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Forager Chef

Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Forager’s Winter Tasting Menu

Ever wanted to put together a menu for an event, or just dream one up? Special event menus are a creative process I crave. The final event I did for 2018 was the yearly gathering for the Twin Cities Chapter of the Society of Amateur Chefs, who requested a 7 course tasting menu following an hour of butler passed apps. I thought it would be fun to give you a behind the scenes look at my methods/thought process along with the menu and as many pictures as I could scrape together. It’s a bit long, so feel free to skim.

Making obscure ingredients approachable with visual aids

Familiarity with foraged ingredients and esoterica is not the norm. I find knowing the audience, and what they might be able to grasp can help avoid confusing them and making myself look like a wierdo. Adventurous diners can be ready to absorb information, but it helps to have visuals detailing where it came from, and how special some of these things are.

Bringing talking point ingredients in raw or preserved form in a jar to pass around for show and tell is one thing that can help. In this case, with so many people, the host and I slapped together a kind of booklet out of my menu and stock photos to help people understand, which makes things taste better. It also functions as a cue card for me when addressing lots of people during tasting menus, which will last a few hours.

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Appetizers: 

With only two people (myself and a helper), executing 8 courses plus appetizers, and me discussing everything with guests before each course, ease of execution and pre-prep hedges my bet, so I made sure to have only 1 cold item that had to be assembled (apples and turkey). Something deep fried that requires no garnishes is always a good bet too (sauerkraut balls). The other app was little fritters I make from mushroom duxelles. Here’s what we did:

  • Slice of dried snowsweet apple with turkey confit, fermented cranberries and Vietnamese coriander 
  • Milwaukee rice, sauerkraut, and gruyere croquettes (deep fried, breaded balls of goodness)
  • Hen of the woods fritters with caramelized allium sour cream. (Compare to my recipe here)
A recipe for hen of the woods mushroom fritters

Hen of the woods fritters with caramelized allium sour cream.

Amuse Bouche: Pork tenderloin crusted with szechuan peppercorns, spices and seeds, skewered with a birch twig

An amuse bouche that attacks you with flavor. Bite-sized pieces of pork get pressed into the spice mixture, skewered with a twig and seared to prevent having to skewer food after it’s cooked, which could make it overcook and/or cool down.

Wild szechuan peppercorn rub

A spicy, numbing rub with wild Szechuan peppercorns.

Leccinum mushroom sourdough buns with soft cheese and wild onion scapes

The buns are a great app or first course, and an excuse for me to discuss sourdough with guests. You take a bun, brush it with lard, grill it until it’s hot and toasted, then serve with a dollop of good mascarpone or another soft cheese, and finely chopped, brined wild onion scapes that end up functioning like caviar.

Leccinum Mushroom Sourdough Rolls

Leccinum rolls

Shellfish bisque with crayfish salad and crayfish oil

A request of the host I was working with. After tasting my bisque at a local restaurant I was consulting at this Spring, he was adamant it be a part of the dinner.

Lobster Bisque

Same thing here, just with crayfish.

Buttercup squash agnolotti with bitternut hickory cream, shagbark nuts, birch syrup and parmesan

I needed to find some way to showcase the hickory nuts and hickory nut oil. After starting out with squash ravioli being dressed with a caramelized porcini vinaigrette, I ended up with this version above. You whisk some cream with hickory nut oil, and leave it broken so the bubbles of oil are visible, dress some good squash ravioli with it, then top it with toasted hickory nuts and birch syrup (tastes a bit like balsamic), which helps to cut through the richness.

Buttercup squash ravioli with hickory nuts and birch syrup

Lamb Sequence 

A sequence is a study in an animal where I serve one protein separated into 3 courses, it usually begins with offal, then a luxury cut, finally a broth made from the bones of the same creature.

Lamb heart sausage with 14 day fermented root vegetables, wild caraway, wild horseradish

As I mentioned above, the first course of the sequence is offal. Everyone likes smoked sausages, so I fashioned one purely from ground lamb hearts. It ends up tasting like a braunshwieger, and needs to be served pink.

Lamb heart sausage with wild caraway, fermented root vegetables and wild horseradish cream

Fermented root vegetables

The root vegetables are a mix of gold and purple top turnips, rutabaga, carrot, celery root and parsnips that get salted, pounded with a mallet, mixed with wild carraway seeds and fermented just like you would sauerkraut. Since they haven’t been canned, they’re crunchy still, so they need to be cooked, which I like to do with butter and a piece of smoked meat to flavor them. The sour cream condiment is horseradish I dug at the farm, shredded, mixed with vinegar, drained, and worked into sour cream.

fermented root vegetables with wild caraway: parsnip, celery root, carrots, turnips, rutabaga

After fermenting, because they are still nice and crunchy, the ferment needs to be cooked, which also lets you adjust the flavor if you need to.

Half lamb roulade, with burdock, horseradish leaves, pig ear mushrooms and tkemali

With 35 people, I needed an easy to prepare (ahead of time), and attractive main course. Having a whole lamb we’d raised and butchered on the farm, I immediately went to porchetta, but it was not that simple. A cliff note would say I cut the lamb in half, fabricated each half into an even-sized jelly roll, tied and seasoned them, then braised them slowly, chilled, cut, and gently reheated them.

Tkemali sauce made from wild plums

It took many batches to get the tkemali to start tasting right. Fermenting unripe plums first helped to remove astringency.

The garnishes are important too. The first thing the sheep would go to eat when put in a new paddock seemed to be young bitter burdock leaves, so burdock root is cooked alongisde a cake of horseradish greens, Tkemali wild plum sauce, and sauteed pig ear mushrooms (Gomphus clavatus).

1/2 lamb roulade (lambchetta) with tkemali sauce, horseradish leaves, burdock root and pig ear mushrooms

Icelandic lamb, horseradish greens, burdock, tkemali, and pig ear mushrooms.

Lamb broth infused with black trumpet mushrooms

The “final thoughts” on lamb. This gets served in a bowl, or in this case, a tea cup. I don’t serve broth with a spoon, you need to have the guest put their face in it somehow, so they can smell it. The mushrooms are infused and strained out since they can’t be sipped. I did a couple different variations with mushroom infusions, and black trumpets were the winner, since the only thing deeper than the color they imbue is their flavor.

Lamb broth infused with black trumpet mushrooms

Desserts

3 desserts here, but to speed up service and to shock diners with a table that goes from empty to packed with an array of sweets in sedonds, they all arrive to the table at the same time.

Spruce tip posset with wild blueberries 

A chilled custard with no egg or gelatin. One of the best ways I’ve used spruce tips so far.

Spruce tip posset recipe

Caramelized pumpkin bread with mascarpone, candied wild plums, and black walnuts 

This was hands-down the crowd favorite dessert. Take a piece of pumpkinbread, smear it with butter, then dip it in maple sugar and griddle it. Top it with some berries, candied black walnuts and a good dollop of creme fraiche. The wild plums here are stoned plums candied in vinegar-sugar syrup, which is a really great way to preserve them. My orignal version alos had heirloom popcorn, but I forgot to pop it at the last minute-shit happens.

Caramelized pumpkin bread with wild plums, candied black walnuts, wild blueberries and heirloom popcorn

Mignardises

(Meen-Yahr-Deez) These are little sweets, petit fours, or other small treats. The beauty of the mignardises is that they can all be prepped far in advance, and served straight-away with zero added prep. Coming up with a blend of ones using foraged flavors was a great exercise, and for more informal dinners or lunches most of them can be packed up and served straight from a cooler in remote locations, like after a plant walk or foray.

black walnut truffle, wild grape pates de fruits, serviceberry leather, candy cap caramels, candied wild plum, mignardise, candied black walnut, fruit truffles soaked in nocino.

Starting LtR: candy cap caramels, fruit truffles marinated in nocino, traditional serviceberry leather, candied wild plum, wild grape pates de fruits, candied black walnuts, black walnut-maple chocolate truffles.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ellen Zachos

    December 15, 2018 at 11:46 am

    Oh Alan! This sounds so amazing. I would have loved to be at that dinner.

    Reply
  2. Marc

    December 15, 2018 at 11:53 am

    Wow. Some inspiring ideas here, some of which I’m sure to borrow ???? particularly like the sound of the Agnolotti and the sausages.

    Reply
  3. Vivian Roberts

    December 15, 2018 at 12:28 pm

    Always enjoy reading your stuff!

    Reply
  4. Kathleen Rodgers

    December 15, 2018 at 2:41 pm

    Love this ! I will have to try this with mixed local and foraged foods. This sounds like a fun thing to do with friends !
    Also , have you ever cooked pestal corals ? I have marked a spot where they are a ready November / December find. I know that they cook the giant species on the west coast. Would those cooking methods work for the smaller eastern species?

    Reply
  5. Megha Baikadi

    February 19, 2019 at 10:35 pm

    Wow, everything looks so, so good.

    I did have a question, though – I saw many (or most) of the individual recipes are posted elsewhere, but I couldn’t find a couple of them that I was looking for – did I miss them, or are they not posted for some reason, or something? I was looking for the spruce tip posset with blueberries and the leccinum mushroom sourdough with brined onion scapes. I really would be interested in the recipes if possible 🙂

    Thank you… not just for this tantalizing post but all of the tempting recipes and information you post
    Megha

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      February 19, 2019 at 10:46 pm

      Thanks Megha. You’re correct, some of the recipes are posted, some are not. The reason is that attempting to post 13 recipes at once is a herculean effort. Unlike a lot of websites, I am just a single person over here, and this is a completely homegrown operation as I have no IT training. You’ll see things here not available anywhere else, but the price is tons of spelling and grammar errors, accidental post publishing, and all the other human mistakes youd expect.

      For the Mushroom sourdough tasting portions, refer to my wild mushroom sourdough recipe, and portion the dough into 1 oz rolls. The spruce posset will be posted in a few weeks after I type it up and grab the images from the archive.

      Thank You, and don’t hesitate to send a message if you need help trouble shooting something. -Alan.

      Reply

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🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Last entry. I’ve saved t 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Last entry. I’ve saved the smallest, fern gulliest plant for last. 

False Mermaid Weed (Floerkea proserpinacoides) is a good little plant Sam Thayer showed me. It’s tiny, as in all the photos are from me on my belly, in a wet ditch. It’s so small it’s hard to get the camera to even focus on it (see pic with my finger for scale). 

Mermaid weed likes wet areas, like ditches and spots that hold a bit of water (perfect mosquito habitat😁). 

Like chickweed, Floerkia greens are like nature’s Microgreens. They’re in the Limnanthaceae, (a new-ish group of brassicas) and like the Toothwort form earlier this week, you’ll taste a strong mustard-family flavor in a mouthful of their tender stems. 

They’re literally wild mustard sprouts, and, unlike other wild sprouts (garlic mustard 🤬) they stay sprouts, and, they actually taste good. 

It has a wide range over much of the eastern and western U.S., and is listed as secure globally, but is endangered in some states and shouldn’t be disturbed in those places. 

I’m lucky enough to have some large colonies near me so I do clip a few handfuls each year-my annual reward for removing some of the garlic mustard nearby, that, along with atvs, dirt bikes, and contamination from local water pollution, is one of the biggest threats to this tiny green. 

#floerkiaproserpinacoides 
#wildsprouts #mustardsprouts #ferngully #tiny #foraging #mermaid #🧜‍♀️
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Virginia Bluebells (Merten 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are one of the most beautiful harbingers of spring I know, as well as one of the most delicious. 

They’re in the Borage family, along with the namesake plant, Comfrey (which I only eat a few flowers of occasionally) and Honeywort. 

The flavor of the greens, like borage, has a rich flavor some people might describe as mushroomy or fishy, but after a just a few moments of cooking (30-60 seconds) they get mild and delicious, with a subtle bitterness. It’s a good bitter though-nothing like dandelions or garlic mustard that aren’t fit to be in the same basket, let alone on the same plate. 

The shoots are sweet and delicious, much more mild than the greens. As they can grow to be over a foot long, they’re almost more of a vegetable than a leafy green, depending on when you harvest them. 

Bluebells love moist, rich soil, but you don’t have to go to the woods to get them. Many people know Virginia Bluebells as a garden plant, and they can make a great edible addition to your landscape.

#virginiabluebells #foraging #ephemerals #springwildflowers #wildfoodlove #mertensiavirginica
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / White Ramp (Allium burdickii) 

If you’re in a ramp patch you might occasionally see some with white stems (pic 1,2). These are a cousin to the more common variety with much larger leaves and red stems (pic 3,4,5)

Allium burdickii is not as common as the red-stemmed variety, and in every ramp patch I’ve been in, the white ramp is heavily outnumbered. 

Where I harvest, I like to leave them alone, and mark the areas where they grow with sticks or middens on the ground so I can go back in the fall and help them spread their seeds. I also try and remove garlic mustard when I see it-a much more imminent threat in my mind to ramps than foragers out to gather some leaves. 

2020 was a banner year for ramp seeds, and you can still help the plants right now (pic 7) as some seed heads are still full and would love for you to give them a shake as you walk by. 

#alliumburdickii #ramps #ephemerals #foraging #spring
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 #4: Erythronium leaves E 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

#4: Erythronium leaves 

Erythronium (Trout Lily) are another ephemeral that I see widespread in my ramp patches, there’s at least 32 species world-wide, with at least one endangered species in MN (Dwarf Trout Lily). 

They’re a beautiful, delicious plant I eat every year, but I can’t recommend serving them to the general public. Plenty of people say these are edible, but also emetic if eaten in “quantity”. 

I can tell you, at least with E. albidum and E. americanum I’ve eaten, that some people are much more sensitive than others, so if you want to make a salad to serve people, make sure they’re comfortable eating it, and use a few leaves as a garnish. 

Funny enough, I didn’t learn about these from a foraging book. Like knotweed, I learned about them from one of my favorite chefs: Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs of the turn of the 21 century. 

Any chef that works with wild plants owes a debt to Bras. His book, although a little dated now, still teaches me new things all the time. While flipping through the book I also caught a recipe using tansy flowers 😳 that I’d probably pass on. 

The whitefish crusted with sunflower seeds is a dish of mine from 2012, and an example of how I eat the leaves: a few at a time, as a garnish. 

#troutlily #erythronium #michelbras #ephemerals #foraging
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwor 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) is another beautiful spring wildflower that loves to grow in the same habitat you’ll see ramps and spring beauty. 

Its small at first, but grows to a worthy size for eating as it flowers. It’s related to cabbage and mustard greens (Brassicaceae) and eating just a few leaves will give you a potent, spicy pop of mustard-family flavor reminiscent of horseradish. 

Eaten in combination with other things, like in a salad, the flavor becomes submissive and you’ll barely know it’s there. 

Some people eat the spicy roots shaped like canine teeth, but for the work I hardly think they’re worth it. 

A great wild spring green for the salad bowl-eat them leaves, tender stem, flowers and all🤤. 

#cutleaftoothwort #cadamineconcatenata #ephemeral #springedibles #foraging #wildfoodlove
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #2 is Virginia water 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #2 is Virginia waterleaf, and, I’m cheating a bit as it’s semi-ephemeral. The plant comes up in spring and goes to flower, but gives a second harvest of fresh growth in the fall, where other ephemerals I know do not. 

This is a great starter wild green-easy to recognize with the splashes of white on the leaves that may or may not be present. After you learn it though, don’t be surprised if, like me, you eventually pass it up for more delicious greens nearby. 

The plant gets tough quick, and the flavor is..meh, so I usually have small amounts of very young greens in blends of blanched and sautéed mixes. 

My favorite part is the wee flower buds, that, if you get at the right time, can be harvested in decent quantity and are good steamed as they’ll soak up oil sautéed. 

#hydrophyllumvirginianum #waterleaf #foraging #fueledbynature #weedeater
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