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FORAGER | CHEF

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

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Wild Blueberries

Wild Blueberry-Maple Leather

Wild Blueberry Maple Leather

Everyone should know how to make a good wild fruit leather, and wild blueberries make some of the best since they can be harvested in large quantity, and they don’t require any straining to remove seeds or skins.  The method is super easy if you aren’t familiar, and a recipe hardly seems necessary, but I’m…

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Persimmon-Acorn Pudding with Dried wild Fruit

Persimmon and wild fruit pudding with chokecherry sauce

  When you look up old recipes for persimmons (many fruit for that matter) one thing you’ll often see are puddings. If you’re from America and you’re looking at the images here and wondering why this doesn’t come served in a cup, don’t worry, it’s ok. What you can technically describe as a pudding can…

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Wild Blueberries with Crème Fraîche

Wild blueberries with creme fraiche

Wild Blueberries with Crème Fraîche is a love letter to one of the best summer desserts of all time: berries and cream.  One night during the winter, my girlfriend and I were sitting beside the fire. She was feeling snackish and asked if there was anything I could throw together quick. I went over to…

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Wild Blueberry Molasses / Reduction

Wild blueberry juice reduction or molassses recipe

Wild blueberry..juice? Yes. Reduction? Double yes.  Wild lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) are by far the most abundant wild fruit I harvest that needs really no processing at all. Wild plums I can gather in larger quantity, but they require much more effort to process and make them delicious than wild blueberries do.  When I was speaking…

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Wild Berry Cassis

Blackcap Raspberry Cassis Recipe

I have a tendency to miss some berries during foraging season. Black caps (Rubus occidentalis) especially I love, but never seem to take the time to pick enough. This year I found a great new patch though, so I made sure to try a few new things that weren’t jam or jelly. Wild berry cassis…

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How to Taste a Landscape

The jack pine barrens, image by Jesse Roesler.

The jack pine barrens are one of the most beautiful, unique landscapes I know. There’s gently rolling hills as far as you can see, with dips of kettles, those spots where glaciers paused, making depressions in the Earth. The green hills are dotted here and there with the scorched black skeletons of old jack pines–a…

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Stuffed Grape Leaves with Wild Fruit and Nuts

Foraged grape leaves stuffed with wild blueberries pine nuts and wild rice flour

There’s dolmas, dolmades, dolmasi dolmathakia, dolmathes, sarma, sarmasi, and probably a few other names I haven’t seen them travel under. Whatever you call them, if you put some in front me I’m going in for more than my share, because I love a good stuffed grape leaf. They may be small nibbles, but they’re rich…

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Fruit Scrap Vinegar

Foraged vinegars: wild plum, berry, and maple sap vinegars

If you harvest your own fruit–any kind of fruit–you know how many leftover skins, seeds, pits, cooked stuff, raw stuff, and all kinds of other things are leftover from processing. So much scrap, from so much good fruit. If you’re anything like me, you may have wondered if there’s anything you can do with it….

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FORAGER | CHEF®
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Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
2022 James Beard Nominee
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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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