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Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Offal

 

ingredients for veal liver and sweet chanterelle sauce

Offal, otherwise known as organ meats. People have really mixed feelings about these. You might know someone who eats liver, or perhaps the occasional chicken gizzard. When I was younger I always liked food, but organ meats were strange, and gross. I became exposed to cooking with them through working in restaurants while I was going to business school. Slowly but surely, I began to have a paradigm shift. I began to understand why people eat these things.

I began to understand that eating organ meats was historically a necessity, and sometimes even a luxury. In older times, animals were seasonally harvested, every single part of it was used, and nothing was wasted.  Contrastingly, Foie gras is one of the most expensive products I have ever cooked with, it is typically the fattened liver of ducks or geese, although the ancient Romans crafted foie from many animals, such as pigs.

In all seriousness though, I don’t sit at home and eat brains all the time, I reserve most offal for special occasions, and for people that I know will appreciate them. Nowadays people have a great fear of organs in mainstream cuisine, although it seems to be getting better slowly. One thing I know truly though, is that taking a piece of food many would throw away and call trash, and using it to create something delicious is profound. Its almost like a sort of culinary alchemy, turning scrap metal into gold.

Introductions to offal

Cleaning cooked tongue

Beef/Cow/Veal Tongue

Using caul fat

Caul Fat

 Cooking with brainsbrains for ravioli

Offal Recipes

Goat brain ravioli with morel tomato sauce and sage

This is probably the most approachable way to enjoy brains

goat brain ravioli with morel tomato sauce

Nettle soup with tongue, creme fraiche and chives

A bit like fancy spinach soup

Spring Nettle soup, veal tongue, creme fraiche, croutons

Sauteed liver with sweet chanterelle sauce, garlic mustard and apricots

A dish that celebrates liver and how well it pair with sweet sauces, in this case, one made with chanterelles.

veal liver and sweet chanterelle sauce

Venison en crepinette

One of the most approachable variety meats is caul fat, its like bacon from another universe. In this recipe I show how you can wrap a roast or steak in a mousse made from trim, then roll the whole thing up in caul fat and create a nice, refined dish.

venison en crepinette

Cornmeal crusted fish with peas, tongue, ramps, and yellowfoot chanterelle sauce

Fish and peas is a classic Italian combination, here is a dressed-up take on it

Perch With Yellowfoot Mushrooms, Tongue, Peas, and Ramps

 

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Tres Leches soaked in candy cap milk was a fun var Tres Leches soaked in candy cap milk was a fun variation I did on the house dessert of a little restaurant I was at for a time. 

Don’t be surprised if you smell like maple syrup a few hours after eating it. Using ground dried golden chanterelles is another variation that’s on my list to try. 

Link in bio to see how to make your own. 

#candycaps #treslechescake #myteethfellout #wildmushrooms #wildfoodlove
ARISE #fungimancer #frostbite #morels #tisthes ARISE 

 #fungimancer 
#frostbite #morels #tistheseason #mushroomhunting #winter #offseasontraining
Big thanks🙏 to all of you who showed your suppo Big thanks🙏 to all of you who showed your support with the first line of spirits @ida_graves_distillery and I collaborated on. 

Brock did a great job wrangling the wild things, and we have plenty of fun ideas in store (think aging nocino in barrels, new flavor combos, etc). If you’re in the Twin Cities and still need some, the amaro is #soldout but @ombibulousmn has nocino, and should have the spruce  liquor (goes down like pine gin) soon. Thank you!

#distillery #foragedcocktails #nocino #craftspirits #drinkatree #mnspirits #smallbatch #godscountry
Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, roadkill is too s Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, roadkill is too specific a term for me—I don’t limit myself to vehicular-harvested meat. 

However you feel about the topic, grab some popcorn and head over to the comment section on my blog (link in bio) for the 🔥personal stories from readers have shared from around the world. 

There’s the kid who brought home a nutria after school, a wife getting 4 deer with the same car, a train hitting a herd of elk, a bear named squish, living in a house with weasels, and more. 

#budgetgourmet #gleaning #scavenging #meatismeat #roadkill #freefoods #finderskeepers #wastenotwantnot
Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberr Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberry cultivars (3 types!) on me before the last snowfall and I honestly don’t even know where to start after processing them. I’d already made jams and hot sauce already and I have enough for a year. 😅

Great time to practice the cold-juice which ensures the juice isn’t bitter. 

Anyone else have any ideas? 

You can still find some on the shrubs if the birds didn’t get them up by the north shore. 

#highbushcranberry #winterforaging #birdberries #sweetnectar #foragerproblems #juiceme #embarassmentofriches #wildfoodlove
100% wild candy bars. I don’t usually make raw v 100% wild candy bars. I don’t usually make raw vegan snacks, but when I read about Euell Gibbon’s wild hackberry candy bars I had to try them. The  originals were just crushed hackberries and hickory nuts, but, I’ve read that Euell grew to dislike the crunch of hackberry seeds later in life. 

Here’s the thing though, if you sift the hackberry flour, you get a fun texture, with no worries about cracking a tooth. 

These are equal parts ground hackberries, dried wild blueberries, and hickory nuts, with a splash of maple syrup to bind.

The end product is a shelf stable, nutrient-packed bite filled with protein, carbohydrates, fats and natural sugars infinitely adaptable to your local landscape.

The texture is chewy and nougat-like, and now I’m curious to see how they’d perform baked in recipes that use frangipane or almond paste. 

#euellgibbons #energybars #hackberry #crushin #paleobreakfast #tradionalfood #wildfoodlove #rawfoods
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