Kentucky Coffee Beans, also known as mastadon peas (my name), have been on my mind, in my fridge, and in my belly all week. They are, without a doubt, the largest, tastiest and most interesting wild legume (sans tepary beans, of course) I’ve eaten to date. This is a long, detailed post, with a lot…
Appetizers
Huitlacoche Elotes
Sweet corn season is in full swing here in the Midwest: stands filled with green spears of golden kernels dot the roadsides, parking lots of neighborhood watering holes, private drives, and just about anywhere you can fit a corn stand. Mushroom hunters know that with corn season comes another offering: Aztec black gold. Now is…
Wild Greek Salad with Purslane and Stonecrop
Midsummer means a lot of things, but heat and garden weeds are probably two that many of us are familiar with right now. A few weeks ago, there was a dinner on the farm I was going to contribute a dish too, and, as my partner’s family is proud of their Greek heritage, I thought…
Morel Escargot
I’ve gotten plenty of comments/request this year about what I do with big morels, you know, the giants, honkers, pigs and behemoths that come up at the end of the season. Seasoning them in a method similar to escargot is a fun treatment, and something you should try if you’re lucky enough to get a…
Morilles à la Crème (Morels with Cream)
I make all kinds of things with my morels, some of them take a bit of preparation, like roasted chicken with morels, morel quiche, or morels stuffed with morel sauce. But, when I come back fresh from a good hunt, my legs sore, and my little mushroom hunters heart excited to share the days finds…
Pheasant Back-Spring Vegetable Soup
Here’s a great recipe to celebrate some of the young growing plants of spring: a simple, brothy soup made from green garlic or wild onions, pheasant back mushrooms, a spring shoot/vegetable of your choice (I used fiddleheads and elm samaras) wild rice or another grain, and a little meat broth or whatever you have on…
Fiddlehead Salad
This simple salad is my go-to recipe for eating ostrich fiddleheads. There’s all sorts of advice out there on how to cook them: blanch five minutes, blanch ten minutes, saute afterwords and cook them to death in oil, put them in lasagna and bake them to oblivion, then pull out long, soft and stringy noodles…
Dandelion Hearts / Crowns
About 7 years ago while I was playing disc golf, I came across an elderly women digging up dandelions near the parking lot of the course. I’ve always been fascinated by traditional recipes and preparations, so, of course I had to walk up and ask what she was harvesting, and how she was going to…
Crispy Gyromitra
I finally got to eat my first Gyromitra caroliniana, also known as the “Big Red”. Where I live on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin we have a number of Gyromitra that I’ve eaten, well two species to be exact (Gyromitra korfii and Gyromitra Brunnea) and they’re ok. Gyromitra caroliniana is special in a number…
Wild Greens with Walnut Sauce
As I was cooking with my Virginia Bluebells this year, I started looking around in my library for recipes specifically calling for borage greens, since Virginia Bluebells are in the Boraginaceae. Borage has been cooked in the Mediterranean for a very long time, but I also found different recipes from Eastern Europe like Georgia, as…
Turkish Nettles (Isirgan Buğulaması)
Today, I have for you one of the best recipes for nettles I’ve tasted to date. Turkish nettles? Oh yes. I’m unsure of the exact species of nettle that might be cooked in the Middle East, as there’s a number of nettle genera eaten around the world, like the giant Nepali nettle (Girardinia diversifolia which,…
Italian Nettle Breadcrumb Gnocchi
Deep green nettle gnocchi are a great way to celebrate spring. Unlike typical gnocchi you’re probably familiar with, these are a rustic, peasant gnocchi that (gasp!) include no potato, or flour in the dough. There’s a number of different specific pasta names that you could use to refer to them, malfatti could work, although sometimes…
Rabbit Ragu with Wild Herb Gnocchi
I love small game, and I have plenty of rabbit recipes on this site, but most of them are for the whole creature cut into parts, or maybe stewed. One thing I’ve been meaning to put up is a solid rabbit pasta sauce like I used to make working under my chef from Rome, Angelo,…