Snow is on the ground, and that means it’s time to start working through the mushroom stash. The first thing in my queue was a simple broth with shrimp dumplings based on an old recipe I used to run as a deep fried fish cake appetizer. The dumplings were just for fun since I was…
Soup
Matsutake Miso Soup
I can still taste the first bowl of miso soup I ever had. It was at a higher-ish end Tepanyaki restaurant chain called Benihana, one of those places where they have a cook make the food in front of you on a grill set in the table-it’s a great place to bring dates. Before all…
Morel Broth with Wild Caraway Leaves
In Sam Thayer’s book Incredible Wild Edibles, he discusses wild caraway in depth, and, in passing, mentions a sort of Scandinavian soup made with beef stock and wild caraway leaves. I wanted to find the soup, and, even moreso, I wanted to study the history and any variations I could find. Well, it took me…
Vietnamese Coral Mushroom-Chicken Noodle Soup
I’ve been working on recipes with Rau-Ram, or Vietnamese coriander, as it’s basically my new favorite herb. If you don’t like cilantro, you should probably close your browser immediately, and walk away slowly from the computer, using your fingers to form a crucifix. Trust me, it may not be in the cilantro family, but the…
Yellowfoot Chanterelle Broth with Tiny Pasta
Midwestern yellowfoot chanterelles are small–no doubt about it. As such, their the sort of ingredient that is so difficult to source in volume as to make them near impossible to find on a restaurant menu, no matter the cost. They’re literally a chef’s dream, and I made one of the best wild mushroom soups I’ve…
Desert Stew
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…
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 intensive blog at Serious Eats. The book won the…
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…
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…