Elderberry clafoutis pie

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans! To our neighbors in the great white north, Happy Thanksgiving, 6 weeks late, and to our southern neighbors, feliz Día de la Revolución! Wherever you're from, I hope you're celebrating the harvest season with a sweet treat. 

Thanksgiving is one of the few occasions where I will attempt to bake. As a rule, I personally hate baking. It's more science than art--get something wrong and it generally won't work out at all, unlike cooking where almost any mistake can be mitigated, one way or another. Baking also generally involves a lot of steps, a lot of bowls, a lot of prep work, and significantly more time than cooking--all of these are things I hate. So, in our household, my husband generally does most of the baking, including all the Christmas baking of cookies, cherry coconut bars, and fudge. 

But my husband is a nurse and it's rare for him to get the entirety of Thanksgiving off.  And while Christmas baking can sort of be worked in in and around and throughout the holiday season, Thanksgiving dessert needs to be prepared on Thanksgiving Day, meaning it generally falls to me to make. I usually make a fruit cobbler or a fruit crisp, as they are easy, basically foolproof, and require some of the least prep work in the baking world. 

But for the past year, recipes for clafoutis have been popping up practically non-stop in my Pinterest feed, piquing my curiosity. 

Like a cobbler, a clafoutis involves basically 5 steps: grease a baking pan, layer in fruit, mix a bunch of things, spread on top, and bake. 

And, despite the town of McKinney clearing away much of the elderberry bushes in a part I frequent--why did they do this? They didn't replace it with anything--I still had several containers of the fruit in the freezer. So, I decided to try my hand at an elderberry clafoutis for this year's Thanksgiving. 

This recipe requires some special equipment:

• Blender
• Deep pie pan; my pan was around 1.5" deep and was barely enough. A 2" pan would be much better. 

Elderberry Clafoutis Pie 

• 2 cups fresh or frozen elderberries | If frozen, defrost and reserve the liquid
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup plain white flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar, divided into 3/4 and 1/4 portions* 
• 2/3 cup heavy cream or whole milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Butter to grease the pan

1. Preheat the oven to 325
2. Grease a deep pie pan with butter.
3. Spread your elderberries out in the greased pan. 
4. Add any reserved elderberry liquid, the eggs, the flour, the 3/4 cup of sugar, the cream or milk, vanilla, almond and salt to the blender and liquify. 
5. Pour the mixture over the top of the elderberries--slowly, if you can. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar over everything evenly.
6. Put the pan in the oven and bake for around 45 minutes until it puffs up and turns golden brown on top.

* This makes a lightly sweet clafoutis. Next time I would probably increase the sugar a little to offset the tartness of the elderberries more. I would also sprinkle the elderberries themselves with sugar in the pan. 

Right out of the oven

The result and what I would do differently next time

Elderberries float, which doesn't provide the intended 
layer effect

The elderberry clafoutis was tasty, but it did have the regular issues that any elderberry dish has, primarily being the crunchy elderberry seeds. There's no real way to work around these, unless you have a juicer and want to juice the berries first, so just be aware, your topping is going to be textural. 

The bigger issue is that I don't think that elderberries are right for a clafoutis because they are too small and too light. This means they float when you pour the liquid mixture over them. 

A clafoutis is supposed to come out as layers: crust on top, moist cake in the middle, and fruit on the bottom. But because of the floating, the finished product didn't have that layer effect. Instead, my fruit rose to the top (see pic) and became part of the crust. Still tasty, but not the intended result. 

Other than that, a great, lightly sweet dessert made with the kind of wild ingredients that would have been eaten by both the Native Americans and the early European settlers, though they likely would have been dried to make it into November. 

Mushroom candy made with foraged wood ear mushrooms

A little while ago a stumbled across multiple huge flushes of some of the most perfectly formed, perfectly fresh, perfectly "ripe" wood ear mushrooms, Auricularia angiospermarum; also called jelly ear and tree ear mushrooms. If you want to learn how to identify these mushrooms, click here. 

They were so perfect that I was immediately inspired to try something I've wanted to do for some time: Wood ear mushroom candy.

Is this not the single most perfect wood ear mushroom you've ever seen?

I've been really interested in the idea of mushroom candy since I purchased my first (and still one of my favorite) edible mushroom identification book, Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America by David W. Fischer and Alan E. Bessette. In that book the authors introduce the jellytooth (Pseudohydnum gelatinosum) and apricot jelly (Phlogiotis helvelloides) mushrooms and mentions that while they lack a lot of flavor on their own, but act as a culinary novelty that can be turned into some truly unique foods, including desserts. Alan Bessette also includes a recipe for "glazed jellytooth." This dish is clearly a dessert with sugar, fruit-flavored liqueur, berries and apples. 

Both of those mushrooms fall into the large category of "jelly fungus." These two mushrooms are fairly uncommon and, when you do find them, rarely found in any abundance. But the wood ear mushroom is quite common throughout much of the continental U.S. and is often found quite abundantly. Interestingly, despite being abundant, easy to identify and having a long history as food in multiple cultures, the wood ear mushroom isn't mentioned in the book. 

I've also seen wood ear mushrooms used in desserts from foragers on blogs and on Instagram and the Central Texas Mycological Society posted one as well. So I really wanted to try my hand at my own. 

A note on orange liquor

This recipe, as is, does include alcohol. If you want to share with children or if you don't drink alcohol you can substitute with an orange syrup, orange extract or orange juice concentrate. You can also use the orange liquor but bring it and the orange juice to a boil and simmer for a few minutes to cook off the alcohol. 

These mushrooms have only a very small amount of alcohol in them though, they don't absorb much when they reconstitute.

Another note on dried mushrooms

Before you begin the recipe, you must first boil the mushrooms for at least 2 minutes. This is because you shouldn't eat wood ear mushrooms uncooked AND boiling wild mushrooms can help with any potential parasites.

The mushrooms must already be dehydrated for this recipe. This is because wood ear mushrooms pick up the flavor of whatever they are reconstituted in, and we want to infuse the mushrooms with flavor.

If you don't have a dehydrator you can dry in the oven. For oven drying, spread out on a baking sheet and bake on the lowest temperature your oven can produce, 140-170 degrees are ideal. If your oven can't go below 200 degrees, you should keep it cracked open. Check often, flip every hour, and remove mushrooms as they become dry--usually after 4-6 hours. 

After the mushrooms are truly dry you can wait as long as you like to begin. 

The dark area inside is the mushroom

Chocolate and orange wood ear mushrooms

Please note, this recipe does require a dehydrator or dehydrating mushrooms in the oven.

• 
  
  Around 3 cups of fresh wood ear mushrooms
• 7 oz of your preferred chocolate, I like a ~70% cacao dark chocolate
• 1 pint orange juice
• 1/4 cup orange or peach liquor, or whichever flavor you prefer
• Confectioners' sugar (optional)

1. For this recipe, you need to work with mushrooms that have been first boiled and then dehydrated. See above. 
2. Mix the orange juice and liquor in a large bowl. If you don't want these to have any alcohol at all, bring the mix to a boil for at least a minute and then let cool. 
3. Add the mushrooms in and set aside in the fridge for at least 2 hours to reconstitute. 
4. Spread parchment on a cooled baking sheet. Space the pieces of reconstituted mushroom out on the sheet. 
5. Melt the chocolate in either a double boiler or a microwave.
6. Drizzle with the orange juice/liquor and then the chocolate. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar if you wish.
7. Place in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Then flip each piece and repeat the process. 
8. Enjoy, but they should be kept in the refrigerator and should either be consumed or frozen within 4-5 days or the mycelium will begin to re-consume the mushrooms, which isn't bad for you but does impact the texture. 

Foraging: identifying creeping cucumber, edible wild fruit

Latin name: Melothria pendula
Common name: Creeping cucumber
Season: Summer
Edible: Unripe fruit ONLY
Flavor: Good
Medicinal value: Unknown, but see notes below
Nutritional value: Carbohydrates, fiber, vitamin C and a surprising amount of protein

Identification difficulty: Beginner

Note on edibility: Only unripe fruits, which are light to medium green and hard should be eaten. Once even slightly soft or dark green, these fruits become dangerous laxatives. Some people, myself included, are highly sensitive to the laxative effects of this plant, even when the fruit is very unripe. I recommend only trying 1-3 at first, until you discover how you react. 

This charming little viny plant is Melothria pendula, commonly known as the creeping cucumber or the Guadalupe cucumber. The common names come from the similar appearance of the plant to cultivated cucumbers, although in miniature. Despite the names and the similar appearance, creeping cucumber is only distantly related to its cultivated cousins; they are both in the Cucurbitaceae family. 

The Cucurbitaceae family, or the gourd family, contains most melons, gourds, squashes and cucumbers. Cultivated cucumbers are part of the Benincaseae tribe (which also contains watermelons) and the Cucumis genus, but creeping cucumbers are not part of that tribe. 

What creeping cucumber does have in common with cucumbers and the white rind of watermelons is the taste. 

Creeping cucumber flower and young leaves

Creeping cucumber range

In the United States, creeping cucumber is found in the southeast states only, from Virginia south to Florida, and west as far as Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. In rare occurrences it has been found in Pennsylvania, though be sure to really check your identification that far north. 

Outside of the USA, this plant can be found in Mexico, Central America, including the islands of the West Indies, and parts of South America. I am not sure how far south it extends. It has also been found tropical areas of the far east, such as Malaysia, Sumatra, the Philippines, and Bali. It is likely introduced to those areas. 

As always, this post is intended for readers in the United States, and I cannot account for potential look-a-likes in other countries, as I would not be aware of them. 

Creeping cucumber season

In the southern USA, you may begin to find fruit as early as June, and fruiting will continue throughout the summer, until the days start to shorten in September. In the northern part of the plant's range, you can't expect fruit before July. 

Creeping cucumber identification

Creeping cucumber leaves

Creeping cucumber stem, vine and leaf features 

Creeping cucumber is a tiny vine, only about 3-4mm in diameter, though the fruit-bearing tendrils will be thinner. The image to the right gives you a pretty good idea of the thickness of the vines as compared to my fingers.

As shown in the photo above, the thin leaves are palmate, which is to say that the leaf veins all come from a single point where they connect to the stem, like the fronds on a palm tree connect to the trunk.

They have 3 lobes when young, but 5 when mature, though 2 lobes will always be rather subtle. I have numbered them to make them easier to see in the photo above. 

As creeping cucumber is a vine, it can't support its own weight and creep over woody plants and even young trees, often forming dense mats. (See below.) Plants covered this way will die. 

The vine attaches to other plants via delicate tendrils shown here. The leaves, stems, vines and tendrils are all poisonous and should not be eaten. 

Creeping cucumber tendrils

A dense mat of creeping cucumber vines, covering other plants and underbrush.

Flowers 

Creeping cucumber flowers are bright yellow and have 5 petals. Each petal is notched at the end.

The flowers are dainty, around 7mm in diameter, or slightly larger than a pencil eraser. 

The flowers hang off pendules (from which the plant gets the second part of its Latin name: pendula), at the node where two opposite leaves meet on the vine. This means that the flowers, and the fruit they turn into, will often be hidden under the leaves. 

This unripe fruit is at the perfect stage for eating

Fruit 

ONLY UNRIPE FRUIT SHOULD BE EATEN.

Unripe fruit is light green, speckled, and firm or hard. 

Creeping cucumber fruits are ovate or occasionally  teardrop shaped. 

They are small, not more than an inch in length and half to 3/4 of an inch in diameter. They can be smaller, around the size of a jelly bean. 

The one shown to the right is at the perfect stage for eating. Once they darken and soften, the spots will fade and the insides will start to become gelatinous (see below). They will eventually become near-black. 

These fruits are too mature and will have
a dangerous laxative effect if consumed

Ripe fruits are powerful laxatives, eating them will result in the urgent need to painfully defecate and can potentially lead to dangerous dehydration and even muscle spasms. 

Eating creeping cucumber

Creeping cucumbers are fun to pick and are famously popular with young children who grow up in the states where they are native. 

The unripe, light green fruits taste similar to cucumbers, though I personally think they are closer to the white parts of watermelon rind. They are crisp and slightly juicy, and their best application is probably tossed into a salad. If you find a large amount you could also pickle them. 

Creeping cucumber nutrition

Creeping cucumber is generally ignored by American publications, but has been analyzed by Mexican authorities. Unfortunately, these publications are in Spanish, which I can't read or speak. 

However, according to "Green Dean", famous forager and author of the Eat the Weeds website, who had a friend translate the study, the caloric nature of unripe fruits are made up of 56.8% carbohyrdate, 16.30% fiber, and a surprising 12.6% protein. They are also good sources of vitamins and minerals, though which ones specifically aren't mentioned in the original publication I found, at least not the part that has been translated into English. It is possible they are similar to cultivated cucumbers, which means they would primarily have vitamin C and potassium. 

Unfortunately, the small size of these fruits makes their nutritional value rather limited, unless they could be cultivated to be much larger. 

Medicinal applications - don't

Despite the ripe fruit being a powerful laxative, it is important that you do not attempt to use creeping cucumber medicinally. The native peoples of the Americas were well-aware of this plant and yet no record of it being used medicinally has been found. This is likely due to how very powerful it is. It would be difficult to find a way to safely use this plant--and attempts could result in dangerous cramping and dehydration. 

Edible Giant Ragweed Foraging and Identification

Latin name: Ambrosia trifida & Ambrosia trifida var texana 
Common name: Giant ragweed & Texas giant ragweed 
Season: Early spring through early fall
Edible: Yes, seeds, greens, buds, and flowers. But see potential toxicity warning below
Flavor: Fair 
Medicinal: Possible
Nutritional: protein and fats for the seeds, presumably standard green nutritional values for greens
See below for information regarding allergies and potential toxicity 

Identification difficulty: Novice when mature, Intermediate when young

Identification note: If you live in a region where giant hogweed, Heracleum mantegazzianum, is known to grow, pay especial attention to the look-a-likes section of this article. Giant hogweed is deadly poisonous and can cause blindness and chemical-like burns from simple contact. 

Please note, I am honestly not sure if the images I have here are for giant ragweed, A. trifida, or its subspecies, the Texas giant ragweed, A. trifida var. texana. The share edibility and identification features. 

Giant ragweed distribution

Giant ragweed is a native North American plant found throughout most of southern Canada, 47 of the 48 continental United States (comically avoiding Nevada), and southern and central Mexico. It has been introduced and become invasive throughout much of Europe, parts of the Middle East, and east, southeast and northeast Asia. As always, my guides are intended only for readers in the United States, as I don't know about look-a-like species in other parts of the world. 

Giant ragweed and allergies

Ragweed pollen is second only to mold when it comes to the likelihood of triggering allergies in humans. Ragweed is generally the true cause of so-called "hay fever" in the late summer and fall, though this often gets attributed to goldenrod, or, well, hay. 

For anyone who has a high sensitivity to pollen-related allergies, asthma or any other raspatory disorder, I would advice avoiding this plant when it's flowering, including not consuming ragweed flowers. While it is possible that consuming ragweed pollen might help build immunity, there is no clear evidence backing that AND it's pretty much impossible to gather and use without inhaling a significant amount of pollen. Marie Viljoen of Gardenista recommends wearing a mask. I recommend foraging it before it begins pollination, so in late May, June or early July. 

In large part due to climate change, the range of introduced ragweed is spreading rapidly. Ragweed also produces more pollen in warmer years, increasing the allergy risk with global warming. 

Do an allergy test before consumption

Despite the high incidence of allergies to the pollen, what we know about the greens indicates they are safe for most people. Still, I would definitely start with a small amount at first and if you have ragweed pollen allergies, even do an allergen test on the greens before eating them. An allergen test involves grinding up a few leaves into a paste using a mortar and pestle. Then rub the paste over the inside of your elbow. Allow to sit for around 2 minutes then rinse off. Wait up to 5 days and see if the area develops any reaction, such as redness, blistering or itch. If you see any reaction, do not eat this plant, even in small amounts. Of course, if you have a severe reaction, even to a skin test, consider seeking out immediate medical attention. 

Giant ragweed history as a food crop

Seeds of a cultivated form of giant ragweed have been found in ancient sites of the Native Peoples of the Americas, most notably those of the southwest and plains states, including the Cheyenne, the Sioux and the Osage. 

These seeds are much larger than any that grow naturally, indicating that giant ragweed was important enough to prioritize size (and potentially nutritional content) when choosing which strains to cultivate. Despite some sources claiming that giant ragweed was merely ritual or medicinal in use, this focus on size would indicate food use. Other sources agree that giant ragweed was most likely cultivated for its seeds as a source of protein and fat. This cultivation goes back at least 2000 years, but ends between 500-800 years ago, most likely due to the spread of maize from the south. Maize (the precursor to corn) naturally grows larger and, while it lacks in protein and fat, it is higher in caloric value, due to being primarily carbohydrates. Additionally, the calories in maize are easier to utilize, since they do not require dehulling or winnowing.

Despite significant evidence of the seeds being eaten and even cultivated for larger yields, there is scant evidence that the greens were eaten, though many native tribes used them medicinally and/or ritualistically. Despite no clear history of human consumption, the foliage is desirable for most livestock.

Ragweed seeds make up an important part of the diet of game birds and migratory birds, small mammals and even larger mammals like deer.

Giant ragweed identification (mature plants)

A massive stand of giant ragweed, showing average mid-summer height of 4-6 feet

Plant size and location

• Usually by early summer, June through July, giant ragweed is best identified by it's impressive fully-grown size, when the plants will be anywhere from 5' - 7' tall. However, they start out small, almost like a groundcover plant. 
• Plants grow in a variety of conditions, including nearly full shade, but favor full or partial sun. Giant ragweed is a ruderal species, which means it likes to move in on disturbed soil. This means it's often found in creek bottoms and similar areas, but will also pop up where land has recently been cleared, such as for farming or construction. 

Depending on growing conditions and plant age, giant ragweed leaves vary greatly.

Leaf shape, size and texture

• Giant ragweed leaves are always large to extra large in size for the size of the plant. Even when the plant is young, they will be over 4" long and 3" wide. When the plant is mature they will be between 8" and 12" long and 8" and 10" wide. 
• Giant ragweed leaves are deeply lobbed. When young, the plants may only have 3 lobes but as they mature they should have 5, though sometimes the leaves at the top will still only have 3. 
• Giant ragweed leaves have a lot of variety in how they are lobed. Sometimes they resemble maple leaves, with the lobs going down about half the length of the leaf. Other times the lobes will cut much deeper, cutting almost to the center of the leaf. 
• The back of the leaves are silvery green in color and the underside of the leaf veins are covered in tiny hairs. This makes the leaf feel almost sandpapery underneath, its also why these greens should probably always be eaten cooked. The fine hairs can irritate the throat. 

Tiny hairs line the undersides of leaf veins. 

During the earlies spring weeks (March 7 here)
Giant ragweed leaves will look significantly different from the mature ones

Very early giant ragweed leaves

Identification of young plants (March - April)

Giant ragweed doesn't really start to bolt until mid to late spring, reaching around 3' - 4' tall by mid-April through May here in Texas. Before that, it stays small (under a foot) throughout March and early April. It even starts out looking like a groundcover. 

Very early in the season, the end of February through the first week of March here in north Texas, not only will giant ragweed be low to the ground, it will also almost never have any 5 lobed leaves, they will all be 3-lobed or even 2-lobed "mitten" shaped. 

By the middle of March the plants, while still groundcover height, will start to primarily growth their 5-lobed, mature leaf forms. Of course, these young plants will still have some 3-lobed leaves as even mature plants retain some of those. 

Same plants on March 18, you can see they are starting to grow a number of 5-lobed leaves.