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FORAGER | CHEF

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

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Spruce Tip and Conifer Recipes

Spruce tips
Spruce tips and conifers are some of the easiest wild edibles to gather, but they need to be used with care to taste great. If you're new to spruce tips, read through my basic guide to cooking with spruce tips first. If you have some you'd like to cook, don't miss Classic Spruce Tip Syrup, or Spruce Tip Ice Cream.

Pollen and Honey Truffles

Traditional pine pollen chinese candy

I have for you today what I think is one of the most fascinating sweets I’ve ever tasted: what I’ve been calling Pine Pollen Fudge or Pine Pollen Truffles. I started working on the recipe last year, but had a couple accidents with my pollen (D’oh!) and, if you’ve ever gathered the stuff, you know…

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Pine Cone-Cider Jam / Varenye

Pine cone preserves recipe with apple cider molasses

“Ever eat a pine tree?”. That infamous quote from Euell Gibbons during a Grape Nuts commercial (there’s a lot of them on You Tube now and some are hilarious) has some truth to it. Sure, you can make tea (mostly I see it done with the soft needles of Easter White Pine) from needles, bark bread…

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Pollen Bread

Pine pollen bread

My pollen bread is essentially pollen cornbread, with a few tweaks, and it’s a good introductory recipe to start out with if you have some pollen to use. Most of the time, when people talk about cooking with pollen, they might think of pollen pancakes, and they can be good, as well as your other…

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Pollen Pancakes with Conifer Syrup and Berries

Pine pollen pancakes with mugolio pine cone syrup and wild blueberries

I have a big stash of pine pollen I’ve been waiting to use the cold months and I finally got around to making some new things with it. If you’re not familiar, pine pollen is a thing, similar to cattail pollen, but much easier to harvest in my opinion, as the window for capturing it…

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Mugolio: Pine Cone Syrup

Mugolio, a traditional pine cone syrup recipe

  Mugolio, a dark, aromatic syrup imbued with the flavor of pine cones, is the poster child for the kind of crazy cool, Illuminati-esque foodstuff foragers have access to, all for the price of a hike, or even less, depending on how close you are to some pine trees. The syrup came on my radar…

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Classic Spruce Tip Syrup

Traditional spruce tip syrup recipe

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 when I had bartenders breathing down my neck about running out of spruce tip syrup…

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Spruce Tip Panna Cotta

Spruce tip panna cotta recipe with wild grape sauce and pistachios

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…

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Spruce Chocolate Mousse

Chocolate-Spruce 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…

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Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
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Alan Bergo
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
Oh the things I get in the mail. This is my kind Oh the things I get in the mail. 

This is my kind of tip though: a handmade buckskin bag with a note and a handful of bleached snapping turtle claws. 😁😂 

Sent in by Leslie, a reader. 

Smells like woodsmoke and the cat quickly claimed it as her new bed. 

#buckskin #mailsurprise #turtleclaws #thisimylife #cathouse
Bluebell season. Destined for a Ligurian ravioli Bluebell season. 

Destined for a Ligurian ravioli as a replacement for the traditional borage greens. 

#mertensiavirginica #virginiabluebells #spring #foraging
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