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FORAGER | CHEF

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

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Verdolagas / Purslane

Purslane or Portulaca oleracea, a delicious edible garden weed

Lots of food happens when the garden gets weeded for purslane.

Verdolagas, also known as purslane, Portulaca oleracea, pirpirim, and other names, is one of the most common garden edible garden weeds I know of, and a great plant to add to your repertoire.

If you're new to this plant, check out my  intro guide to verdolagas first, and branch out from there. Hot tip: lots of people like this plant raw, but around the world it's probably served more as a cooked green.

Cattail Rhizome Salad with Smoked Trout

Cattail salad with lemon, smoked trout and chickweed with runner bean flowers

A fresh, crisp salad of shaved lateral rhizomes, smoked trout, lemon and a handful of fresh greens is a cattail recipe I developed (with a little help from Sam Thayer) for an episode of Daniel Vitalis’s show Wild Fed this week.  I’d cooked with the lateral rhizomes of cattails (Typha latifolia) before, but it had…

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Moroccan Foraged Greens with Preserved Lemon: Bakoula

Bakula, Mallow and purslane with olives, garlic and preserved lemon

Bakula, a Moroccan mallow salad also known as Khoubiza or Bakoula, along with Bqula, among other names, is one of the most famous dishes of foraged greens I’ve found, and comes from Morocco.  I first read about it while I was going through a research project / academic compilation called “Local Mediterranean Food Plants and Nutruceuticals“-a…

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Wild Greek Salad with Purslane and Stonecrop

Wild Greek salad recipe with purslane, stonecrop, bergamot flowers and grape tendrils

Midsummer means a lot of things, but heat and garden weeds are probably two that many of us are familiar with right now.  A few weeks ago, there was a dinner on the farm I was going to contribute a dish too, and, as my partner’s family is proud of their Greek heritage, I thought…

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Purslane, Avocado, and Cucumber Salad

Purslane, avocado, and cucumber salad with cilantro recipe

It’s verdolagas / purslane season here, and that means I’m eating it every day, sometimes for two meals a day, mostly in cold salads like this one. I like purslane cooked, but most of the time in the summer when I eat it, I just want to wash it, chop it, and call it a…

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Purslane and Sweet Corn Salad

Purslane and sweet corn salad recipe

Verdolagas and sweetcorn salad isn’t a traditional Mexican recipe, but it might as well be. An homage to Mexico, and it’s love of quelites, a sort of catch-all term for edible wild plants, it’s a generous dose of the famous edible garden weed mixed with roasted sweet corn, charred tomatoes, and simple Mexican seasonings and…

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Verdolagas Guisadas (Braised Purslane)

Braised Purslane with Tomato and Duck Fat

I love verdolagas / purslane, but until a while ago I hadn’t really thought about cooking it. I knew it was done in some places, but there were a few reasons I didn’t ever entertain cooking it: I was harvesting purslane for a restaurant where I was the chef, and since I was picking it…

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Wild Mushroom Tartine with Purslane and Pickled Vegetables

Wild Mushroom Tartine

It’s the heart of wild mushroom season in the Midwest, the boom time when you can go to your favorite patch and come home with all sorts of different types. Multiple types of chanterelles, chicken and maybe hen of the woods, Aborted Entoloma, Lactifluus, lobster mushrooms, various black trumpets, coral mushrooms/Ramaria, Hygrophorus, all manner of…

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Watermelon Salad With Purslane and Anise Hyssop

Watermelon Salad With Purslane, Goat Cheese, Jalapeno, and Anise Hyssop

Watermelon salad is on plenty of menus in the summer for good reason, it’s cold, refreshing, and evocative of the season. At it’s best it can be paradigm shifting, at it’s worst, it’s nothing more than a glorified fruit salad. While I was in San Francisco this past month, I had one that was basically…

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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
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
Special thanks to the beach in Ashland for hooking Special thanks to the beach in Ashland for hooking it up with on-site garnishes. Beach pea flowers taste strong and leguminous, similar to vetch, or like a rich tasting pea shoot. 

#lathyrusjaponicus #beachpeas #peaflower #foraging #northshore #bts
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