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…
Fermentation
Lacto-sauerklraut with wild seeds is one of my favorite things to make.
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,…
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…
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…
Mugolio: Pine Cone Syrup
Mugolio, a dark, aromatic syrup imbued with the flavor of pine cones, is the poster child for the kind of crazy cool, Illuminati-esque foodstuff foragers have access to, all for the price of a hike, or even less, depending on how close you are to some pine trees. The syrup came on my radar…
Fermented Grape Leaves
Have you ever had commercially pickled grape leaves? If you haven’t, don’t bother, I’m pretty sure they’re the reason some people claim not to like grape leaves, or things made with them like dolmades. Like plenty of commercial pickled things, I usually find grape leaves from a store shelf overly acidic, like the processor is…
Pheasant Back Fermented Shoyu
Prime pheasant back / dryad saddle 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…
Lacto Fiddlehead Pickles
I love pickled ostrich fern fiddleheads, and my recipe for crisp vinegar fiddlehead pickles is one of the most popular recipes on this site (if you’re not a fermenter, try those first). I love the old pickles too, and by old I mean naturally fermented pickles–kosher dills, if you will. I’d tried fermenting ostrich fiddleheads…
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…
Lacto Knotweed Pickles
One of the best parts about this site I never would’ve imagined as it was hatched when I lived in my friends basement years ago was that I’d be able to talk to people outside of the Midwest. In hindsight, the Internet being, well, the Internet, I should’ve known, but it came as a real…
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…
Fruit Scrap Vinegar
If you harvest your own fruit–any kind of fruit–you know how many leftover skins, seeds, pits, cooked stuff, raw stuff, and all kinds of other things are leftover from processing. So much scrap, from so much good fruit. If you’re anything like me, you may have wondered if there’s anything you can do with it….
Maple Sap Vinegar
Cooped up alone during quarantine? Consider a bacterial companion. With just a few household ingredients and a little time, you too can give birth to a a jiggly, wiggly vinegar mother you can take out of the jar and play with during isolation, or…eat if things take a turn for the worst. Either way you’ll…