Poli Museo della Grappa Srlu

Alpine Sow-thistle

• Plant: Alpine Sow-thistle, Alpine Blue-sow-thistle (Mulgedium Alpinum)
• Plant part: shoot
• Plant feauters: digestive, diuretic, purifying, immunostimulator

• Description:

  During the spring season, in calcareous soils on the edge of the snowfields or damp pastures, one can collect the fresh shoots of a food plant, which in appearance resembles the red radicchio. His name is Mulgedium alpinum or rather alpine Cicerbita, known by the name of lettuce or radicchio Alps avalanche.
  Its name is Mulgedium alpinum or Cicerbita alpina, known under the name Alpine Sow-thistle or Alpine Blue-sow-thistle.
  It is actually a salad (also according to appearance), but should not be confused with other possibly poisonous shoots, which grow in the same environment.

  It has happened in fact that the Mulgedium Alpinum shoot has been confused with that of Aconite with consequences that can be imagined.
  Confusion aside, our radicchio, as the famous red radicchio di Treviso, can be very well used as a corrective of Grappa.

   

The recipe

• Ingredients:

  - a dozen of fresh shoots of Alpine Cicerbita
  - 1 Liter of Grappa

• Preparation:

  For this purpose, the fresh shoots of the Mulgedium (at least ten), collected in early spring, are placed in a liter of Grappa for three months.
  After two months of maturation the Grappa assumes a brown-green color as well as a soft bitter taste and is particularly suitable as digestive after lunch.