I love gathering fruit, especially wild fruit I can extract juice from like wild grapes, aronia berries, and elderberries. After the hustle and bustle of harvesting, when it comes time to use up what I’ve put away, I know I’ll make a few jellies and other preserves, but there’s always a part of me that…
Condiments
Wild Mushroom Ketchup
Have you ever run up to a massive chicken or hen of the woods, only to find it just a tiny bit past being good for the pan? Ever thought there might be something useful you could make with all the edible mushroom biomass you walk past, but pass up? Enter mushroom ketchup. Mushroom ketchup…
Toasted Porcini Aioli
During the Winter after a really good year for boletes (likely the legendary Pallidoroseus haul of 2013) I started making all kinds of things with my dried shrooms. Cooking with European porcini is easy: just throw them in anything and the flavor will take over. The porcini I pick in Minnesota (Boletus atkinsonii, or whatever…
Simple Chokeberry / Aronia Preserves or Jam
Since the skin and flesh of chokeberries / Aronia melanocarpa are more tannic than other berries, they’re usually just processed into juice or jelly, and most of the time that’s how you’ll see them sold commercially, or online. If you haven’t ever looked, go look at some products, especially the price tag (30$/12oz of juice!)…
Ischnoderma Kimchi
Ischnoderma resinosum is a great all-around mushroom, and I managed to snag a few at the end of the season before it got too cold. I’d made a note to ferment some up to see how I liked them. Sure, There’s plenty of mushrooms you could ferment like this, but some are better than others….
Wild Mushroom Conserve with Walnut Oil
I have a lot of different ways I like to preserve mushrooms I’ve learned or come up with myself over the years. This method is one of the more interesting ones, and, I can’t take credit for it. When I started working at Heartland, with it’s daily changing menu that the staff collaboratively designed, one…
Beefsteak Mushrooms with Sorrel
Here’s a study in how a dish can be completely different in a short time after it’s been composed. I was thinking about how to eat a beefsteak mushroom / oxtongue fungus (Fistulina hepatica) I had the other week, those shelf fungus that give red juice when cut, have a slightly tart taste, and, that…
Beefsteak Mushroom Relish
Cutting up my first beefsteak mushroom (Fistulina hepatica) was a mess. My cutting board looked like a murder scene, my hands were tacky and red, there was sticky trim scraped off of the knife in little piles around the board. In the end though, I did get a nice pile of dice from it to…
Caramelized Shallots and Black Trumpets
An ode to all things dark and sweet, here’s a recipe to up those fresh or dried black trumpet mushrooms: mixed in with some caramelized shallots and reduced down to a sweet-savory condiment for a hunk of meat, although it makes a great tart filling, coarsely chopped, too. It came about as I was looking…
Lobster Mushroom Breadcrumbs
I almost always have bags of dried lobster mushrooms around the apartment. Re-hydrated and mixed into things they’re ok, and just ok. Most of the time though, I’m going to grind the suckers up and do something with the powder. Dried, re-hydrated lobsters might not be that interesting, (toast them a little to bring out…
Dryad Saddle Pickles with Jalapeno & Dill
I have a few friends in particular that go out every year for morels and consistently can’t grab enough for a meal. But, one thing they can usually count on are a few dryad saddles / pheasant backs (Cerioporus squamosus). The flavor is strong, and some people don’t care for it, but, however you feel…
Wild Plum Jam
Here’s a solid recipe for working with wild plums (Prunus americanus). Wild plums are a lot different from plums you might see in a store, as they can be tannic, sour, and generally difficult to work with if you’re expecting your wild fruit to be sweet. A lot of times, people have the tendency to…
Dried Lobster Mushroom Rub
If you hunt lobster mushrooms, chances are you end up with a surplus of dried ones at the end of the season. If you don’t keep on top of using them, that surplus can double up if there’s any left once mushroom hunting season starts again where you live. Unlike some other mushrooms I pick,…