Wild herbs: two words that conjure up thoughts of exotic flavors, aromas, and special dishes. But what sort of herbs are there you can pick in the wilderness? Hands down, the easiest to identify and harvest, from my experience is bergamot and other species of plants in the family of Lamiacae, also known as the…
Garden
Kale Sprouts
Imagine for a moment the wonder that could be if Brussels sprouts and kale had little babies. Now, contain your excitement, because it is a thing, and has been for a number of years. They also go by the name of kalettes, and they’ve been popping up all over the place, from conventional grocery stores to Trader…
How to Cook Cardoons
Cardoons. An giant thistle related to artichokes Darwin classified as a pest species. Every since I read about these in a book by Lorenza de Medici I wanted to eat them. It took until I was on the email list of a kooky Eastern European farmer that I got my chance to cook some. I…
In Search of White Tomatoes
If you’re not striving for perfection, you’re striving for mediocrity: a maxim I picked up along the way somewhere and one that I like to share with my staff often. Whatever we are cooking should be the best that we can make in the moment, anything else is just not good enough. The standard should…
Broccoli Leaves
I was walking through the gardens at the farm, clipping some weeds to eat in between the rows of broccoli. I’d cooked nice farm broccoli and commodity broccoli over the course of my career, and I knew that the commodity stuff would generally have larger heads and less flavor, but I’d never really stopped to…
Carrots Glazed in Carrot Juice, with Wild Carrot Flowers and Seeds
Wild carrot is up, one of the last wildflowers we’ll see in the Midwest. The flavor is nice and carrot tasting, but it’s delicate, subtle, too many other things in a dish will overpower it. Most of the time I just sprinkle the flowers and seeds on simple things, raw, unadulterated. A couple weeks ago…
Spring Dug Parsnip Soup with Acorn Oil
One of my favorite Spring treats is parsnips that have been left to winter in the ground. During the Winter, the cold converts starches in the parsnip into sugars, and sugars don’t like to freeze. The sugary parsnips stay alive throughout the cold season, get harvested in the spring and sold for a premium. You…
White Winter Vegetables
As a society it seems to me we’ve more or less completely forgotten what it means for food to have a season. Every year I inevitably get questions about how much asparagus can be offered in November, or if someone can get Minnesota peas in March. But, growing up I was just as ignorant. I…
Eating the Whole Beet
I need a garden. The more time I spend near them in the growing season the more I uncover about the plants as I watch their growing cycle. An edible pod here, a shoot there, a seed afterwords maybe. A couple months ago when I was showing someone how to clean chard and I had…
Ground Cherry Tart
To me nothing says the end of summer like ground cherries (a.k.a. cape gooseberry or husk tomato) showing up at the farmers market. I’m still surprised at the lack of interest in them though, even though people’s desire to cook with them seems to be on the rise. Part of the barrier to enjoying them…
Squash and Pumpkin Shoots
A few weeks ago I was walking through the garden picking squash blossoms when I saw these little curly-cue guys here and there in the squash and pumpkin patches. There was a dialogue in my brain that went like this: The squash is growing on a vine Peas grow on a vine I eat peas,…
Winter Radish-Ramp Preserves / Retach mit Shmaltz
I’m not Jewish, but they’re masters of doing interesting things with poultry lard, and I love duck fat. This is one of those under the radar-cultural specialties people get flushes of memories from, or so the stories go. You might find it in an old delicatessen, or place that sells things like gribenes, and gefilte…
Pumpkin Butternut Squash
Recently I was watching the chef’s table, a really great series on Netflix. It’s a couple episodes focusing on some ground breaking chefs and the work they do. The episode I was watching that really piqued my interest was on Dan Barber, the chef/owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns Farm. One…