Celtuce. Kind of like if lettuce and a long root vegetable had a baby, with a beautiful, translucent, emerald color. I heard about it from a friend of mine one day when we had a snowday, he and I decided to meet up, geek out over some of his cook books, drink a couple beers…
Stalks and Shoots
Duck Egg Spaghetti with Cattail Pollen, Shoot Relish and Marigolds
If you can collect enough flower dust to bake with you’re a foraging savant, and a better hunter than me. A quick google of “cattail pollen recipes” will show you different ways of using pollen, mostly for pancakes and baked goods. Honestly the baking looks interesting, and I love the color the pollen adds. But,…
Sochan
Sochan, pound for pound, is one of the best greens I’ve eaten and to sweeten the deal, is one of the cornerstones of traditional, and severely under-documented Cherokee cuisine. You might be thinking, Alan, I’m a forager, and if it’s as great as you say, what is sochan and why haven’t I heard of it…
Asparagus and Fiddleheads with Shaved Dryad Saddle
This week I’ve been working on a side that evokes spring and also happens to be a great way to use those dryad saddles/pheasant back mushrooms that come up with abandon in the Spring. I was in the kitchen wondering what to do with some fiddleheads Hidden Stream Farm brought me, and I wound up…
Hosta Shoots
No, no, you can’t eat my Hostas! Was the reaction I got asking my friends with gardens if I could eat them. I didn’t understand, hell, I’d never even noticed them before. Sure, they look ok, after they grow and the leaves unfurl, but they’re going to look great on a plate, too, and doesn’t…
Milkweed Pods
There’s lots of wild plants out there, but it’s rare to find a plant that produces something similar to what you might cook like a garden “vegetable”. Milkweed is one of the anomalies, over a season it has 3 different parts than more or less resemble unique little vegetables. After the young shoots and buds…
Day Lily Shoots
Day lily shoots seem to be everywhere near me during the summer. They’re in landscaping, gardens, parking lots, *everywhere*. With how common they are, you’d think that they would be one of the easy things to get your hands on. Nope. Everyone I talked to, from farmers to gardeners had a clear opinion about their…
Burdock Flower Stalks
Arctium lapa. Burdock. Nuisance of gardeners and landscapers everywhere and giver of one of the most delicious feral vegetables I’ve tasted. Spring 2016, I tried cutting a few of the central flower shoots. I knew some plants would make shoots and some wouldn’t, but I didn’t exactly comprehend the entire process. Here’s the skinny. Burdock…
Marinated Cattail Hearts
I’ve been trying to harvest more young shoots, every year I get a little bit better with my timing, mostly from making sure I use a journal. I got a few cattail hearts last year, and loved them so much I had to go back and grab a few more, but by the time I…
Midwestern Vignarola, 2017
There’s usually a point in April where I just stop ordering root vegetables-a purgatory state of the local growing and selling where I can’t really get anything except the random squash, root or potato, maybe some greenhouse vegetables if I’m lucky. After I stop ordering roots for the year I look forward and dream of…
Squash and Pumpkin Shoots
A few weeks ago I was walking through the garden picking squash blossoms when I saw these little curly-cue guys here and there in the squash and pumpkin patches. There was a dialogue in my brain that went like this: The squash is growing on a vine Peas grow on a vine I eat peas,…
Salmon With 6 Lilies and Saffron
Here’s a recipe with one of my favorite themes: members of the onion/lily family. I’ve shared a couple recipes that kind of function as a study in lilies, another being a spring version with sunflower seed crusted whitefish and trout lily. I borrowed the idea years ago from Mario Batali in his Babbo cookbook–one of…
Bread and Butter Fiddlehead Pickles
A couple years ago I shared my basic method for pickled fiddleheads- a savory pickle using salt as opposed to sugar. I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t share some variations though, so here’s another favorite of mine: bread and butters. It’s pretty much as easy as it sounds. All I did was…