Cattail ( Typha Latifolia )

[TeeDee]

Suggestions for the best most effective way to turn the Roots into Flour type material?

 

[Robson Valley]

The descriptions are quite cryptic so there's nothing I will add.

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden by Gilbert Wilson: no mention at all.
Plants of Haida Gwaii by Nancy Turner: no mention at all.

The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman & Beth Dooley: p94: ". . . every part of the plant is edible at different times of the year.
The cattail roots or rhizomes are starchy and can be dried and ground into flour and used to make into biscuits; but that's a lot of work,
and, to be honest, I prefer the upper parts of the plant."

Native Harvests American Indian Wild Foods and Recipes. by E. Barrie Kavasch. p124: pollen was harvested from the male spike (above the female spike)
and used as a flour extender to 50%.

Wildwood Wisdom by Ellsworth Jaeger. p254 & p255: rhizomes boiled into a starchy gruel or roasted.
They were then dried and pounded into a meal. Pollen pancakes made with 50% pollen/flour.

I might have other references but I've forgotten. Looks like you are in for some experimental dinners!

 

[Toddy]

Cook them, scrape/squeeze/wring the starchy stuff off the stringy stuff, dry and grind.
You can bash the fresh roots into a kind of pulp, but it's an awful lot of hard work, and extract the flesh from the fibrous material that way.
I think it'd clog up a food processors blades.

 

[Broch]

I confess, and this is a big confession for someone that has been foraging for a very long time, I have never made flour out of anything - there, it's out

 

[Toddy]

The pollen is excellent. It comes off in huge amounts when the spikes are ripe. Just gently bend the stem until you can put the spike into a paper or polythene bag and then rattle it around a bit. The pollen will fall to the bottom of the bag. Don't damage the spike, because it'll make release pollen for several days.
It's bright golden yellow, really protein rich and it's not much flavoured but it does add nutrient to flour

M

 

[TeeDee]

The descriptions are quite cryptic so there's nothing I will add.

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden by Gilbert Wilson: no mention at all.
Plants of Haida Gwaii by Nancy Turner: no mention at all.

The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman & Beth Dooley: p94: ". . . every part of the plant is edible at different times of the year.
The cattail roots or rhizomes are starchy and can be dried and ground into flour and used to make into biscuits; but that's a lot of work,
and, to be honest, I prefer the upper parts of the plant."

Native Harvests American Indian Wild Foods and Recipes. by E. Barrie Kavasch. p124: pollen was harvested from the male spike (above the female spike)
and used as a flour extender to 50%.

Wildwood Wisdom by Ellsworth Jaeger. p254 & p255: rhizomes boiled into a starchy gruel or roasted.
They were then dried and pounded into a meal. Pollen pancakes made with 50% pollen/flour.

I might have other references but I've forgotten. Looks like you are in for some experimental dinners!

I appreciate the effort you put in. You've also given me the leads on some 1st nation related books - something Ive an interest in , so I will also follow those up.

 

[TeeDee]

I confess, and this is a big confession for someone that has been foraging for a very long time, I have never made flour out of anything - there, it's out

Get. Out. !!!

 

[TeeDee]

The pollen is excellent. It comes off in huge amounts when the spikes are ripe. Just gently bend the stem until you can put the spike into a paper or polythene bag and then rattle it around a bit. The pollen will fall to the bottom of the bag. Don't damage the spike, because it'll make release pollen for several days.
It's bright golden yellow, really protein rich and it's not much flavoured but it does add nutrient to flour

M

I'll be doing that , thanks Toddy.

 

[Toddy]

I confess, and this is a big confession for someone that has been foraging for a very long time, I have never made flour out of anything - there, it's out

It's damned hard work !

Been there, done that. Even cracking the grain first it takes half an hour to make a reasonable flour to bake a loaf.

It's all very well saying that people of the past had grain, and that grain itself tells us so much, but it doesn't tell us how many hours women spent on their knees grinding grain. Only when big mills come in does it get easier, and just as soon as they do, the multure rights come in and that means taxation.....and the multure holders broke the querns so folks could no longer mill their own, just to make sure that they got their cut.

 

[Toddy]

I'll be doing that , thanks Toddy.

You're welcome. A dry day and it's easy to collect a bagful from a couple of dozen big ripe spikes
I grow the mini typha in my garden pond and even from that I manage a bagful over two or three days. I just use it up in bread or scones.

M

 

[Robson Valley]

I have a bunch of other First Nations books, mostly on art and carvings, museum collections and biographies.

Everyone with even the faintest interest in bushcraft needs to own a copy of Wildwood Wisdom.
It's a reprint from 1945, Jaeger was a Museum director with a special interest in First Nations.

You might have seen a resurrection of bushcrafty things on TV, cribbed more or less directly from Jaeger's book.

I suggest you take advantage of abeBooks.com and abeBooks.uk to search 6,000,000 discounted titles.

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden is an extraordinary collection of interviews with BBW and illustrations of Haidatsa culture.
Interesting window on their understanding and manipulation of maize genetics.
Damn! Now I'm hungry for some tortillas.

 

[Rabbit leg]

I tried to get some roots a couple of months ago but the water was low which exposed the sandy bottom. This was frozen solid, so no digging and no food.
I had to forage for a pot noodle instead. (Typha chow mein).
But I did manage to get a few stems and make a few hand drill embers on the spot. (Hearth was pre-dried clematis).

So if you do the cooking, I'll get the fire going.