Growing up in the restaurant industry in the Early 2000’s, I was witness to some of the great culinary cliches of our time, many of them born in the 1990’s from what I can gather. Honestly, there’s too many to count, and I’m guilty of a few myself, like stacking food a la Alfred Portale….
Pickles, Preserves, Etc
Green Walnut Honey
It’s green black walnut season. I don’t know how people figured out you could use unripe walnuts in cooking, but I’m sure glad they did, and after you try making fermented green walnut honey, I think you will be too, even if you don’t like the taste of black walnuts cracked from the shell. Unripe…
Fermented Ramp Leaf Soy Sauce
Soy sauce makes just about everything taste better. One thing many people don’t know is that there are a myriad of options for soy. There’s aged soy sauce, shoyu, tamari, for starters, and then, pertaining to this post, there’s flavored soys. There’s mushroom-infused soy sauce, and that can be good if you get a decent…
Pine Cone-Cider Jam / Varenye
“Ever eat a pine tree?”. That infamous quote from Euell Gibbons during a Grape Nuts commercial (there’s a lot of them on You Tube now and some are hilarious) has some truth to it. Sure, you can make tea (mostly I see it done with the soft needles of Easter White Pine) from needles, bark bread…
Wild Blueberry-Maple Leather
Everyone should know how to make a good wild fruit leather, and wild blueberries make some of the best since they can be harvested in large quantity, and they don’t require any straining to remove seeds or skins. The method is super easy if you aren’t familiar, and a recipe hardly seems necessary, but I’m…
Lewis and Clark Wild Cherry Whiskey
Whiskey infused with wild black cherries (Prunus serotina) is one of the best alcohol infusions I’ve made. To sweeten the deal, not only does it taste stronger than any cherry flavored booze Ive had, but it’s inspired by an actual, documented experience that happened, oh, 200 years ago. I’m a sucker for a good for…
Hosta Shoot Kimchi
It’s hosta shoot season, and besides just throwing them in a hot pan (which is great) the shoots are a bit like rolled-up lettuce, and they take really well to the kimchi treatment. It’s a great recipe to add to your repertoire for this common, delicious garden ornamental. It’s easy. To prepare them for fermentation,…
Dried Fiddleheads
I love fiddleheads. But, the season for them seems to go lightning fast: one minute they’re everywhere, the next minute they’re unraveled. I’ve preserved them (crunchy pickled fiddleheads) and that works well, but, vinegar-based preserves limit the possibilities for cooking down the road and it’s nice to have some variation. What you might not have…
Wild Blueberry Molasses / Reduction
Wild blueberry..juice? Yes. Reduction? Double yes. Wild lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) are by far the most abundant wild fruit I harvest that needs really no processing at all. Wild plums I can gather in larger quantity, but they require much more effort to process and make them delicious than wild blueberries do. When I was speaking…
Fermented Mushroom Pierogi
Fermented mushroom pierogi, along with a few different sauces I’ve made (dryad saddle shoyu/soy sauce) are the most delicious things I’ve made with fermented mushrooms yet. Fermented mushrooms are a concentrate, they’re not something I’m going to go and just eat out of a jar, especially if they’ve been long-fermented and have turned soft. The…
Fish Sauce Pickled Enoki
I love a good mushroom pickle. If I feel like it, or if I think the species would take particularly well to it, I may go with a different flavor profile than the pickled mushroom conserve I usually make by the gallon. These enoki preserved in a pickle liquid made with fish sauce are a…
Oven-Dried Tomatoes with Bergamot and Ramp Leaves
This is one of my absolute favorite ways to preserve tomatoes—great for the bounty of tomato season, or even if you’re just craving good tomato flavor in the off season, which I often do. They’re made to mimic the oil-cured, semi-dried Italian tomatoes that restaurants often purchase from wholesale purveyors. If I say so myself,…
Fermented Highbush Cranberry Hot Sauce
Highbush cranberries are a great fruit: they’re easy to harvest, bountiful when you find a good patch, and reliable, as birds seem to leave them on the tree longer than others, at least from my experience. The fruit makes a great jelly, pates de fruits, traditional cranberry sauce, colored apple sauce–they’re a great addition…