Learning to forage food in my backyard in Minnesota and Wisconsin has made me do a lot more than find food where I live and learn about my environment. Now, whenever I travel, I find myself going on the same sort of culinary scavenger hunts wherever I go. Barrel cactus fruit were the latest desert…
Soup
Hotch Potch
The “green holiday” is coming tommorrow, and, while I won’t be eating corned beef and cabbage, or drinking beer with green food coloring in it, I do have a fun Scottish recipe for you, and, a video replete with Scottish themed music at the end to go with it. It’s not Irish, but it’s close…
Hunter’s Borcht with River Grape and Wild Caraway
Winter, also known as “clean out the freezer” season for foragers. If you’re a chef, have game in the freezer, or buy large quantities of meat from a local producer, you’ll experience with the scenario of having a little of this, and a little of that. last week, what I had, was one lone Canadian…
Crock Pot Stock and Bone Broth
Guess what? You can make higher quality stock than the majority of professional chefs in the restaurant industry at home using a crock pot. Story goes last year I read a book about the science of home cooking from J Kenji Lopez-Alt, the man behind the ridiculously intensive blog at Serious Eats. The book won…
Pork Short Rib and Burdock Stew
I’m constantly blown away by the connections I get to make, in the Midwest, and the United States, but especially from other countries around the world. A few years ago, I was talking about using burdock root to make a relish I had been serving with fish, and I got an interesting conversation going with…
Parched Wild Rice-Mushroom Bisque
If you’re a mushroom hunter who likes to pick different types of boletes this mushroom bisque is for you. 2018 was a great year for boletes with our steady, late summer rain, and I got a lot more variety than what I’d say a typical year brings. The great part about boletes is that with…
Tepary Bean Soup with Galinsoga and Dried, Smoked Goose
I’m getting ready to make a winter trip down to Arizona to see my grandparents. One of the thngs that means, besides hiking up mountains with my Dad, is that I need to use up some of the ingredients I brought back with me last time so I can re-up on more. When I think…
Miso Soup with Shaved Matsutake
One of the best ways to understand mushrooms from a culinary perspective is to find cultures that traditionally use them, with matsutake, that typically means that I’m going to look at Japanese food, although I suspect there might be some Scandinavian tricks hiding out somewhere too. Japan is the only country/culture I know of that…
Stinging Nettle Soup with Quail Eggs
I see a lot of people in the Midwest say they’re excited about Spring and mention things like peas. I think what we really should be talking about are stinging and wood nettles, the real first Spring vegetables that will come out of the ground worthy of eating, in my opinion. Peas on the other…
End of Winter Goat Shoulder Stew
Here’s my in-between season/end of Winter dish for this year: a goat shoulder rubbed with wild herbs, braised until tender, then served with it’s broth and a few different winter vegetables, finished with the first nettle tips of the year. I discussed the reason I like to make things like this at the end of…
Ischnoderma Resinosum Broth
Ischnoderma resinosum, the underused polypore mushroom with a certain beefy qaulity to them and lots of trim that could go into a great stock. A while back one of my friends from the local mycological society mentioned making broth from them, which sounded like a great way to use all their trim. I made sure…
Dried Morel Bisque
It was Spring 2016 at The Salt Cellar. The restaurant was slow and the outlook was grim. Even so, I tried to stay focused on keeping things as seasonal as possible, changing the menu to engage the cooks and help keep morale up. When morel season came around, I knew I couldn’t afford to buy…
Baby Bok Choy In Lactarius Broth With Quail Eggs
Here’s a recipe I created to use dried Lactarius salmoneus, donated to the Cascade Mycological Society for their cookbook. When powdered and made into a broth, you’d be hard pressed to say it isn’t chicken stock. From my experience, different dried Lactarius resembling deliciosus, rubrilactus, and sanguifluus will give similar results. The recipe is designed…