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…
Nuts, Seeds and Starches
Tinpsila Harvest
I turned off the gravel onto the road–ghosts of tire tracks barely noticeable through summer’s tall yellow clover, it gave me the feeling the clearance of my city slicker “little Honda that could” might not be enough for what was to come, the caravan of trucks I was following having no problem. But, I’d just…
Kernza Salad with Butternuts and Mushrooms
Kernza, a crop being researched by the land institute in the University of Minnesota is a potentially groundbreaking game changing grain. Most grains, like wheat, corn and soy beans, need to be planted as an annual. Kernza is the opposite, a perennial grain that needs no planting, no tilling, and, because of that, actually replenishes…
Wild Rice Crackers
I’ve been wanting a simple, wild-inspired cracker I can make to serve at events that’s portable, made from 100% wild rice or another indigenous grain, and most of all, is a snap to put together and doesn’t involve rolling out glutinous dough or using a pasta roller. I used to make a sort of Japanese…
Wild Rice Flour Pasta Dough
Wild rice flour pasta dough is exactly what it sounds like: fresh pasta dough, made with wild rice flour. Not 100% wild rice flour, just 50%, since that’s about the most you can work into fresh pasta and still have it act like fresh pasta while you’re rolling it out, since wild rice flour lacks…
Braised Burdock and Wild Mushrooms
Ever since I figured out a reasonably efficient way to dig burdock roots, I’ve been eating it every which way. Kinpira was my real breakthrough. Sure, I opened up a restaurant featuring burdock as a local ingredient, but back then I cooked it like a European would, generally with dairy, which is fine, but the…
Burdock Kinpira
Got a burdock root? Meet your new favorite recipe. Kinpira, or kinpira gobo as you’ll see it listed on menus at various sushi and similar restaurants, is a tried and true preparation for burdock root (it’s usually called gobo) and if you’ve never had it before, you need to drop what you’re doing and make…
Acorn Grits
If you process acorns, acorn grits are another great, simple way to enjoy your harvest. There’s plenty of guide books and people in the foraging space that talk about making acorn grits, and most of them seem to like using 100% acorn meal. Personally I find it way too heavy of a food to eat…
Guide to Black Walnuts
Like a lot of other people, I have memories of tripping and stepping on ugly, gooey black walnuts in the yard when I was growing up. They were a serious pain when I had to mow the lawn, and I thought they were weird, not food–no way they could actually be related to regular nuts…
Black Walnut-Maple Honey
I love old cookbooks. Recently For research on lamb and goat recipes for the farm I work with, I’ve been collecting old Scottish and Irish books, most from around the 1900’s, since I know they historically work with lots of lamb and small ruminants. Aside from all of the great recipes like hotch potch I…
Nocino, The Black Walnut Liquor
Before I knew a mushroom to pick, before I had ever considered clipping a leafy green to cook from a field, I knew I could pick black walnuts and make nocino. I don’t remember at exactly what time I picked it up, but it was early in my career while I was working at the…
Turkey Wild Rice Soup with Black Trumpets
As far as food is concerned, the main course for holidays will change here and there. One year it’s a ham for Christmas, the next year we’ll smoke a prime rib. One thing that’s constant is somewhere along the line there’s probably turkey at one of the gatherings I’ll attend, either for my girlfriend’s family…
Wild Rice Polenta
Wild rice polenta. Breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, you name it. This stuff is great, and it cooks in a fraction of the time typical wild rice does. It started with a farmer that ran a CSA that would bring me goodies once and a while when dropping off his boxes of veggies: a couple sunchokes…