Meaning of poke salad | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A food made from boiled pokeweed leaves, which are poisonous unless cooked properly.
   countable, uncountable
2. A Hawaiian food made from diced raw fish, seasoning, diced fruit and vegetables, and sometimes rice.
   countable, uncountable
3. Pokeweed, the leafy plant used to make such a dish.
   Appalachia, Southern-US, countable, uncountable

Examples

“The Harvard man went back into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red-checked oil-cloth. On it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee.”

“Whereas to most people, “salad” is made with raw greens, “poke salad” shoots and greens must be cooked, the cooking water changed and discarded several times. […] There are many documented deaths from eating improperly prepared “poke salad.””

“Despite the fact that the kudzu-like Phytolacca americana sprouts up all across North America, poke sallet, a dish made from the plant’s slightly-less-toxic leaves, is a regional thing, popular only to Appalachia and the American South.”

“If some of ya'll never been down south too much / I'm gonna tell you a little bit about this / So that you'll understand what I'm talking about / Down there we have a plant that grows out in the woods, and the fields / And it looks something like a turnip green / Everybody calls it polk salad”

“(see more at pokeweed)”

“[…] a wide range of creative seafood dishes (the Hawaiian-style poke salad with ahi tuna is a local favorite).”

CEFR level