Dryad's Saddle Mushroom Teriyaki

I served roasted milkweed shoots as a side--instructions below

Dryad's saddle mushrooms (Polyporus squamosus, also called Pheasant's Back mushrooms) are generally not very highly thought of. They are often considered tough and lacking in flavor, especially when not very, very young (under 3-4 inches across). I have been struggling with this mushroom for some time, and I refuse to give up on it. I found a nice haul last year, and experimented with a recipe on Steve Brill's website, but I have to admit--I really didn't care for it.

Gorgeous fruiting from last year.
This is how they look when they haven't been rained on.

Then I found this website's recipe for a jambalaya, and I regained hope in the humble dryad's saddle. The jambalaya helped me figure out what dryad's saddle mushrooms are all about: though they are lacking in flavor, they have a nice, meaty richness to them--one of the meatiest mouth feels I have ever had from a mushroom. I wanted to play that up more, find away to enhance the meatiness and add flavor which the fungus lacked. This teriyaki was my first successful attempt!

The real struggle with this dish is the cutting. You want everything to be more or less even in thickness, otherwise some will burn when you roast them, while others will be undone. The ideal pieces are just this side of too tough--they have that nice meatiness, but will also be toothsome, even chewy. If you don't like that texture, you probably won't enjoy these mushrooms prepared this way.

Foraged Milkweed Minestrone Recipe

So, the season for milkweed shoots is passing, and the season for milkweed buds begin. The flowerbuds of milkweed are many people's favorite part of the plant, though I think I personally prefer the shoots. The flavor of the buds is similar to that of the shoots (a mixture of broccoli and green beans), but the texture is very much like that of over-sized broccoli florets. The buds do best with a quicker cooking than the shoots, but they should still be blanched to remove the chalky taste of the sap.

Remember, don't take all of the flower buds. I usually take one per plant. Taking more than that will rob you of the opportunity to harvest both the edible flowers and the edible seed pods later in the season. It will also prevent the milkweed from any chance of reproducing this year.

Taking the flower buds doesn't hurt or kill the individual plant, (like taking the shoot does), and thus you can harvest the buds--in moderation--from smaller patches of milkweed.

When harvesting milkweed buds, it is essential that you check for small monarch caterpillars. The milkweed family is the only food which young monarchs can eat, and they are frequently found crawling around the buds. Simply relocate them to a new home on another part of the plant. . 

Black Bean Pork with Foraged Milkweed Shoots Recipe

Milkweed shoots are not an easy ID, and they have
toxic look-a-likes. Make sure you know this plant
100% before you try to harvest it.

Milkweed is an extremely useful plant, producing different edible parts throughout the season, all of which are versatile vegetables. To me, the flavor of the shoots, flower buds, and the young pods is like a mix of green beans and broccoli. The shoots can be prepared in ways similar to asparagus, since they have a similar texture, but they should always be blanched first, to remove the pasty taste of the milkweed sap.

Aside from the blanching, milkweed's taste and texture are so similar to that of cultivated vegetables that it can be used in almost any recipe in your regular repertoire.

So this dish is directly stolen from an homage to Andrew Zimmern's Pork and Asparagus with Chile-Garlic Sauce from  Food & Wine magazine. You can find the original here.

I like this dish because it's fast, healthy, delicious, and doesn't require an enormous amount of cleanup. I have made some substitutions of the more exotic ingredients to fit what was in my own pantry. Toban djan is a spicy paste made from fava beans and chilies, but I didn't have any, so I used a mixture of black bean paste and sriracha. The end result is very different from Zimmern's dish, but equally tasty!

Foraged Recipe: Milkweed Shoot, Pancetta, & Ramp Sallet

This is the kind of dish that keeps me foraging. I would go so far as to say it's the kind of dish that represents the lifestyle I aspire to lead: meals made with a mix of wild edibles and high-quality, healthy (mostly) store-bought ingredients. Meals that are quick enough for weeknights, but make dinner feel like a special occasion. Meals that are so good, and so easy, that I will never order take-out Chinese again.

I'm not there yet, but this was a great start.

Foraged Simple Milkweed Bud Stir-Fry Recipe

After a long day of being in the sun, hiking around foraging, I usually don't want to spend hours prepping an elaborate dinner. A quick stir-fry can be the perfect solution. Straightforward ingredients, simple, carefully chosen spices, and an exotic, wild element produce a memorable meal, one that comes together in about 30 minutes--and all in one pot!.

Milkweed buds are a great wild food source. They are generally abundant, incredibly easy to gather, and are part of a plant that will produce one vegetable after another over the course of several months. (Shoots in the early spring, buds and flowers in the early summer, and pods during the height of summer.)