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 shoots/hearts last year, and loved them so much I had to go back and grab a few more, but by the time I…
Stalks and Shoots
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…
Spring Vegetables With Spruce Tips and Lemon Agrumato
Out of all the dishes I created for Slow Food MN’s “Where the Wild Things Are” farm dinner, this was probably the crowd favorite. The evolution of it was a little interesting. The hosts of the event looked at my original menu and suggested we add a vegetable side of some kind to appease vegetarians…
Knotweed Mousse Cake With Maple Buttercream and Wildflowers
When I was planning my spring hunt with Chris Bohnhoff last year, we made a dinner to be part of the video. As luck would have it though, the day was rainy and the lighting inside wasn’t up to scratch, so our dinner didn’t make the footage. We had a risotto of fresh morels, spruce cured…
Japanese Knotweed Sorbet
I’ve had a lot of fun playing with Japanese knotweed, but there’s was one recipe that’s trumped all the others. Last year I took a vacation in San Francisco to enjoy the sights and eat at some amazing restaurants, three in particular: Coi, Saison, and Bouchon. All of them were great (Coi and Saison were…
Knotweed Custard Tart, With Goat Cheese Mousse
Knotweed season has passed, but here’s a great way to use the sweetened puree of the shoots I mentioned a while ago. The puree is just a blank slate for whatever you want, eggs can be added like in the recipe here, but there’s really infinite possibilities, for example the knotweed leather (recipe here) as…
Chicken Smothered With Chicken Of The Woods
Summer mushroom season has started here in Minnesota, and the chicken of the woods / sulphur shelves have started to appear. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again though, you need to find them young, as in as young as possible. If you find some growing and leave them, hoping to come back…
Fiddlehead Salad With Spruce Tips, Peppermint, And Pecorino
Here’s what I made with the last of my fiddleheads this year, it’s a great little spring salad. The origins are Italian. In the Spring, it’s an Italian tradition to have fresh fava beans with hunks of pecorino cheese, a great example of less is more-just beans and cheese, that’s it. A colleague of mine,…
Knotweed Fruit Leather
Here’s a fun twist on classic fruit leather using a basic puree of knotweed I mentioned here. It has a nice, slightly tight apple flavor. Lately my pastry chef has been cutting these into strips, tying them in knots, and serving them on the complimentary petit fours plate we serve at The Salt Cellar to…
Japanese Knotweed
Knotweed. This stuff is chic in foraging communities, but I didn’t find out about it through a wild food book or online group. I read about it in one of my favorite cookbooks: Provence Harvest by Jacques Chibois. Chibois’s restaurant, La Bastide St. Antoine has a garden where Chibois is said to have hundreds of…