It’s green black walnut season. I don’t know how people figured out you could use unripe walnuts in cooking, but I’m sure glad they did, and after you try making fermented green walnut honey, I think you will be too, even if you don’t like the taste of black walnuts cracked from the shell. Unripe…
Sweets
Pollen and Honey Fudge
I have for you today what I think is one of the most fascinating sweets I’ve ever tasted: what I’ve been calling Pine Pollen Fudge. I started working on the recipe last year, but had a couple accidents with my pollen (D’oh!) and, if you’ve ever gathered the stuff, you know that it’s extremely labor…
Pine Cone-Cider Jam / Varenye
“Ever eat a pine tree?”. That infamous quote from Euell Gibbons during a Grape Nuts commercial (there’s a lot of them on You Tube now and some are hilarious) has some truth to it. Sure, you can make tea (mostly I see it done with the soft needles of Easter White Pine) from needles, bark bread…
Wild Berry-Thíŋpsiŋla Wóžapi
Thíŋpsiŋla Wóžapi, also known as the best wild berry-based condiment you haven’t had yet. Thanksgiving turkey, venison, pheasant, all the meats, and plenty of other things too, sweet and savory, will all be improved with a few spoonfuls of this. Wóžapi is arguably the most famous condiment I know of in many North American Native…
Wild Blueberry-Maple Leather
Everyone should know how to make a good wild fruit leather, and wild blueberries make some of the best since they can be harvested in large quantity, and they don’t require any straining to remove seeds or skins. The method is super easy if you aren’t familiar, and a recipe hardly seems necessary, but I’m…
Persimmon-Acorn Pudding with Dried wild Fruit
When you look up old recipes for persimmons (many fruit for that matter) one thing you’ll often see are puddings. If you’re from America and you’re looking at the images here and wondering why this doesn’t come served in a cup, don’t worry, it’s ok. What you can technically describe as a pudding can…
Wild Blueberries with Crème Fraîche
Wild Blueberries with Crème Fraîche is a love letter to one of the best summer desserts of all time: berries and cream. One night during the winter, my girlfriend and I were sitting beside the fire. She was feeling snackish and asked if there was anything I could throw together quick. I went over to…
Butterscotch Box Elder Pudding
Butterscotch Box Elder Pudding is a fun way I’ve been using box elder syrup, a cousin to maple syrup. I live in maple country—there’s two commercial operations that will pull 1000 gallons a day from the trees on the property next door. Maples aren’t the only trees that make sap though. I grew up in…
Wild Blueberry Molasses / Reduction
Wild blueberry..juice? Yes. Reduction? Double yes. Wild lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) are by far the most abundant wild fruit I harvest that needs really no processing at all. Wild plums I can gather in larger quantity, but they require much more effort to process and make them delicious than wild blueberries do. When I was speaking…
Hackberry Bonet Pudding
I’ve been having a lot of fun working with my stash of hackberries. As I mentioned in my intro post on hackberries, there’s a number of things you can make with them, but hackberry milk is one of the most versatile. Besides drinking the milk (it tastes reminiscent of squash) you can also use the…
Pollen Pancakes with Pine Cone Syrup
I have a big stash of pine pollen I’ve been waiting to use the cold months and I finally got around to making some new things with it. If you’re not familiar, pine pollen is a thing, similar to cattail pollen, but much easier to harvest in my opinion, as the window for capturing it…
Candy Cap Tres-Leches Cake
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…
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…