Chanterelle no kneed, dutch oven bread, made with dried foraged wild mushrooms

Making bread never really interested me much. It seemed like it tied you at home in the kitchen, waiting for yeast to fart just so you could periodically punch it back down. My weekends are very precious and loosing hours that could better be spent outside in the woods, swimming, hanging out or even doing chores has never appealed to me, even though homemade bread is crazy delicious. 

So needless to say, I was intrigued when I started hearing about dutch oven breads, which had as little as 15 minutes of prep time, can rise in the refrigerator for hours or days, so you can get to them when you get to them, and who only need about 40 mins in the oven. 

Mushrooms infuse the bread 3 ways:
powdered mushrooms in the flour,  mushroom
reconstitution liquid and mushrooms baked on top

This manner of bread-making produces a small, dense, oval loaf with a crispy crust that becomes more like a sourdough if you leave it for a longer period in the fridge. 

These loaves are often baked simply, perhaps with some poppy seeds, or olive oil and fresh herbs, but I speculated there was no reason not to infuse the bread with other ingredients and flavors, and so I did. Having just come back from another foraging trip, our larder is rich with chanterelles, especially Cantharellus texensis. 

A pepper-tasting Texas red chanterelle

Unlike the fruity classic golden chanterelle, C. cibarius, the Texas chanterelle is mostly peppery in taste, with the fruitiness fading into the background, and I felt like that flavor would work well in a savory, crusty loaf. 

Plus, chanterelles and their closely related cousins, are often famously ground into powders and used as seasonings. Since they are very thin-fleshed, they dehydrate and grind easily, but their strong flavors mean even a small amount go a long way in terms of taste. So I decided to basically make an infused flour with ground cinnabar chanterelles. 

The darker color and speckled texture looks like whole wheat, 
but actually the color comes from specs of ground-up mushrooms 

The flavor of this bread is excellent, very, very umami and a bit peppery, with a hint of fruit-like sweetness on the very tail end of the palette. Traditional yellow chanterelles would probably make a sweeter loaf.

Chickweed frittata with prosciutto, potatoes and shallots. High protein, gluten-free foraging recipe.

Happy New Year everyone!!

I hope you've had a fantastic holiday season: safe, healthy, fun and full of family and friends. 

For us, Texas has been magnificently warm, with temperatures in the 60s and even into the 70s throughout the month of December. 

As a result, the plants have been seriously confused as to season, with many spring plants sprouting and even flowering. The strangest I've yet seen are violets in flower!

Foraging has been superb, when I can get to it. A major project at work has kept me working late, and sometimes even weekend overtime. 

One of my favorite, generally spring-only ephemeral plants -- chickweed -- has been coming up in large patches or dense matts everywhere. 

Chickweed is delicious, one of the few wild greens that I will eat both fresh or cooked. It has a flavor like spring peas, with a hint of sweet corn and Boston lettuce. When you cook it it becomes slightly herbal, like spring onions. A very versatile plant, no one I know who has tried it has disliked it, making it great for new foragers. 

A quick recipe for today: a decedent frittata. This time I've made it properly, starting everything over the stove and only finishing in the oven. Previously, I've often made frittatas in the oven-only, which saves time and cleanup, but at the cost of flavor. 

This recipe is delicious, easy to do (though somewhat time-consuming), gluten-free, high in protein and great as a main course for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner. 

Chickweed frittata with prosciutto, potatoes and shallots. 

Prep time: 10 minutes, cook time: 45 minutes. Serves 4-8 as a main course. 

6 eggs

4 cups of roughly chopped fresh chickweed

3/4 lb of prosciutto, diced

1/2 lb fingerling potatoes, chopped bite size

3/4 cup of sliced shallots

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1/4 cup heavy cream

5 oz. grated hard cheese (asiago, parmesan, etc.)

1+ sticks of butter

Salt, pepper, ground celery seed

1. Lightly salt 8 cups of water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add your chopped potatoes and reduce heat to a slow boil. Continue until potatoes are soft, then drain.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and heavy cream. Set aside. 
3. In an oven-safe 11" sauté or cast iron pan, melt 1-2 pats of butter over medium-high heat. Add in your sliced shallots. Sprinkle with salt and celery seed and cook, stirring often, until shallots are translucent and beginning to brown. 
4. Add in your garlic, and more butter if needed. Continue to sauté until shallots are fully caramelized. 
5. Add the prosciutto and sauté about 5-7 minutes until the meat has softened. Add in the cooked potatoes, season with ground black pepper and celery seed, and stir. 
6. Working in batches, stir in chickweed. When each batch wilts you can add in more. 
7. The chickweed will release a lot of liquid. Make sure you cook, stirring frequently, until all the liquid has dried. You can increase heat to do so. 
8. Reduce heat to low. Stir for about 10 minutes to allow the temperature to reduce.
9. Add in 4 oz. of your grated cheese, stir to mix until melted. 
10. Slowly pour in your egg and cream mixture. Gently stir the pan, once or twice to allow the eggs to fill in around all the ingredients. 
11. Continue to cook over medium-low heat, without stirring, until the eggs are fully cooked. You can occasionally turn or shimmy the pan over the heat. 
12. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Top the cooked egg mixture with the remaining grated cheese. Bake in the oven for 5 minutes, until cheese melts. Remove from oven. 
    
    
    
13. Raise oven temperature to a broil. Return frittata to the oven, and broil for 3-5 minutes until cheese is browned and bubbly. 

Enjoy! My pictures really don't do this dish justice!

Pears poached in elderberries with warm spices

Elderberry season seems to have come quickly this year,  even by Texas standards. I found a stand that I identified last year, past season, and already about half of the berries had fallen. This is now my second good source, as I already had an enormous tree right in my neighborhood.  

Fruit heads 8-10" across.

Better still, just days before I went and got the berries, my across the street neighbor invited my husband and myself to come grab some feral pears from the tree in her yard. Feral fruit is when you have a cultivated variety, in this case green anjou, but you don't treat it in anyway, you just let it grow as if it were wild. So no insect spraying, feeding/fertilizer, etc. 

Theoretically, this can deminish yield, and smaller sized fruit, but, well just look at it! Each branch was heavily laden with fruit and many of the pears were enormous! Honestly, I had difficulty finding "medium" sized pears for this recipe.

Pears that have not been sprayed for insects have thicker, more bitter skins than pears that have. The pear thickens its skin in response to insect activity. So naturally,  with pears that need to be peeled in one hand, and a crap ton of elderberries in the other, my mind went to poached pears. 

I like to poach pears to remain firm after cooking, for this reason I harvest them slightly underripe. Also, most recipes say to remove the elderberries from their stems by running a fork through them like a comb. I end up with a hot mess when I try this, so instead I simply use my fingers, gently. It may take a bit longer but it's not that bad. 

Nutritionally, this dish is super good for you, especially when you consider what's usually in a dessert. For each half-pear serving, with 1/6 of the sauce, you have about 135 calories, a ton of antioxidants and about half your daily vitamin C.

Pears poached in elderberries with warm spices 

Makes six servings or 3 large servings 

• 2 cups of elderberries (about 5 large heads of berries)
• 3 medium sized pears, peeled, tops and bottoms removed, cut in half lengthwise
• 4 green cardamom pods, smashed to open
• 1 cup of water
• 1/4 cup red wine or 2 tbs. bourbon 
• 2 tbs. brown sugar or honey 
• 1 tbs. aged balsamic vinegar
• 1 tps. ground cinnamon 
• 1/2 tps. ground cloves
• 1/4 tps. ground allspice
• 1 star anise
• Zest of one medium lemon 
• 1 tbs. corn starch

Add the water, smashed cardamom, lemon zest, star anise, brown sugar/honey, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice to a medium sauté pan on high heat. Bring to a boil and stir. 

Add in the elderberries and reduce heat to medium, but keep it simmering. Simmer for 5 minutes until the berries start to break apart. You can smash them a bit with your wooden spoon.

Place your pear halves in the sauce and continue to simmer for about 40 minutes, flipping the halves every 10 mins or so, until pears are the desired level of softness and redness.

Remove just the pears from the sauce and set aside. Mix the cornstarch with 3 tablespoons of water. Then add the resulting slurry to the sauce. Bring heat to a roiling boil and boil for 5 minutes, stiring constantly. 

Remove from heat, return pears to the sauce and serve pears and sauce after letting cool for about 5 mins. Tastes great with nonfat greek yogurt (makes a great brunch), clotted cream, ice cream or all by itself!

I mixed 1/2 cup fat free plain and 1/2 fat free vanilla greek yogurt and ate as a brunch!

Notes of caution when eating elderberries 

• Be sure of your identification.  People have mistaken deadly plants for elder.
• Only harvest flowers or berries, all other parts of the plant are poisonous.
• Only pick dead ripe and black (or blue, on the blue elder bush) berries. Underripe berries are partially poisonous as well.
• Only eat elderberries if you've cooked them well, the seeds contain toxins which must be destroyed with heat.
• Do not eat elder if you have the following medical conditions: diabetes (can interfere with medicine), cancer on chemotherapy (can interfere with treatment), autoimmune diseases (can aggravate symptoms and/or interfere with treatments) or if you are on laxatives or diuretics (can enhance the effects of both for dangerous dehydration) or Theophylline or other bronchodilators.

Vegetarian, foraged oyster mushroom chowder

It's important to know the right mushroom for every task.

When you go to buy oyster mushrooms in the store, you will find that the caps are very small (less than 2" across) and still feature "in-rolled" edges. Basically the edges of the caps roll down and under, towards the gills. This is considered the best time to eat oysters, as they have not yet released their spores, and the flesh is at it's most firm and meaty.

They basically look like this:

When the caps are still rolled down towards the gills,
oyster mushrooms have their best firmness. 

It's easy to harvest "optimal" mushrooms when you are farm-raising them. But in the wild, you generally don't have the luxury, unless you know a spot you can visit every day. Most often the oysters you find in the wild will have flat caps, occasionally with rippled and/or cracked edges. They will mostly look like this:

Older oyster mushrooms are less firm, and work best in soups,
gravies, and after being dried and reconstituted.

Older oyster mushrooms, like the ones above, loose some of that firmness, and are less meaty. Some foragers will even bypass these "spongy" specimens, but they still have a lot of flavor, and are perfect in the right application. By pureeing these mushrooms, like in soups or gravies, you avoid the texture issues.

You can also dehydrate older oyster mushrooms. Once reconstituted, they will have a unique texture--not firm and "mushroomy" like the young ones, but more meaty, almost rubbery a bit. Rather like cooked clams, which is what made me want to try this dish.

Being a native New Englander living in Texas, I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with the desire for foods I simply can't get around here. Sometimes it's lobster rolls, but most often it's clam chowder.  I'd heard that oyster mushrooms can make a passible substitute for clam chowder, and I was highly skeptical, but I decided to give it a shot.

You CAN eat thistles! Plus a vegan, paleo Greek salad recipe

Thistles. Covered in spikes, bane of young children playing outside, hated by homeowners who want a perfect yard, and loathed by ranchers who fear the weed will take over the grasslands needed by their cattle. Thistles are also edible, at least in parts.

The problem, of course, is the nasty spines. They completely cover the thick, juicy stalks, and the ruffled edges of each leaf. But if you can get beyond them, the inner core of the stem, and the "mid rib" of the leaf (the light green/whitish part), are both edible, and have a texture very similar to celery. There is one downside: thistles, especially the leaf mid rib, tend to be on the bitter side.

Henbit and dead nettle shakshuka: eggs, greens and feta in a spicy tomato sauce

Shakshuka is spicy, rich, decadent, yet healthy at the same time. The heat level is why it's commonly known as "eggs in hell". It's a vegetarian North African/Middle Eastern/Israeli meal that's eaten overseas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And it's become a hip brunch meal in some of the hottest West Coast cities. It's vegetarian, gluten-free, low in carbohydrates, low in fat and high in protein. You can omit the feta and it becomes Paleo and dairy-free.

There are a lot of Shakshuka recipes out there, but I've been told that they all leave something out, that when you eat it in the Middle East they add a lot of fresh local herbs and spices, many of which would be foraged. With that in mind, I thought adding henbit to the dish was appropriate, as henbit originates in North Africa.  Dead nettle and curly dock aren't from North Africa, but they have become local here in the US, so I felt they would fit the spirit of adding local greens.

Make sure you only use the top of the henbit plants, as the bottom stems are woody and don't really soften in the dish. I inadvertently left a couple in, and they were the only thing I didn't like.

Savory spruce (or pine!), oatmeal and cheese scones. Eat your Christmas tree, part 2!

So after experimenting with the spruce in a sweet dessert cookie, I got curious about it as a savory. After all, rosemary and pine have kind of similar flavors, and rosemary is frequently the featured flavor in artisanal breads, biscuits and rolls.

I started out with a fairly basic oatmeal scone recipe, but I deviated pretty quickly. Technically, I think these would count as a "teacake" at this point, rather than a true scone.  I made them a little smaller than scones, as they are little sweeter (but still not sweet), denser, and richer. 

With spruce being an ingredient in Scandinavian cooking, and scones being British or English, what would you call these? Scandlish? Britinavian? 

I really liked these a lot, more than the sweet cookies I made earlier, though most everyone else liked the sweet better. These are best served hot, preferably with some creamy, grass-fed butter or fresh cheese, and, of course, a pot of hot tea!

Special note: women who are pregnant should avoid eating spruce. You could make these with pine or balsam fir instead, though!

Spicy, sour Sichuan wood ear mushroom salad. Vegan, foraged wild mushrooms

We are officially in the middle of December and Texas mushroom hunting is still going strong. . . though it's a little more complicated than it was in November. This week we saw temps in the 50s, with cold rain, then a drop to 34! Finally the week ended with a spell in the low 70s. I've been harvesting winter mushrooms: oysters, velvet foot, and wood ear like crazy. Most has been going into the dehydrator, but I've been enjoying stir fries, mushroom sauces, soups. . .and this amazing salad.

Wood ear mushrooms are a staple of Chinese cuisine, where they are appreciated not just as food, but as natural medicine. Western science has recently validated wood ear as effective against tumors, as an anti-coagulant, hypoglycemic, among others. Wood ear mushrooms are mild in flavor (they absorb whatever they are cooked in), and gelatinous and somewhat chewy in texture. Marinated wood ears are a popular cold appetizer in Sichuan (Schezwan) Chinese cuisine. They are spicy and sour, slightly sweet, and served with cilantro, chilies and bell peppers. The resulting dish is crisp (from the peppers), chewy (from the mushrooms), and refreshing (from the cilantro).

Foraged spring soup: greenbriar and potato

Happy Mother's Day! In the spirit of the day, here is a wildcrafted dish that would be perfect with brunch! And it comes together quickly, so you and mom can spend the morning together in the woods, and whip this up when you get back.

You know how spring greens just seem to pair naturally with potatoes? I think it's because, at the end of a hard winter, our ancestors would only have root vegetables left, and they would be eager to mix them up with those sweet, fresh, first greens of spring. In addition to much needed variety and nutrition, wild greens would have given our forefathers a food source when they most needed it: when their own reserves were spent from the winter, but when planted crops hadn't yet begun to produce.

So I made this dish with that heritage in mind.

Leaving the skin on the potatoes increases the nutrition. To keep the dish vegan, but to add some meatiness, I think a garnish of sautéed mushrooms would really complete this soup well. Next time!

I have to be honest, I did not expect this soup to turn out THIS well! The greenbriar has an excellent leek-like taste, especially with the additional onions. Plus something about the flavor really reminds me of dill, which goes so well with the potatoes.

Foraged Chickweed and Mushroom Omelette

A mushroom omelette is one of my favorite ways to eat chickweed, because the flavor how very well with egg and most cheeses, and a light sauté keeps the freshness and crispness of the chickweed but fixes the textural issues of the hairy stems.

I prefer this dish with wild mushrooms, especially oysters, puffballs or milky caps, but I didn't have any of those so I used your basic white buttons. Half of a package will do for one omelette. I used Swiss cheese here, but goat cheese, asiago, Parmesan, and provolone all work.

It's simple to make, healthy and comes together quickly.

Foraged Wild Mushroom & Ramp Strata

And just like that, ramp season is over! 4 weeks, give or take a day or two, and the leaves of all the plants are yellowing, wilting, and dying. We went crazy, harvesting the last of the greenery last weekend. We picked enough for another batch of Spicy Black Bean Fish with Ramps, enough to fill a couple of large freezer bags, and enough for this bread pudding dish.

A strata is like a bread pudding, very rich and dense. This is not a light meal, this is not a healthy meal; with heavy cream, prosciutto, eggs, bread, butter, and cheese, it's just plain decadent. . . But ramp season comes just once a year, and it just seemed fitting to have it go out with a bang!

I reconstituted wine-cap (Stropharia rugosoannulata) mushrooms from that epic haul of a couple weeks ago to make this dish, but you could use fresh cremini or white button mushrooms instead. Tossing a few morels in would probably be pretty great as well, given how well they pair with cream.

Foraged Knotweed, Cucumber & Avocado Gazpacho Recipe

Ever since I discovered the similarities in flavor between Japanese knotweed and tomatillos, I have been experimenting with using the invasive in Latin-American style cuisine, notably a salsa verde and a  pico de gallo. These recipes were successful, unlike other experiments where I tried to use knotweed like rhubarb. I never posted about these, but they were not good; the worst being my attempt at a knotweed mostarda, based on a rhubarb recipe.

For me, I don't like knotweed cooked more than just the slightest blanching. I think it takes on an unpleasant character, not really noticeable at first, but after eating more than a few bites of it, it gets worse and worse.

So I have been looking for ideas that would let me use the knotweed raw, or lightly cooked. This tomatillo gazpacho recipe popped up in pinterest, unfortunately after knotweed season had passed, but it has been on my mind ever since. I had trepidations since the reviews were so mixed, but overall it sounded good to me, so I decided to give it a go. I am glad I did! This soup is great--somewhat hot, somewhat creamy, and very, very refreshing.

I did make a cucumber/shrimp salad for the topping, and I drank some sangria while eating. Happy Cinco de Mayo! (even if I don't actually get to post this till tomorrow)

Wild Berry & Baked Brie Tartlets

Either I somehow managed to miss the juneberry season, or it really wasn't very good this year. In April, when the flowers were blooming, I went around and ID-d a bunch of trees, doubling the number I knew of in my neighborhood. Despite double the number of trees, I actually harvested less fruit than last year, which is a shame, because I was really looking forward, and I had several recipes that I wanted to experiment with.

Despite early indications of abundance, most of these
berries were eaten by birds before ripening fully.

The birds seemed to notice the poor season as well. They striped the trees bare long before the majority of the fruit was ripe. Also, usually they stay in the upper branches, since my neighborhood has a lot of constant car and sidewalk traffic, and this leaves the low-hanging fruit for me. However, this year the birds were everywhere, even sometimes within arm's length of me, as I harvested. They also seemed to do fly-by "strikes" on the fruit--where they swooped in and pecked at a berry while continuing to fly. This meant that a lot of the fruit I could get was unusable, as it spoiled once pecked at.

Anyway, complaining aside, I got enough berries to make this dessert. It's not particularly creative, there are numerous recipes where berries (usually blueberries) are baked with brie; however, I wanted to make something a little less sweet, and completely home-made, without the preservatives and other additives found in pre-made phyllo dough or ready-to-bake crescent rolls. 

Foraged Recipe: Black Locust & Ricotta Crostini with Wild Mint

Some flowers taste like flowers. Others have a floral quality, but taste primarily like something else. The black locust is one of these, its flowers taste like the sweetest of sweet spring peas, though they have a slightly crunchy texture--like celery.

Around here, black locust blooms are only available for about 2 weeks out of the year, in the late spring. Aside from being delicious, they have the advantage of being very abundant, hard to over-harvest, easy to pick, and pretty easy to identify. Check out my identification post here.

Black locust is frequently used as other edible flowers are used: in baking, or to make syrups. I really don't like to bake, and I wanted to make something that would highlight the pea-like flavors, rather than the floral taste. I also wanted something fresh to celebrate the end of spring. Peas and mint are a pretty classic combo, and cheese makes everything better, right? With wild mint in season, this pretty little appetizer (also good for a light lunch) seemed like a slam dunk. It tastes good, and is attractive an exotic enough to convert even the most hesitant non-forager.

Superfood "Mac & Cheese" Casserole Recipe with Foraged Nettles and Quinoa

While looking for morels this weekend, I was pretty excited to stumble upon a nice patch of wood nettles. Wood nettles, like their more popular cousins the stinging nettles, are nutritional powerhouses--superfoods! They are rich in vitamins A, C, D, and K, and calcium (more than a glass of milk!).

For me, nettles I trust to eat are rather a rarity. Stinging nettles are generally easier to find, because they prefer disturbed ground settings, growing as common weeds in areas that have been touched by human hands. But for this reason, at least in NJ where I live, I never find any I can trust to be pesticide and road-waste free. These gorgeous plants, growing deep in the old-growth forest, were clearly untouched and safe to eat.

Tasty young wood nettle

Despite their name, wood nettles still sting, especially the older plants. As I was hunting for morels that day, I didn't have any gloves. For that reason, and because the shoots are more tender and flavorful anyway--I avoided any plants over about 7", and focused on harvesting the little ones. I still got stung, sometimes enough to make me walk away and continue my search for morels for a good 15 minutes, till the sting subsided. As Thayer (in his book, the Forager's Harvest) says, it is best to only touch the stems with your tough finger-tips. The worst stinging happens when you accidentally brush the plant with the soft skin on top of your hand, or inside your wrist.

I have had this recipe on my mind for some time, and I rushed home to make it. It's really, really good. It's guilt-free comfort food, a perfect balance of vitamins from the nettles, protein from the quinoa and cottage cheese, calcium from the nettles and the cheese, and minerals from the mushrooms. By replacing some of the cheddar with fat-free cottage cheese (another superfood), we up the nutrition and reduce the fat further while still keeping the oozy cheesy, gooey-ness factor.

Next time you get stung by a weed in your garden, whip this up for dinner, you won't be disappointed!