Sam put up a fun post yesterday asking her readers to identify an unnamed vegetable she picked up from a nearby farm. It was a fun new tidbit for me, having never heard of Puntarelle before.
Here’s a similar one… what is the plant pictured here? It’s an ingredient I’ve been growing since I picked it up at my farmers market this last summer. Amazingly, its doing quite well, and I don’t even have a green thumb!
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hello! i think this is the thing that i was pondering previously, and which has been collectively decided as being pennywort. it’s used as an herbal remedy, along with its culinary uses.
- nope
I’ve never heard of pennywort before! This is an ingredient that I imagine most people have heard of and probably tasted before.
–McAuliflower
Hello McAuliflower,
it be Wasabia japonica / Eutrema japonica
a.k.a Wasabi / Japanese horseradish?
- yep!
–McAuliflower
Ah! I’m sooo jealous!
I attempted to grow wasabi and failed miserably. The darn things shrivled up and died in under two months. I must really have a brown thumb!
- What you can’t see from the picture is that we have it standing in a pool of mucky looking brown fish water. It seems to like a marshy like condition- so I think a brown thumb would be what it likes
–McAuliflower
I thinkyou need to chnge careers you can make a fortune selling fresh wasabi!
Er, what do you do with it? Must admit I am wildly ignorant about Japanese food.
- The plant or just wasabi in general?
The root of the plant is what gets used. It is grated into a pulp and used as a spicy condiment. Wasabi has a kick like horseradish- a buzz that goes straight up to your nose. In particular it is heaven when paired with tuna in a gentle smear across the piece of fish. Some people choose to take a dab of wasabi and dissolve it in a small dish of soy sauce to dip thier pieces of fish in.
Here’s epicurious’s listing of recipes that call for wasabi.
Mmm , now I want sushi!
–McAuliflower
Cool!!! Well done on growing it. I thought it had to grow in running water. It’s nice to know that it can be in still water (even if it is fishy water) Do you have anything close to resembling a root that you can harvest yet?
Ever since seeing a photo of real wasabi, I wanted to grow some. But after looking on the internet, I saw that the cost of a starter root was prohibitive. I gave up…
It drives me crazy that people in Japan can stroll to the vegetable market and pick up a handful of the roots.
I’d LOVE to taste wasabi to see how much it differs from the horseradish substitute we have here in North America.
-Elizabeth
