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….
Pickles, Preserves, Etc
Ramp Ketchup
Besides pickled bulbs, ramp ketchup is one of the first things I ever made with everyones favorite wild leek. At the time, I remember making a few gallons of it to use as a condiment for vegetarian tasting menus, but we eventually started putting it on all kinds of things. Now, homemade ketchup and I…
Ramp Scrap Vinegar
Bright pink and smelling of woodsy garlic, ramp scrap vinegar is one of the first things I ever made with ramps. Back then, when the ramps would come in the restaurant when I worked at Heartland in St. Paul, the line cooks would fight over who got to use them on the menu first. When…
Ramp Leaf Butter
Lots of people make ramp butter, and there’s definitely more than one way to skin a cat. But, I was reminded the other day that not all ramp butters are created equal when I told one of my line cooks to make ramp butter for a steak dish we were running without giving him an…
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…
Maple Sap Soda
Ever wondered “can I make something from maple sap?”. I have. There’s just something about sap that’s fun, it’s like tree water, and, its bountiful. There has to be some great use for it, right? You bet, maple sap can be used to make maple syrup. Sarcasm aside, if you haven’t had it, maple sap…
Wild Grape, Aronia, or Elderberry BBQ (Spicy!)
I love gathering fruit, especially wild fruit I can extract juice from like wild grapes, aronia berries, and elderberries. After the hustle and bustle of harvesting, when it comes time to use up what I’ve put away, I know I’ll make a few jellies and other preserves, but there’s always a part of me that…
Wild Mushroom Fermentation
I fermented my first wild mushrooms about 7 or 8 years ago. Every cook has stages they go through as they learn, and fermentation, at that point in time, was my obsession. Similarly, another cook where I worked was fixated on candying things, all the things: carrots, jalapeños—you name it, if it could fit in…
Wild Plum Preserves
This is the greatest recipe for preserving wild plums I’ve ever had, and it should be–it’s taken me about 4 years to dial it in properly. For years I’ve been searching for a way to candy wild plums like this: soft, tart, yet sweet, with their flesh candied to the point of creamy, goodness. The…
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…
Nannyberry-Maple Butter
I finally remembered to get to the nannyberry patch this year, also known as a patch of landscaping around one of my favorite disc-golf parks. I’d tasted nannyberries before, and liked the sort of raisin-prune-meets-dark-banana flavor they have going on, but I’d never managed to get over and harvest them. I’m unsure of the exact…
How to Freeze Wild Mushrooms
If you’re a mushroom hunter, even a beginner, you’re going to have excess shrooms, and that’s a good thing. But you’ll want, and need to have some solid methods for preserving them in your bag of tricks to make the most of your harvest. Drying and pickling are my favorite methods. But, if you’ve ever…
Ischnoderma Kimchi
Ischnoderma resinosum is a great all-around mushroom, and I managed to snag a few at the end of the season before it got too cold. I’d made a note to ferment some up to see how I liked them. Sure, There’s plenty of mushrooms you could ferment like this, but some are better than others….