This past Summer I really became aware of the presence of geese. You see them so often it’s easy for them to blend in and look like just like any other animal doing their thing. They’re a kind of menace though, and have been wreaking havoc on the watercress pond, and just being pests in…
Poultry
Crock Pot Stock and Bone Broth
Guess what? You can make higher quality stock than the majority of professional chefs in the restaurant industry at home using a crock pot. Story goes last year I read a book about the science of home cooking from J Kenji Lopez-Alt, the man behind the ridiculously intensive blog at Serious Eats. The book won…
Tepary Bean Soup with Galinsoga and Dried, Smoked Goose
I’m getting ready to make a winter trip down to Arizona to see my grandparents. One of the thngs that means, besides hiking up mountains with my Dad, is that I need to use up some of the ingredients I brought back with me last time so I can re-up on more. When I think…
Chestnut Honey Sauce
Chestnuts are a lot more than something to add to stuffing or roast an eat, they’re special flavor, treated well can become a condiment all by themselves, particularly good with game and poultry. This sauce elevates them to a different level by incorporating a special ingredient: Chestnut blossom honey. Chestnut honey, along with buckwheat honey…
Duck Egg-Ricotta Omelet with Boletes, Herbs and Chickweed
I have a lot of friends who hunt mushrooms, but my friend Olena is a special one. She’s from Eastern Europe, and as you might expect has the penchant for hunting mushrooms that so many people from the region do, but with a few differences from some of the others I’ve ran into in the…
Pigeon with Chestnut Boletes, Purslane, Onions and Gooseberries
After I found enough chestnut boletes to actually cook, I planned out a couple dishes they would go in with what I had in the fridge. The first thing was half food/half humor: cooking them with a few other very small things as a sort of play on tiny animals in a tiny land, like…
White Pheasant Stew with Chanterelles and Black Trumpets
After Anthony Bourdain passed away I spent the following week tearing through his first book and then his cookbook, a sort of half mourning, half refresher course on one my favorite chefs I’ve always looked up to. The days after his passsing were announced for me were sullen, as they were for a lot of…
Chicken Breast with Crispy Skin and Duxelle Pan Sauce
You had a great mushroom hunting season, you crushed the chanterelles, boletes, and all the mushrooms you wanted to get. You made duxelles, and put some in the freezer for a rainy day in the off-season. Great, but now what do you do with the duxelles? Duxelles in stuffings and such is great, but one…
Pan Roasted Chicken with Morel Sauce
I never went to culinary school, and neither did the most important people who trained me, or the people that trained them. Instead of going to culinary school (which I’m not saying is a bad idea) I read, and worked, a lot. The foundation of my library have always been books on classical French and…
Quail With Cranberries, Rowanberries, and Chestnut Sauce
Using pickles is a hallmark of mine, I love the brightness they add to a dish. Pickled berries aren’t really something you think about often, since most of the time they get made into jams and jellies. Typical jams and jellies use way too much sugar for my tastes though, and can overpower a sauce,…
Pheasant Mousseline with Morel Mushrooms, Nettles, Asparagus and Green Garlic
This Spring I was rummaging around the freezer and found a couple pheasant breasts, the sad kind I usually get donated by friends who hunt and just breast the birds out and throw away the legs and skin. It’s too bad more people don’t save all of the animal they kill, but I’m happy to…
Winter Greens With Lentils, Chicken Heart Confit and Hedgehog Mushrooms
As the head of purchasing for the restaurant I have plenty of local purveyors I buy food from but there’s one that stands out from the others. He isn’t technically local, but he might as well be. His name is George Weppler, and in the Twin Cities there’s plenty of restaurants that would like to…
Baby Bok Choy In Lactarius Broth With Quail Eggs
Here’s a recipe I created to use dried Lactarius salmoneus, donated to the Cascade Mycological Society for their cookbook. When powdered and made into a broth, you’d be hard pressed to say it isn’t chicken stock. From my experience, different dried Lactarius resembling deliciosus, rubrilactus, and sanguifluus will give similar results. The recipe is designed…