamb's Quarters, that blankety-blank weed, or whatever you prefer to call it is a delicious, and nutritious green sadly forgotten. You can enjoy your peasant status while eating this anciently used plant - and after my adventures in medieval peasant eating I believe they ate really pretty well! That, and it is an unbelievably satisfying way of getting it out of your garden!