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FORAGER | CHEF

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

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Lobster Mushrooms

Wild edible lobster mushrooms or Hypomyces lactiflourum (2)

A fascinating creation of nature, lobster mushrooms are the result of a fungus parisitizing Russula and/or Lactarius mushrooms that changes their shape, improves their flavor, and gives them a bright red-orange color. These are incredibly versatile mushrooms, and highly appreciated by chefs and sold commercially in large quantities. They can also be found in large quantities by you.

If you're new to lobsters, check out my intro to lobster mushrooms. If you have some you'd like to cook, try my lobster mushroom cakes or lobster rolls first and branch out from there.

Summer Vegetable Tagine, With Lobster Mushrooms

Lobster Mushroom Tagine

Lobster mushroooms start to fruit heavy in late summer right when gardens and vegetables are at their peak of production. I don’t have a garden, but I gather from one often, and when the squash, corn, peppers, broccoli, greens, onion, potatoes and all the other good things start to go crazy; they demand to be…

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Lobster Mushroom Rice Pilaf

It can be tricky to get lobster mushrooms to take on a flavor that resembles their name. Cooked fresh, they need a little help sometimes. They fruit heavily during their season where I live in Minnesota, and I’ve found myself with more than I can use within a few days after picking plenty of times….

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Lobster Mushroom Cakes (Video)

Lobster Mushrooms

Here’s another fun video from photographer Chris Bohnhoff and myself. We’ve been trying to shoot a couple videos each year together as a collaborative/creative project. We both have our main gigs, Chris being a professional shooter of photos and video, and myself running the Salt Cellar. Even so, if you’ve ever known a creative, you…

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Lobster Mushroom Cakes

Lobster Mushroom Cakes

Nothings says a good morning like a bag of giant lobster mushrooms. Their size can be stunning, along with their heartiness against bugs. But, when push comes to shove, they can be bland simply fried up in a pan, compared with something like a morel or a chanterelle which can be at their best cooked…

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Lobster Mushroom Hollandaise

Lobster mushroom hollandaise

This happened during a night in the kitchen at Heartland. It was one of those days where the other guys on the line and I would shoot ideas back and forth during service, trying to come up with the best things to make with what the season gave us. That night, we were in the…

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Stuffed Giant Lobster Mushrooms

Giant stuffed lobster mushrooms_

After lobster season has been at it for a while, you can find some really large mushrooms. The shape of lobsters can be irregular, but you can always count on a couple here and there that are big and concave-more than once I’ve heard my friends refer to them as giant tacos. If you’re like…

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Swordfish With Lobster Mushroom Stuffing

swordfish with lobster mushroom pine nut stuffing and milkweed caper sauce_-2

This is what happens when you have extra swordfish samples laying around, and need to start using up duxelles from a great lobster mushroom season. I can’t remember where I got the idea, but I’ve been making this for years. Here’s the jist: you take a thin piece of swordfish  in the middle of each…

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Lobster Mushroom Infused Butter

lobster mushroom infused butter

This is hands down one of the coolest things I discovered cooking with lobster mushrooms. Here’s the story. I was on the line at Heartland one evening. It wasn’t so busy that I couldn’t work on some projects in my spare time, so I set about trying to preserve some of the haul of lobster…

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Alan Bergo
I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. You tak I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. 

You take the pure juice of the leaves, mix it with salt, Koji rice, and more chopped fresh ramp leaves, then ferment it for a bit. 

After the fermentation you put it into a dehydrator and cook it at 145-150 F for 30 days. 

The slow heat causes a Maillard/browning reaction over time. 

After 30 days you strain the liquid and bottle it. It’s the closest thing to plant-based fish sauce I’ve had yet. 

The potency of ramps is a pretty darn good approximation of the glutamates in meat. But you could prob make something similar with combinations of other alliums. 

The taste is crazy. I get toasted ramp, followed by mellow notes from the fermentation. Potent and delicate at the same time. 

I’ve been using it to make simple Japanese-style dipping sauces for tempura etc. 

Pics: 
2: Ramp juice 
3: Juicy leaf pulp 
4: Squeezing excess juice from the pulp
5: After 5 days at 145F 
6: After 30 days 
7: Straining through Muslin to finish

#ramps #veganfishsauce #experimentalfood #kojibuildscommunity #fermentation #foraging
Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Pepin used to make for French president Charles de Gaulle. 

You bake eggs in a ramekin with shrimp topped with creamy morel sauce and eat with toast points. 

Makes for a really special brunch or breakfast. Recipe’s on my site, but it’s even better to watch Jacques make it on you tube. 

#jacquespepin #morels #shrimp #morilles #brunchtime
Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each instead of the pound. 

Good day today, although my Twin Cities spots seem a full two weeks behind from the late spring. 2 hours south they were almost all mature. 

76 for me and 152 for the group. Check your spots, and good luck! 

#morels #murkels #mollymoochers #drylandfish #spongemushroom #theprecious
The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natu The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natural secretion of water I typically see with plants. 

I understand it as an indicator that the mushrooms are growing rapidly, and a byproduct of their metabolism speeding up. If you have some clarifications, chime in. 

Most people know it from Hydnellum 
peckii-another polypore. I’ve never seen it on pheasant backs before.

Morels are coming soon too. Mine were 1 inch tall yesterday in the Twin Cities. 

#guttation #mushroomhunting #cerioporussquamosus #pheasantback #naturesbeauty
Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a grocery store. 

#groceryshopping #sochan #rudbeckialaciniata #foraging
Italian wild food traditions are some of my favori Italian wild food traditions are some of my favorite. 

Case in point: preboggion, a mixture of wild plants, that, depending on the reference, should be made with 5-23 individual plants. 

Here’s a few mixtures I’ve made this spring, along with a reference from the Oxford companion to Italian food. 

The mixture should include some bitter greens (typically assorted asters) but the most important plant is probably borage. 

Making your own version is a good excercise. Here they’re wilted with garlic and oil, but there’s a bunch of traditional recipes the mixture is used in. 

Can you believe this got cut from my book?!

#preboggion #preboggiun #foraging #traditionalfoods
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