Where I live, and around the country, wild poultry are just about everywhere: ducks, turkeys, quail, swans, pheasants, woodcock, grouse, and many more. One species I’m acutely aware of right now in the spring, as much for the honks and flying Vs, is our native Canada Geese, Branta canadensis. One thing geese and all the…
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Lebanese Dandelions with Caramelized Onions (Hindbeh)
If you were to order them on a menu, Hindbeh, Hindiba, or Hindbeh b’Zeit will all probably arrive at your table looking like the same thing: a bowl of cooked dandelions with caramelized onions. Or maybe it’s wild chicory with fried onions? Whatever you call it, you’re in for a treat. If you crave the…
Dried Fiddleheads
I love fiddleheads. But, the season for them seems to go lightning fast: one minute they’re everywhere, the next minute they’re unraveled. I’ve preserved them (crunchy pickled fiddleheads) and that works well, but, vinegar-based preserves limit the possibilities for cooking down the road and it’s nice to have some variation. What you might not have…
Prickly Ash Sausage
If you harvest your own prickly ash berries (Xanthoxylum/Szechuan peppercorns) sausage should be on your list of things to make. I love the bright, citrusy flavor and gentle numbing quality that prickly ash adds to a dish, but it can be difficult to incorporate them into foods and have them taste coherent if you’re not…
Highbush Cranberry Tkemali
The cuisine of Georgia and the Caucasus offers a lot of inspiration for the adventurous cook and forager, and Tkemali sauce (Tee-guh-molly) is one of the crown jewels of their cuisine—a sort of ketchup like condiment rich with garlic, hot chilies and spices like fenugreek and coriander that would make a shoe taste good. It’s…
Crab Stuffed Morels
Stuffed morels filled with crab meat napped with melted butter, a dusting of breadcrumbs and baked to a golden brown are a classic, and make for a great appetizer made with both fresh or dried mushrooms. With the end of winter coming, I thought it was about time I start really using up the previous…
Sesame Enoki Pancakes
As most of you know, I will make cakes and fritters out of just about anything. Wild enoki and sesame pancakes (cultivated are fine too) are a great variation on that theme, but they’re also a good example of how you can steer lots of dishes in different directions by carefully choosing your ingredients. Here’s…
The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
Work on my first book: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora is almost done, and I finally have some material to share with you. Every week I share an article or special recipe with you, but, over the past three years, I wrote and tested an extra 200 or so recipes, and took thousands of…
Sumerian Pigeon Soup
Sumerian pigeon soup is a love letter on pigeons being worthy for the table, and an example of how I get inspired by historical texts. I like variety, and my collection of food references spans everything from Greco-Roman Apicius, Archestratus, and Byzantine Geoponika, to the more modern A Discourse of Sallets and The Little House…
Yellowfoot Chanterelle Lefse
When I think of the cuisine of my Nordic ancestors, I don’t usually think of mushrooms, and that’s a mistake. Scandinavia is home to many similar varieties of mushrooms that we have in the Midwest: chanterelles, murklor, and even matsutake! Lefse with chanterelles, sauerkraut, and hushallsost cheese is one of the most delicious examples of…