Greek Wild Onions



Broad Leaf Plant

 At this time of the year I usually get to work planting seeds for the coming summer season.  In fact though, this is also a time to harvest, but the harvest that I am thinking of is not at all a generally known one.  In New England in February most people know that it's time to collect the sap from the sugar maple and convert it into maple syrup, maple butter, maple candy, and other maple products.  Most people don't think of this as a harvest, but, in fact, for that part of the world it is the first harvest of the new season (year).





Deep in Hard Soil

Here, in this part of Greece I just harvested what the Greeks, especially the older Greeks, call βολβοί, or bulbs; these belong to a wild plant commonly known in Europe as the Tassel Hyacinth.  I was first introduced to these bulbs by my father when I was a child growing up in Haverhill, Massachusetts.  My father used to call them Greek Wild Onions.  When they are prepared properly, they taste nothing like an onion, and they are pink in color and they can be bitter to the taste.  They are not easy to harvest, requiring a 27 centimeter long fork or shovel to dig the bulbs out of the ground in what can be very hard packed soil.  Fortunately the bulbs produce easy to spot long, broad leaves and tassel like flowers, so finding them is not a chore.

Before Cleaning and Trimming

To prepare the bulbs for eating, the leaves are removed as well as the outer skin and roots of each bulb much as you would do an onion.  This gets to be a tedious affair since the bulbs excrete a sticky liquid that tends to get in the way of cleaning them.  Once the bulbs are clean they are soaked in water for a few days changing the water three or four times a day much as one does when curing olives.  This water pretreatment tends to remove some of the bitter materials within the bulbs, but more of this is accomplished when the bulbs are boiled in water for about 5 minutes.  Boiling the bulbs this way is repeated two or three times draining and replacing the water with fresh portions each time.  Finally, the cooked bulbs are rinsed, placed in a jar, covered in vinegar, capped and kept in the refrigerator for storage.  With the vinegar rinsed off, the bulbs are served in small portions at a time sprinkled with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Washed and Ready for Vinegar Storage