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FORAGER | CHEF

Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

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Fresh Mushroom Recipes

Hedgehog mushroom soup with foraged greens, beans and tomatoes

Fresh mushrooms work in two basic ways: as the main ingredient in a recipe, or as a supporting character working in the background. Here you'll find a little bit of everything.

Wild Mushroom Conserve with Walnut Oil

Blewit mushrooms preserved in walnut oil

I have a lot of different ways I like to preserve mushrooms I’ve learned or come up with myself over the years. This method is one of the more interesting ones, and, I can’t take credit for it. When I started working at Heartland, with it’s daily changing menu that the staff collaboratively designed, one…

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Hen of the Woods Roast with Leeks and Black Walnuts

Maitake mushroom roast with frizzled leeks (13)

Since hen of the woods can have such a large size, I love swapping them out for meat in recipes. With the maitake coming up in earnest in late September/October right now I’ve had more than my share of them hanging out in the fridge waiting to get cooked, so big ol’chunk of hen has…

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Beefsteak Mushrooms with Sorrel

Beefsteak mushroom salad with olive oil and wood sorrel recipe

Here’s a study in how a dish can be completely different in a short time after it’s been composed. I was thinking about how to eat a beefsteak mushroom / oxtongue fungus (Fistulina hepatica) I had the other week, those shelf fungus that give red juice when cut, have a slightly tart taste, and, that…

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Whole Seared Matsutake, Medium-Rare

Whole seared matsutake mushrooms with walnut ketchup, scallions and cilantro

When we think of how to cook mushrooms, generally the thought process is they should be cooked through, then you proceed with whatever dish you’re making. Rarely, there might be some special wild mushrooms you can eat raw, like porcini, Amanita caesarea, or my little matsutake here, if any of them aren’t horribly bug riddled,…

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Vietnamese Coral Mushroom-Chicken Noodle Soup

Vietnamese style noodle soup with coral mushrooms, chicken and rue ram

I’ve been working on recipes with Rau-Ram, or Vietnamese coriander, as it’s basically my new favorite herb. If you don’t like cilantro, you should probably close your browser immediately, and walk away slowly from the computer, using your fingers to form a crucifix. Trust me, it may not be in the cilantro family, but the…

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Beefsteak Mushroom Relish

beefsteak mushroom relish

Cutting up my first beefsteak mushroom (Fistulina hepatica) was a mess. My cutting board looked like a murder scene, my hands were tacky and red, there was sticky trim scraped off of the knife in little piles around the board. In the end though, I did get a nice pile of dice from it to…

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Pig Ear Gomphus Tacos

Pig Ear Mushroom or Gomphus Tacos

Gomphus clavatus are an increasingly rare edible mushroom also known as the violet chanterelle, the pig ear, and likely a bunch of different cultural specific names I don’t know of yet. These pictured in the recipe are actually a rare version of Gomphus clavatus that grows with hardwoods as opposed to pine, currently called pseudocraterllus…

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Yellowfoot Chanterelle Broth with Tiny Pasta

Yellowfoot chanterelle soup recipe with pasta

Midwestern yellowfoot chanterelles are small–no doubt about it. As such, their the sort of ingredient that is so difficult to source in volume as to make them near impossible to find on a restaurant menu, no matter the cost. They’re literally a chef’s dream, and I made one of the best wild mushroom soups I’ve…

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FORAGER | CHEF®
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Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
James Beard Award ‘22
Host: Field Forest Feast 👇
streaming on @tastemade

Alan Bergo
Had a blast on the last day of the @wild.fed shoot Had a blast on the last day of the @wild.fed shoot cooking in the Garden of Eden, a.k.a Sam Thayer’s orchard. 

We’d planned on making ground squirrel, bullfrog and crayfish gumbo but only the crayfish came through. Luckily I had some back up andouille just in case. 

It’s may not be traditional, but gumbo with crayfish broth, a heap of @mushroomforaginginmn porcini, milkweed pods (in lieu of okra) wild rice and crayfish-chanterelle salad didn’t suck. 6 of us polished off a gallon 😁.

H/o to chef Lenny Russo who I pestered with questions on frog-based foods beforehand. Hyper-local meals like this are what we made at Heartland in St Paul during my tenure there. 

@danielvitalis 
@grantguiliano 

#ditchlobster #mudbugs #gumbo #crayfish #wildrice #wildfed
Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water by hand with Sam Thayer and @danielvitalis for @wild.fed 

Daniel and Sam were the apex predators, but I got a few. 

Without a net catching crayfish by hand is definitely a wax-on wax-off sort of skill. Clears your mind. 

They’re going into gumbo with porcini, sausage and milkweed pods today. 

#crayfish #ninjareflexes #waxonwaxoff #normalthings #onset🎥🎬
Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizo Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizomes and blueberries for this weeks shoot with @wildfed 

Been a few years since I worked with these. Thankfully Sam Thayer dropped a couple off for me to work with. They’re tender, crisp and delicious. 

Sam mentioned their mild flavor and texture could be because they don’t have to worry about predators eating them, since they grow in the muck of cattail marshes. 

I think they could use a pet name. Pond tusk? Swamp spears? Help me out here. 😂

Nature makes the coolest things. 

#itcamefromthepond #cattail #rhizomes #foraging #typhalatifolia
I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so much we filmed it instead of the original dish I’d planned. 

Cooked natural wild rice (not the black shiny stuff) is great hot, cold, sweet or savory. It’s a perfect, filling lunch for a long day of berry picking. 

I make them with whatever I have on hand. Mushrooms will fade into the background a little here, so I use a bunch of them, along with lots of herbs and hickory nut oil + dill flowers. 

I’m eating the leftovers today back up in the barrens (hopefully) getting some more bluebs for another shoot this week w @wild.fed 

#wilwilwice #wildrice #chanterelles #campfood #castironcooking
Baby’s first homegrown mushrooms! Backyard wine Baby’s first homegrown mushrooms! Backyard wine caps on hardwood sawdust from my lumberjack buddy.

Next up blewits. Spawn from @northsporemushrooms

#winecaps #strophariaaeruginosa #allthemushroomtags
It’s wild cherry season. I’ll be picking from It’s wild cherry season. I’ll be picking from my favorite spot tomorrow a.m. and have room for a couple helpers. It’s at an event on a farm just south of St. Cloud. 

If you’re interested send me a message and I’ll raffle off the spots. Plenty of cherries to go around. I’ll be leading a short plant walk around the farm too. 

#chokecherries #foraging #prunusvirginiana #summervibes
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