How to Harvest Pennycress To Make Lithuanian Skilandis

By Christy Naujalis

Pennycress seeds are about the size of sesame seeds, but regardless of their tiny size, they pack a wallop of flavor. If you haven’t tasted pennycress seeds, imagine the bold garlicky spices in salami and you should have a good concept of this flavor.

My ancestors from rural Lithuania used pennycress seeds to make skilandis, a dried pork sausage. After immigrating to America, they were happy to discover their beloved “kolytos” growing here, as well.
I found my grandmother’s skilandis recipe recently and decided to go back to nature to harvest my own seeds for this traditional Lithuanian dried sausage.

Here in southeast Pennsylvania, pennycress seeds tend to be ripe for harvesting in mid-July. While it may seem a tedious task, it really was not and was actually fun.

Armed with a clean plastic grocery bag, my mother and I explored the edges of corn and hay fields until eventually we located the silver seed pods of pennycress. We carefully snapped their dry stems and filled our bag with these seed pod laden stems.

Back in our kitchen, we discovered an easy system for extracting seeds from their pods. Each of us had two bowls - one for collecting seeds along with one for debris. We selected light-colored dishes in order to see everything clearly. We each positioned a fine mesh strainer on our collection dish and filled it with seed pods that we pulled from the stems in our plastic bag.

We rubbed the seed pods together with our hands to free the seeds. We did this repeatedly until eventually all seeds from the stalks in our bag were loosened and our strainers were full of seeds and empty silver pods.
Then, we lifted the strainers above our collection bowls and gently agitated them until the seeds dropped into our bowls. Each time, we removed the tiny stalks and seed pod pieces that collected in our strainers. We repeated this exercise until the seeds looked fairly clean and contained no large debris pieces.

Next, we poured our seeds into an extra fine strainer and shook it several times. Our purpose here was to separate dust and debris that was tinier than the seeds. This worked extremely well as there was quite a bit of dust mixed in with our seeds.

Lastly, when we were confident that our seeds were free of all foreign materials, we placed them in an airtight jar. In one hour’s time, our project yielded a half cup of pennycress seeds - plenty for numerous batches of skilandis!

Lithuanian Skilandis
•2 lbs. ground pork
•2 cloves crushed garlic
•½ tsp pennycress seed
•½ tsp mustard seed
•½ tsp marjoram
•¼ tsp msg
•½ tsp nitrate of potash (saltpeter)
•¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
•¼ tsp salt
•pork casings

Combine pork and crushed garlic being mindful to spread the garlic evenly all through the pork. In a little bowl, mix the dry ingredients together. Sprinkle this dry mix on top of the pork mixture and combine thoroughly.

Stuff this mixture into casings. Remove any air pockets by forcing them to the open end of the sausage before knotting it shut. Hang the sausage in a warm space (55 to 60°F) with good air circulation to dry for one week. You could drape mesh over the sausage to keep stray insects from reaching it. Drying time will differ with humidity levels and air circulation.

After the sausage feels dry to the touch, it is ready to prepare. Just bring water to a boil in a Cuisinart MultiClad Pro stockpot, add the skilandis, and then simmer for one hour.

Gero apetito!

Article Source: http://interpret.zar.vg

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