At this time of the year, sorrel is Latvia’s most ubiquitous edible green. It’s a bright, acidic green, whose leaves resemble pointy and elongated spinach, and Latvians refer to it straightforwardly as “the sour one” – “skabenes.” It’s cheap as dirt and seems to be treated with a bit of contempt – unlike “modern” and relatively expensive spinach or lettuce it is usually purchased by fragile old ladies who probably use it for soup. My grandmother, and my great-grand mother used to make it, too – it was served cold, based on simple water or sometimes sour milk, and contained, aside from boiled sorrel, a chopped hard-boiled egg, sometimes a sauteed onion, and a dollop of sour cream. Cheap food, but also delightfully refreshing in summer.

The common garden sorrel (Rumex acetosa) is related to a whole group of other plants that all look and taste rather similar: red or sheep sorrel - Rumex acetosella, a smaller-leaved, sturdier plant; French sorrel - Rumex scuatus - which grows only in southern Europe and supposedly has more “graceful acid”; wood sorrel from the related oaxlis genus, mountain sorrel, from yet another group, and probably numerous others in various geographic regions. Aside from the simple sorrel soup, which more prosperous French peasants made with chicken stock or milk and cream instead of water, sorrel is commonly used in sauces and as a salad green. In Scandinavia it was put into bread when there wasn’t enough grain, and the Icelanders used it in liew of rennet to curdle milk for cheese.

My own sorrel experiments took me in two directions – a sorrel sauce for fish, and sorrel and leek pancakes, that I also topped with slices of smoked salmon. Both were lovely.

Sorrel sauce is an infallible combination of the green’s mild, citrusy acid and the sweetness of butter, sauteed shallot and cream. Add chopped sorrel leaves to tiny pieces of onion that are beginning to turn golden, cook until they melt (they will), and pour cream until the consistency looks right. You may notice the cream curdling a little – ignore it and keep stirring or whisking, and you’ll end up with a fine, smooth texture. Add salt and pepper if you feel like it. I used a large-ish shallot for a smallish handful of sorrel, and perhaps 100ml of cream.

For sorrel and leek pancakes, take about a cup of chopped leeks and a cup of loosely packed chopped sorrel, sautee leeks in butter until soft, add sorrel and wilt quickly. When the mixture cools, stir in one egg, two tablespoons of flour, and salt and pepper. Fry like you fry pancakes. There’s the same logic to this snack as there is to sorrel sauce – mild dairy-tinted sweetness and mild acid, and just enough simple batter to hold it together.

The only problem with sorrel is that it’s ugly as hell when cooked. From a spritely green it goes to terrible khaki-brown as soon as it wilts, either because you applied heat to it, or because you simply looked at it funny. Perhaps next time I will try to mash it up raw for sauce.

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"sorrel" was written on 26 May 2005 and filed in Techniques / Recipes, Ingredients