Purslane: I call it a nutritious easy to grow crunchy little green (now officially renamed par moi a “super gourmet green” !). Add it to green salads, or – my favorite – to potato salad. Other people like it too: El – of course! (go to this post for a picture … if you need one) – and Chelsea whose post of Warm Potato & Purslane Salad inspired me to try purslane with potato salad. Nonetheless, he calls it a weed. He eats it, though – gingerly. Me? I am going to pickle it, having found a recipe in one of my French cookbooks.

Radish seed pods: I call them tasty little bits, great for salads and stir-fries. He just shrug them off and eats around them. But then he has no particular fondness for radishes, any of it (except the quick pickled ones). Make sure to pick only young and immature pods: they toughen as the seeds mature. There is actually a radish bred for its pods, with the evocative name of Rat’s Tail Radish or sometimes – less poetically – podding radish. I use my standard French breakfast style radish and let them go to seeds. Flowers are pretty, attract pollinators and beneficial insects … and are edible too.

We both agree though that green coriander seed is a short live treasure. Short lived in the garden, as you need to pick the young green immature seeds before they start to mature, and once picked must eat them within a few hours, before they start to dry. The taste is something between cilantro and coriander – which is no surprise since it is both – but without the toughness of the mature coriander shell. The younger the seed (smaller and more vibrant green, with no tinge of yellow), the brighter the taste. I use them in rillettes (just cooked for a few minutes), add to sautéed pork chops or chicken, salsa etc – again adding them just for the last couple of minutes of cooking. I like them so much that I am collecting some and freezing them for future use. The ones I don’t harvest green will become coriander: some will end up in the pantry, others will reseed themselves for a fall crop.