The first time I came about hemp was in culinary school when some of my classmates where bragging about smoking pot. Back then being a young adult we thought it was so cool to smoke tobacco rolled up with nutmeg and saffron – that’s all what we had access to. For sure it had that beautiful fragrant scent but it gave us the biggest headache. Boy where we stupid.
Hemp revisited
Some time ago I was wandering the aisles of a book store and one title grabbed my attention. I belive it was a book called “The Marijuna Cook Book.” I learned then that there were real recipes using cannabis. I thought it was just funny and put it back on the shelf. But recently I was looking in the grain aisle in a health food store for something new on my spring menu and I came across hemp seeds. “The world’s most nutritiounal seeds” was written on the little bag. The hard outer shell was removed already and they were more or less ready to consume. Later in the kitchen I played with different flavor combos like hemp & pinenuts with wild cress, mint panna cotta & strawberries sprinkled with toasted hemp seeds. All these ingredients worked deliciously together. I decided to spruce up my duck dish using hemp. Here is how I prepare it:
Sous-vide duck finished in the Wood stone oven
Craked wheat berries
Sous-vide cooked bunch carrots, lemon thyme & orange
Toasted hemp seed, to sprinkle
Apricot emulsion
Taste & Facts
The plant was formerly placed in the Nettle family, but is now considered, along with hops, in the hemp family. The seeds have a fragrant herbal quality with a pinenut note to it and a welcome texture.
Hemp seeds are 33% protein and have omega 3. It’s one of the fastest growing biomasses known (like wheat). Growning hemp requires little to no pesticideds, no herbicides and it controls erosion of the topsoil, and produces oxygen. Hence it runs parallel with the "Green Future".
You want to know more?
(In California, allegedly, 4:20 p.m. marks the end of the exhausting detention period at some American junior high schools. Ganja aficionados and casual stoners alike draw together every year on April 20 to celebrate.
Cannabis sativa L subsp. (0.3 THC) is the varitety grown for food consumption (non drug). Cannabis indica C subsp. (6% TO 20%) is the kind that produce the “high” one experiences when smoking the leaves. The resinous form is known as hashish.
The major difference between the two types of plants besides appearance is the amount of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) secreted in a resinous mixture by microscopic hair network.
Strains of Cannabis approved for food consumption produce only minute amounts of this psychoactive drug, so give up your hopes -- it’s not enough for any stoned effects.
Check this out: It is estimated that about four percent of the world's adult population (aproximatly 162 million) use cannabis annually and 0.6 percent (22.5 million) daily - not as a food source though!! No wonder my fellow Countryman Arnold (California governor) is rethinking legalization!
