Pine shoots

Pousses de pin

What it is

Herbalists pick the bud while it is still shut, in April, and dry it for cough teas. The cook waits a few weeks more, for the soft green candle that pushes out of it. Pine has nursed winters since antiquity — sanatoriums were ringed with it — and in Poland the spring shoots still go into a jar of sugar for the winter syrup.

In the kitchen

Layer the shoots with sugar in a jar, leave two to four days, then strain. The syrup is more resinous than spruce, so go by the spoonful — over yoghurt, ricotta or a fruit salad. Take only a few per tree, where picking is allowed, and check the needles come in pairs: yew’s grow singly and flat, and yew is lethal.

Its 8 pairings are in the full version (€5.90 a month or €49 a year).

Same species

Pine nut

+ 3 in the full version.

In the same family

Reflexed stonecrop Oxalis Sorrel Kinome (sanshō leaf) Spignel Douglas fir tips

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