After Lucia’s closed, I didn’t feel like running another restaurant quite yet, so I negotiated a part time job consulting on the menu of a little French restaurant near Edina. I was slumming, but I just couldn’t bear tackling another large operation just yet. It wasn’t a good fit. I ended up turning what was…
Sweets
Candy Cap Marshmallows
Candy cap marshmallows are exactly what they sound like, and they’re one of the most creative candy cap recipes I’ve ever worked with. Credit goes to my favorite pastry chef. I’m not a pastry chef, but I always loved collaborating with them, since they were the conduit that allowed me to speak to guests through…
Almond Candy Cap Cookies
Simple butter cookies are a tried and true recipe for using up those dried candy caps, and David Arora even shares a recipe for them in his excellent book All That the Rain Promises and More (get yourself a copy if you don’t have one, it’s a good, portable reference for when you can’t bring…
Candy Cap Flan / Creme Caramel
Flan infused with candy cap mushrooms has been on my list to make for years now. I finally got to it, and, yes, it’s a great recipe for those delicious, maple-y tasting candy cap mushrooms, darling of mushroom enthusiasts the world round that they are. Flan vs Creme Caramel Real quick, for culinary nerds, flan…
Hackberry Souffle / Spoonbread
Hackberry spoonbread, a sort of fallen souffle, is one of my favorite things to make with hackberries. The finished dish is a rich, custard-like brunch or dessert that tastes a bit like crust-less pumpkin pie. As I was working with the hackberries and trying to figure out what I could make with them, I ended…
Wild Berry Cassis
I have a tendency to miss some berries during foraging season. Black caps (Rubus occidentalis) especially I love, but never seem to take the time to pick enough. This year I found a great new patch though, so I made sure to try a few new things that weren’t jam or jelly. Wild berry cassis…
Mugolio: Pine Cone Syrup
Mugolio, a dark, aromatic syrup imbued with the flavor of pine cones, is the poster child for the kind of crazy cool, Illuminati-esque foodstuff foragers have access to, all for the price of a hike, or even less, depending on how close you are to some pine trees. The syrup came on my radar when…
Candied Black Trumpets
Candied mushrooms? Like, with sugar?? Hard pass. Candied mushrooms are the sort of frou-frou B.S. I’d expect 15 year old me to try making, or a young cook still trying to figure out what a palette is. Honestly, I found the idea so annoying it was nearly offensive. These are mushrooms we’re talking about, I…
How to Taste a Landscape
The jack pine barrens are one of the most beautiful, unique landscapes I know. There’s gently rolling hills as far as you can see, with dips of kettles, those spots where glaciers paused, making depressions in the Earth. The green hills are dotted here and there with the scorched black skeletons of old jack pines–a…
Wild Berry Frango
With the heat wave baking most of the U.S. this week, I reached for a tried and true, but most importantly, icy cold dessert to end a couple meals. Frango is a sort of half-frozen, old-timey dessert made from yogurt and cream, traditionally flavored with maple syrup. It’s a great thing to make if you…
Serviceberry-Maple Leather
It took me years to really get a handle on harvesting serviceberries. First I had to find places I could go around the Twin Cities to harvest them, get permission from the land owners, and show up at the right time. Then, even when I did show up when the berries were ripe, bucket in…
Angelica Blossoms (Zavirne)
“These angelicas grow wild near abandoned ruins and damp places. In February the Salentines go feverishly in search of them. This is the moment when the incipient flower-heads are still enclosed in their sheaths right up against the greenish-purple stem. You cut these sheaths with a knife”. –Patience Grey, Honey From a Weed. I love…
Classic Spruce Tip Syrup
I have to preface this by apologizing. I’m sorry for not getting this up sooner. I’ve been writing this website for years, and although I have a spruce tip syrup that tastes like spruce, it’s not the most powerful one you can make–it’s a hybrid, a shortcut. That older recipe of mine was back from…