Huauzontle ✦

Huauzontle

What it is

The Nahuatl name joins huauhtli, amaranth, to tzontli, hair — the plant is a goosefoot grown for its whole flowering head rather than its leaves or its grain. Bound into bundles around a stick of cheese, battered and fried, it is a Lenten dish in central Mexico, eaten by stripping the buds off the stalk with your teeth.

In the kitchen

Whisk the whites to a foam, fold the yolks back in, and fry the bundle seam-side down first so it seals — a flat beaten egg slides off. Warn the table that the central stalk stays in and is not eaten.

Goes with

Egg Tomato Ancho chilli Onion Epazote Garlic Manchego

Same species

Kañiwa Quinoa

In season alongside

Dandelion greens Fiddlehead fern Good King Henry Kale Black bryony shoots Wild asparagus

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