No, I’m not better than making homemade ranch dressing with ramp leaves. Dried ramp leaves are one of the best wild ingredients to preserve for your pantry in the off season, and there’s probably not a better poster child for them than in some good ol’ramp leaf ranch. Now, I’ve made ranch-type sauces out of…
Condiments
Wild Plum Leather (Tklapi)
Wild plums (Prunus americana) are in season, and they’re a puzzle. The flesh is rich and sweet, the perfume so deeply floral it will make your toes curl, but the skins, the skins are tough, and tannic enough to make you feel like you drank a few cups of chianti straight. The two aforementioned reasons are…
Dried Black Trumpet-Ramp Butter
I’ve never met a wild mushroom butter I didn’t like, and the few variations on the simple theme (especially the fresh porcini butter) are some of the most trusty and popular recipes on this website. For the most part, you can substitute different mushrooms in the basic recipe, but this one I developed especially to…
Pheasant Back Fermented Soy Sauce
Prime pheasant back season is usually about over after the spring chicken of the woods pop, but just because they’re big and tough as nails doesn’t mean you can’t do anything with them, and pheasant back shoyu is a great example, especially if you like edible science projects. Shoyu and it’s cousin tamari (soy sauces…
Burdock Yamagobo
Yamagobo is one of the tried and true recipes for cooking with burdock root that comes from Asian cuisine. It’s a simple recipe: burdock roots peeled and mixed with a pickle solution typically colored orange with..carrot powder, or more commonly orange food coloring–no thanks. After a reader tipped me off to the preparation, I had…
Pickled Angelica
Pickled, tender Angelica stems are a good introduction to working with the plant, and I’m surprised I didn’t try it sooner after all the years I’ve worked with it. Angelica (my local species should be A. atropurpurea) is fascinating, and delicious in the right place, but was frustrating as it doesn’t obey some of the…
Dried Ramp Leaf Seasoning / Rub
When I can see ramp leaves starting to turn yellow in sunny areas, I know it’s time to grab some leaves to dehydrate for cooking during the year as an all-purpose replacement to garlic and onion powder (both of which I find too strong for my liking anyway). Dried ramp leaves are more gently than…
Classic Spruce Tip Syrup
I have to preface this by apologizing. I’m sorry for not getting this up sooner. I’ve been writing this website for years, and although I have a spruce tip syrup that tastes like spruce, it’s not the most powerful one you can make–it’s a hybrid, a shortcut. That older recipe of mine was back from…
Ramp Leaf Oil
Forest green, deep and oniony, chefs love a good green oil, and ramp leaf oil is probably the best I’ve ever had. Alot of the time, green oil can be a thoughtless garnish, or lazy drizzle on top of a soup—a little color—nothing more. But with a little care, green oil is not only an…
Ramp Leaf Salsa Verde
If you like ramps and wild onions, ramp leaf salsa verde is a new sauce for you to put on just about everything. I typically keep some sort of herby-mildy spicy sauce around the house for drizzling on things in a pinch, typically made from cilantro, oregano, or lovage, and, while they all follow the…
Sweet and Sour Wild Cherry, Berry or Grape Syrup
Sweet and sour syrup, or gastrique as it’s known among chefs, is a little-known cousin to your typical wild fruit preserves that is one of my favorite to keep on hand all year round. It’s a simple, easy way to put up your wild fruit, and i’ve especially designed this one to work for fruits…
Liver Ketchup
Liver ketchup is another piece of history I came across doing research on lamb and goat in an old Scottish book by An Comunn Gaidhealach (a seriously legit Scottish name) first published in 1907 under the title of The Feill Cookery Book. Like most of the old books I have, a lot of the recipes…
Homegrown Horseradish Cream
Nasal-clearing, bracingly hot, creamy and delicious. Fresh grated horseradish cream sauce lives in the Valhalla of ultimate condiments, and is one thing that everyone should have in their culinary toolkit. It’s a snap to make, keeps for a very long time even though it’s dairy based, has tons of fun variations–two of which I’ll share…