Forest green, deep and oniony, chefs love a good green oil, and ramp leaf oil is probably the best I’ve ever had. Alot of the time, green oil can be a thoughtless garnish, or lazy drizzle on top of a soup—a little color—nothing more. But with a little care, green oil is not only an…
Wild Herbs and Spices
Ramp Leaf Salsa Verde
If you like ramps and wild onions, ramp leaf salsa verde is a new sauce for you to put on just about everything. I typically keep some sort of herby-mildy spicy sauce around the house for drizzling on things in a pinch, typically made from cilantro, oregano, or lovage, and, while they all follow the…
Ramp Ketchup
Besides pickled bulbs, ramp ketchup is one of the first things I ever made with everyones favorite wild leek. At the time, I remember making a few gallons of it to use as a condiment for vegetarian tasting menus, but we eventually started putting it on all kinds of things. Now, homemade ketchup and I…
Ramp Scrap Vinegar
Bright pink and smelling of woodsy garlic, ramp scrap vinegar is one of the first things I ever made with ramps. Back then, when the ramps would come in the restaurant when I worked at Heartland in St. Paul, the line cooks would fight over who got to use them on the menu first. When…
Ramp Leaf Butter
Lots of people make ramp butter, and there’s definitely more than one way to skin a cat. But, I was reminded the other day that not all ramp butters are created equal when I told one of my line cooks to make ramp butter for a steak dish we were running without giving him an…
Syllabubs with Fruit Preserves and Angelica
I love simple, rustic desserts, easy things that can be thrown together. There’s just something about a bowl of good cream, whipped to soft peaks and mixed with fresh berries that just tastes right. On a deeper level, making, enjoying, and especially, reminding others about the simple things is a statement in our modern era…
Wild Blueberry Sauce with Sweetfern
Blueberries, as delicious as they are, always seem to disappoint me when I see them in sauce form. You know the sauce I’m talking about, the thick, gloppy, sauce so sweet it will make your teeth fall out of your head stuff that comes from a can. Sure, people like it, but they like the…
Wild Caraway
Wild caraway (Carum carvi), is another great addition to the growing list of amazing plants and herbs I never thought possible to be picked in the wild. It’s a thing though, and if you come across some, like me, you might fall in love. I knew nothing of caraway until I read about it in…
Spruce Chocolate Mousse
This is exactly what it sounds like: chocolate mousse flavored with spruce tip syrup. Just using spruce tips simmered a bit with water isn’t going to cut it though, for the flavor of spruce to overcome the chocolate you’ll either want to make a slow sun syrup using equal parts by volume of brown, natural…
Cryptotaenia canadensis / Mitsuba / Japanese Parsley / Honewort
If you’ve ever wondered if there was a plant to forage as a parsley substitute, and from there, if it would be worth picking, the answer is yes, and yes. And to sweeten the deal, the plant is widespread, at least around me. It’s goes by the name of Mitsuba, wild Japanese parsley or Cryptotaenia…
Morel Broth with Wild Caraway Leaves
In Sam Thayer’s book Incredible Wild Edibles, he discusses wild caraway in depth, and, in passing, mentions a sort of Scandinavian soup made with beef stock and wild caraway leaves. I wanted to find the soup, and, even moreso, I wanted to study the history and any variations I could find. Well, it took me…
Fried Frog Legs Marinated in Ramp Leaf Oil
A French club was coming in for dinner, and I was told they would expect escargot. The only problem was snails weren’t on the menu, and the party was coming in the next day. Fresh out of helix snails in cans, I gathered a party to excavate the deep freeze of the French concept/restaurant I…
Spruce Tip Posset
Silky-rich and custardy, but without any egg, possets are one of the best desserts I’ve discovered (thanks to my old pastry chef) in recent years. They were totally new to me, but apparently they’re an old fashioned British dessert that used to be relatively common in America around the mid 20th century, but more so…