When I first wrote about my experience detoxifying and eating Amanita, some eight years ago now, I remember getting plenty of chippy comments from people in the mushroom community portraying me as a reckless, attention-seeking newb, which I expected, and understood. Muscaria is a polarizing mushroom, to say the least. It’s widely known that if…
Fermentation
Lacto-sauerklraut with wild seeds is one of my favorite things to make.
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…
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…
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…