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FORAGER | CHEF

Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

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Stalks and Shoots

Silphium / Cup Plant

Leaves and tender tops of Silphium perfoliatum or cup plant

About a decade ago now, I was walking through a park looking for mushrooms, not finding much. I knew a plant or two, but mostly everything that wasn’t a mushroom seemed to be part of an undecipherable wall of green. I remember coming across a giant, handsome colony of plants, with beautiful toothed leaves and…

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Solomon’s Seal Shoots

Edible False Solomon's Seal Shoots Maianthemum racemosum

Solomon’s Seal shoots (Polyganatum biflorum and Maianthemum racemosum covered here) have to be one of the most under-appreciated wild vegetables out there. If you like fiddleheads, asparagus, or just tasty green vegetables in general, you owe it to yourself to find this plant if it grows near you and give it a try.  I read…

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Trout with Spring Shoots and Pheasant Backs

Trout with pheasant back mushrooms, spring shoots and ramp oil

Last week we had a couple over for dinner and the woman, a friend of my girlfriend I’d met many times before, was, unbeknownst to me, a fly-fishing apex predator. I still have trouble catching anything but rocks with my rod, but she showed up with an entire cooler filled with 8 whole brook trout,…

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Fiddlehead Salad

Fiddlehead salad recipe with olive oil lemon and herbs

This simple salad is my go-to recipe for eating ostrich fiddleheads. There’s all sorts of advice out there on how to cook them: blanch five minutes, blanch ten minutes, sauté afterward and cook them to death in oil, put them in lasagna and bake them to oblivion, then pull out long, soft and stringy noodles…

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Goldenrod Shoots and Tips

Edible Canada goldenrod shoots

For a lot of people, Goldenrod probably conjures up images of brilliant yellow blooms in the middle of summer. I like seeing goldenrod flowers too (for their color-not culinary purposes as the flowers are tough, with the exception of the well-known goldenrod tea) but the shoots and young growing tips are actually a vegetable that…

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Virginia Bluebells

Edible Virginia bluebells or Mertensia virginica

There are lots of spring ephemerals I love, but, Virginia Bluebells might just be the prettiest of them all. As you’re probably gathering, you can eat them too, and, they’re delicious! They’re one of the very first ephemerals to come up in the spring, and one of the most beautiful harbingers of the green landscape…

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Hosta Shoot Kimchi

Hosta Shoot Kimchi recipe

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,…

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Marinated Hosta Shoots

Marinated hosta shoots salad

It’s hosta shoot season, and marinated hosta shoots make a great spring appetizer or side dish to help you enjoy your edimentals (edible ornamentals).  Here’s the jist: go get the plumpest, fattest hosta shoots you can find, get a pan or grill really, really hot, char them on one side only, add a splash of…

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FORAGER | CHEF®
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Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
2022 James Beard Nominee
Host: Field Forest Feast 👇
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Alan Bergo
Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each instead of the pound. 

Good day today, although my Twin Cities spots seem a full two weeks behind from the late spring. 2 hours south they were almost all mature. 

76 for me and 152 for the group. Check your spots, and good luck! 

#morels #murkels #mollymoochers #drylandfish #spongemushroom #theprecious
The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natu The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natural secretion of water I typically see with plants. 

I understand it as an indicator that the mushrooms are growing rapidly, and a byproduct of their metabolism speeding up. If you have some clarifications, chime in. 

Most people know it from Hydnellum 
peckii-another polypore. I’ve never seen it on pheasant backs before.

Morels are coming soon too. Mine were 1 inch tall yesterday in the Twin Cities. 

#guttation #mushroomhunting #cerioporussquamosus #pheasantback #naturesbeauty
Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a grocery store. 

#groceryshopping #sochan #rudbeckialaciniata #foraging
Italian wild food traditions are some of my favori Italian wild food traditions are some of my favorite. 

Case in point: preboggion, a mixture of wild plants, that, depending on the reference, should be made with 5-23 individual plants. 

Here’s a few mixtures I’ve made this spring, along with a reference from the Oxford companion to Italian food. 

The mixture should include some bitter greens (typically assorted asters) but the most important plant is probably borage. 

Making your own version is a good excercise. Here they’re wilted with garlic and oil, but there’s a bunch of traditional recipes the mixture is used in. 

Can you believe this got cut from my book?!

#preboggion #preboggiun #foraging #traditionalfoods
Oh the things I get in the mail. This is my kind Oh the things I get in the mail. 

This is my kind of tip though: a handmade buckskin bag with a note and a handful of bleached snapping turtle claws. 😁😂 

Sent in by Leslie, a reader. 

Smells like woodsmoke and the cat quickly claimed it as her new bed. 

#buckskin #mailsurprise #turtleclaws #thisimylife #cathouse
Bluebell season. Destined for a Ligurian ravioli Bluebell season. 

Destined for a Ligurian ravioli as a replacement for the traditional borage greens. 

#mertensiavirginica #virginiabluebells #spring #foraging
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