I have to preface this by apologizing. I’m sorry for not getting this up sooner. I’ve been writing this website for years, and although I have a spruce tip syrup that tastes like spruce, it’s not the most powerful one you can make–it’s a hybrid, a shortcut. That older recipe of mine was back from…
Spruce tip recipes, etc
Spruce Tip Panna Cotta
Spruce tip panna cotta is a great alternative to make if you don’t have an ice cream maker for my signature spruce tip ice cream recipe. Panna cotta is great for a lot of reasons: it’s relatively cheap, easy enough for a blind-folded child to make, and refreshing for those warm summer or late spring…
Spruce Chocolate Mousse
This is exactly what it sounds like: chocolate mousse flavored with spruce tip syrup. Just using spruce tips simmered a bit with water isn’t going to cut it though, for the flavor of spruce to overcome the chocolate you’ll either want to make a slow sun syrup using equal parts by volume of brown, natural…
Spruce Tips
Of all the young growth of Spring, spruce tips occupy a space that’s really interesting. Literally the young growth on branches of spruce trees, they’re not quite a vegetable, not quite an herb. In a sense, they’re a little bit of both, and there’s a learning curve to working with them, but nothing you can’t…
Caramelized Spruce Tip Syrup
Spruce (and cedar) have tons of untapped possibilities. A green ice cream we make from young spruce tips never ceases to get oohs and ahs at the restaurant and I remember one guest I brought a scoop of it to ran back to the kitchen looking for me and asked my staff where “god” had…
Spring Vegetables With Spruce Tips and Lemon Agrumato
Out of all the dishes I created for Slow Food MN’s “Where the Wild Things Are” farm dinner, this was probably the crowd favorite. The evolution of it was a little interesting. The hosts of the event looked at my original menu and suggested we add a vegetable side of some kind to appease vegetarians…
Spruce Ham
A while ago I was having fun working with my old boss Andy, now executive chef of Oxcart Ale House in St. Paul while he did recipe development in my kitchen before opening the restaurant. He started out with the most difficult stuff: dialing in the from-scratch charcuterie program, which is similar to what I…
Fiddlehead Salad With Spruce Tips, Peppermint, And Pecorino
Here’s what I made with the last of my fiddleheads this year, it’s a great little spring salad. The origins are Italian. In the Spring, it’s an Italian tradition to have fresh fava beans with hunks of pecorino cheese, a great example of less is more-just beans and cheese, that’s it. A colleague of mine,…
Rhubarb-Hazelnut Cake, With Spruce Tip Ice Cream
Cooking is more than a job to me, it’s a way of life. When I’m sad, I cook. When I’m bored, I cook. This little cake came from an evening where I cooked because I was really happy. I was cooking for a date, with the most talented and beautiful woman I’d ever met. I…
Spruce Poussin, With Apple Mustard Sauce
There’s nothing quite like a young spring spruce tip, but the mature needles still have a lot of flavor too. I knew that people make tea from older branches, so I thought it would be fun to make some sort of water based infusion as the base of a dish. A simple brine turned out…
Spruce Tip Ice Cream
Spruce tip ice cream is one of my stand-by’s, a cornerstone in a canon of wild food recipes I’ve developed over the years, and one of the most popular recipes on this site, ever. Spruce tips are a great introductory flavor for people getting into foraging, but also for others that may be knowledgeable…
Crispy Pork Snout with Black Truffle
The last time I visited the Butcher Block restaurant in Minneapolis, Chef Fillipo Caffari gave us a tour of the kitchen. Fillipo moved here from Rome, where he used to be a butcher. I haven’t worked directly under him except for one or two special dinners, but I always admired the magic he works with…
Spruce/Fir Tip Pickles
Spruce tips. The Scandinavians have always loved them. The season for these is really short, so when you can find them, grab a bunch and give em a go. They smell awesome: bright, citrusy and fresh. Their texture is soft and chewy. They are widely available, easy to harvest, and delicious. The only challenge can…