Ground Elder's Arabian Nights Fatayer

Ground Elder! :-D

Follow this recipe and you will get this fantastic dish from scratch!

That's one lovely vegetable you can eat in huge quantities - for two reasons. First, it grows super fast and you can forage it daily. Second, it tastes great and you can't get enough of it. It's incredibly versatile and tastes differently depending on how you prepare it.

This recipe takes the ground-elder to the Middle-East. Will you follow us on this culinary expedition?

To prepare the dough take

• 250 g of flour

• 1 spoon of sugar or a small jaggery cube

• 1 bag of bakers' yeast

• 1 spoon of salt

• 3 spoons of olive oil

Is it the filling? Is it a salad? It's both! :-D

The filling isn't cooked, it's raw when it goes int the fatayer.

You need

• 1 colander full of ground elder (we added some hemp nettle and wild garlic)

• 1 garlic clove

• A handful of peppermint leaves

• 1 onion

• 1 handful of dried barberries

• 1 handful of sunflower seeds

• Some salt

• 2 spoons of olive oil

Action!

Put the sugar and the bakers' yeast in 250 ml of lukewarm water and make them dissolve. Take the other ingredients, a bowl, and add the water to them. Now knead the dough until you get a firm dough that's not sticky anymore. Leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes.

For the filling you need your food processor. This little helper will now chop the herbs, the onion, the garlic cloves, the pipperidges together. Take the other ingredients of the filling and mix them all to a great salad.

Take your rolling pin and roll out the dough thinly. Take a big cup or a small bowl and cut out nice round slabs. Lay some of the filling in the middle of each slab, wet one finger and form pyramids out of the slabs.

Now put them into the oven for 10-15 minutes at 200°C, and they're done. Take the leftover filling as a salad o serve with the fatayers.

A patch of ground elder. Some might see weeds. We see abundant free food!

Ground-elder can be found in the shadows, next to the woods or behind hedges. This vegetable has been enjoyed from the antiquity through the middle ages and seems to be forgotten now. That's a pity: it's delicious and full of calcium, potassium, copper, zinc, manganese, magnesium and flavonoids. What's more it has 4 times the vitamin C of lemons, vitamin A and proteins. That's why Plato said: "Fajitas? OK, but with Ground-Elder!". The antiquity was full of wonders. ;-)

It has three leaves per stem and is slightly hairy. It smells of parsley and carrots. Delicious.