The Rumex Cube

IN Edible Plants
5th December 2017/by Jane Carswell

It was only recently that I discovered you could eat dock stems. That’s dock, Rumex crispus the curly leaved variety and Rumex obtusifolius, the broad leaved variety, both adding to the ruin of my not-very-well-kept lawn. It’s infuriatingly well-constructed making it hard to uproot, and has so many seeds per plant that your chances of eradicating it are slim to impossible.

But actually, its speckled stalks are succulent and sour and delicious, with hints of damson and rhubarb, so much so that I juiced them and the results were pink. Mixed with currants, cooked a little sous vide and blitzed, it was a very successful and supremely local substitute for imported, blended lemon juice in a cocktail [See The Ogilvie >]

The rhubarb flavour profile is no coincidence, as it turns out that rhubarb is a member of the same larger plant family, the buckwheat family, Polygonaceae. The buckwheat connection then led me onto my next discovery, a use for the seeds, ground, to make crackers. I see online that there are also recipes available for wafers, pancakes and bread, usually ground dock seeds in cahoots with another type of flour.

Wikipedia call buckwheat a ‘pseudocereal’ because it’s actually not a grass at all. It’s seeds are so rich in complex carbohydrate, gluten free, full of minerals like magnesium and B vitamins, and it has a really short growing season of 10 – 12 weeks, that like a cereal, it is raised as a crop on a substantial scale in Russia, China, the US, Brazil, Tanzania, and others. I can’t find anywhere a full nutritional analysis of dock seeds, although their fibre content was in evidence in the crackers that I tried – possibly because the small seeds are a bastard to winnow! I’m happy knowing that they share with buckwheat a characteristic look like little pyramids after being detached from the leafy plate that sits underneath the seed (presumably to give it a bit of lift during dispersal).

I’ve read that the seeds can be sort of malted before grinding into flour, i.e. sprouted then dehydrated, which I’d like to try as it seems that would only boost the flavour and nutritional value. Roll on next year…

The spire-like structure of the seedheads, reaching two or three foot above the main splat of leaves, introduced another connection between dock and a tasty plant that I often seek, sheeps sorrel – so called locally because it is common in grasslands and our ovine friends have been quietly enjoying it for centuries… In seed, sheeps sorrel is more delicate and more colourful than dock, red and ochre rather than rusty brown, but at a distance you could mix them up. This sorrel’s latin name turns out to be Rumex acetosella – a close relation from the same genus of the same buckwheat family. The enjoyable sourness of the sorrel leaves and of the dock stems that I had been seeking for use in the kitchen and bar, is down to the oxalic acid present in both plants. (However, wood sorrel, also rich in oxalic acid, is unrelated, comes from a small separate family named after the tangy stuff Oxalidaceae, the wood sorrel family.)

Another member of the buckwheat is the notoriously invasive Japanese knotweed, which also just so happens to be delicious. [See Drinks Uses of Japanese Knotweed >]

So my haphazard experience on the ground as a rookie forager – seeing things, seeking things, checking things, working by taste – has seemingly put me in touch with a wider and more logical system of navigating a world of wild flavours. For ingredient-explorers, plant families might just be an extremely useful key.