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Epicurean Kentuckian: Poke is everywhere 2011-04-21 - Adair Co. District 6, Columbia, KY - Photo by Ed Waggener. There's no need to go hungry in Adair County these days, not if one has an ounce of gumption and knows two or three iotas about native plant life. These are the days of tender poke shoots, growing everyone, like the tallest broad leafed plants left, above growing amidst henbit and fescue along Cane Valley RD. Most folks have ritual double cooking and mixing recipes for the delicacy eaten as a mess of greens, eaten ceremonially as mandatory spring therapy. They're also good fried and smothered in gravy, a la the Fairplay school of culinary arts, and, our favorite, as a flavoring in a spring garden salad, with all 'local' ingredients: picked from the earth, bought from a neighbor gatherer, or picked from the local shelves of the IGA, the Walmart, or the Sava-dollar store. The salad has a handful of chopped, tender stalk and all, poke, slices of avocado and sweet white onion, walnuts, boiled eggs, crunchy sauteed catfish, tilapia or chicken, tempura fried dandelion blossoms, deep fried kudzu leaves, leaves of violets and dandelion, violet blossoms and petals from redbud, seasoned with lemon, coarse ground black pepper, and sea salt or EVOO oliver oil and rice vinegar to taste. Best to buy, we guess, the local produce from an approved vendor, though I picked my own, ate it, and lived to write this story. Recipes and poke gathering stories, limericks, poems, and new country music paeans to poke welcome -Ed Waggener Read More... | Permalink | Comments?

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