Harvesting Native Pennycress For Old World Flavor

Pennycress seeds are nearly the size of sesame seeds, but despite their very small size, they pack a wallop of flavor. If you haven’t sampled pennycress seeds, think of the bold garlicky spices in salami and you should get a good concept of this taste.

My ancestors from rural Lithuania used pennycress seeds to produce skilandis, a dried pork sausage. After immigrating to America, they were pleased to discover their beloved "kolytos" growing here, as well.

I found my grandmother’s skilandis recipe recently and decided to return to nature in order to harvest my own seeds for the traditional Lithuanian dried sausage.

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

Equipped with a clean plastic grocery bag, my mother and I explored the borders of corn and hay fields until eventually we found the silvery seed pods of pennycress. We very carefully snapped their dried stems and filled our bag with these seed pod laden stems.

Back in our kitchen, we discovered an easy approach for extracting seeds from their pods. Each of us got two bowls - one for collecting seeds along with one for garbage. We used light-colored bowls in order to see everything clearly. We each placed a fine mesh strainer on our collection dish and filled it with seed pods which we pulled from the stalks in our plastic bag.

We rubbed the seed pods together with our hands in order to free the seeds. We did this several times until eventually all of the seeds from the stems in our bag were loosened and our strainers were full of seeds and bare silvery pods.

Then, we lifted the strainers above our collection bowls and gently shook them until the seeds fell into our dishes. Each time, we extracted the little stalks and seed pod pieces that accumulated in our strainers. We repeated this exercise until the seeds seemed fairly clean and contained no substantial debris pieces.

Next, we poured our seeds into an extra fine strainer and agitated it repeatedly. Our purpose here was to extract dust and debris that was tinier than the seeds. This worked extremely well as there ended up being quite a bit of dust blended in with our seeds.

Finally, when we were certain that our seeds were clean, we put them in an airtight jar. In one hour’s time, our undertaking yielded a half cup of pennycress seeds - plenty for several 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 careful to distribute the garlic evenly all through the pork. In a small bowl, mix the dry ingredients together. Sprinkle this dry mix over 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 closed. Hang the sausage in a warm space (55 to 60°F) with decent air circulation to dry out for one week. You can drape mesh over the sausage to keep stray insects from reaching it. Drying time will vary with humidity levels and also air circulation.

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

Gero apetito!