Amis Wild Greens

Wild greens are the edible foundation of Amis cookery, the indigenous people of Taiwan's east coast, whose deep knowledge of edible plants distinguishes their food from the farming-based Han-Taiwanese cuisine. The Amis, traditionally hunter-gatherers and swidden cultivators, recognise and gather over a hundred species of wild greens from the mountains and riverbanks, each with its own season and flavour, from the slight bitterness of wild mugwort to the sourness of wood sorrel and the mucilaginous tender tips of the wild slippery elm. The simplest and most honouring preparation is to blanch a mix of these greens briefly in boiling water, preserving their varied colours, textures and flavours, and serve them with a simple dip of soy sauce, garlic and chili, the diner tasting each green's character. The dish is eaten at Amis village meals, at east-coast indigenous restaurants, and at the wild-vegetable stalls of Hualien and Taitung markets, where the gathered greens are sold in bundles labelled with their indigenous names. The foraging knowledge, passed through generations, is the dish's real content, the wild greens unavailable in any supermarket.

A platter of vividly varied blanched greens, each with its own texture and flavour, bitter, sour, mucilaginous, tender, served simply with a salty-garlicky soy dip. The point is the range of wild flavours; primal, vegetal, unlike any cultivated green.

The dish is a showcase of foraged biodiversity, the technique being the brief blanch that preserves each green's character. A mix of wild greens, gathered by an Amis cook who knows the mountains, is washed and sorted. Each green has its own blanch time, tender tips needing only seconds, tougher or bitter greens a minute or two, the cook blanching them separately or in stages so each is cooked to its ideal texture rather than uniformly. The blanched greens are drained, plunged briefly in cold water to set their colour, and arranged on a platter, the varied greens, deep green, pale, red-stemmed, making a visual range. The dip is minimal, soy sauce, minced garlic, a little sugar and chili, its role to season without masking the green's flavour, the diner dipping each green and tasting its individual character. The deep foraging knowledge, recognising which of the hundreds of east-coast plants are edible and at their peak, is the dish's real content, a knowledge that cannot be bought or shortcut, and the wild flavours, bitter and sour and mineral, are unavailable in supermarket greens.