Pickled wood ear mushroom relish and how to use it. From foraged wild mushrooms.

My pickled wood ear mushroom relish on grilled Polish sausage with 2 kinds of mustard, grilled peppers and caramelized onions. It tastes as good as it looks!

Wood ear mushrooms are generally regulated exclusively to Asian cuisine, where they are revered as both food and medicine. A Google search will reveal recipes for hot and sour soup, spicy Sichuan salad and the occasional stir-fry.

All great recipes (I've shared my version of hot and sour and Sichuan salad before), but I had to wonder: is there a way for this easy-to-identify wild mushroom to enter main-stream American cuisine?

Wood ear mushroom (also known as tree ear, jelly ear and Latin name: Auricularia auricula), faces a couple of huge challenges.

First, it looks like this:

Despite their unappetizing appearance, wood ear mushrooms have
no flavor, and absorb the taste of whatever you cook them with. 

And second, it has a weird, gelatinous, crunchy texture.

But taste? It doesn't taste bad, in fact, it doesn't really taste like anything. Which is what gave me the idea to pickle it and create a relish.

After all, a good relish is crunchy (wood ear: check) and absorbs the flavors of the vinegar and spices (wood ear: check). Why a relish over a traditional snack pickle? I'm not sure, except I was bored with just pickling things, and I also felt the thin flesh of the wood ear wouldn't hold up as well as a snack food.

The important thing is that they came out great!

Pickled greenbriar tips foraging recipe. Fat free, gluten-free, vegan, paleo.

It's that time of the year again! Greenbriar   Is a really unique wild edible that you generally can only get in the early to mid spring, March through April around here in Texas, and April through June back where I used to live up north.

Greenbriar, genus name: Smilax, is an easy-to-identify vine, and only the young growing tips are edible, which is why you can harvest in the spring. 

Learn how to identify greenbriar here!

I was only able to get a few handfuls this early, but I'm sure I'll be pulling bags of greenbriar from the woods soon! Because I only had a small amount, I decided to make more of a snack, rather than a full meal. I thought pickling would work out well, and it did! They held their crispness well, and the flavor pairs perfectly with salty, sour, and dill.

Here's what I did, but feel free to try your own pickling recipe:

1. Blanch 2 cups of greenbriar tips in boiling water for 1 minute. Add them to a glass or glazed ceramic container (not metal or plastic)
2. Smack 1 tsp coriander seeds and 1/2 tsp. black peppercorns with the side of a knife a couple of times. Mince 2 cloves of garlic.
3. Bring 2 cups of white vinegar to a boil, add in peppercorns, coriander, garlic, 1 tsp. dried dill, 1/2 tsp kosher salt, 1 tsp powdered cumin, and 1/4 tsp sugar.
4. Boil for 5 minutes then pour in with the greenbriar. Seal and allow to come to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 24 hours. Store in the fridge and enjoy them within 2 weeks.

Check out all my greenbriar posts!

Quick mushroom fridge pickle recipe, with foraged ringless honey mushrooms. Vegan, gluten-free, paleo,

Sour. Salty. Spicy. Dilly, and garlicky.

Is your mouth watering yet?
These are some of my favorite flavors, and they are loaded into these fast and easy wild mushroom fridge pickles.

What are fridge pickles? Basically, they are a veggie or mushroom soaked in vinegar and spices, in your fridge, till the food soaks up all the flavor (over about 48 hours) and becomes an excellent snack or condiment. Fridge pickles must be refrigerated (they aren't shelf-stable), as they are neither canned nor fermented, nor are they salty enough to salt-cure, and they keep for about 2-3 weeks. Because there is no canning involved, they come together quickly.

I made these will ringless honey mushrooms, Armillaria tabescens, (learn how to ID them here) but you can use other wild mushrooms, or even store-bought. The smaller the mushroom the better, as they will soak up the flavor faster!

Pickled Sow Thistle Bud "Capers"

 

As sow thistles get a bit older, and start to flower, the leaves become tougher, more bitter and a tad fibrous. The prickles can also become stiffer and less pleasant to eat. At this stage it's best to cook the leaves completely before you do anything with them. But this is the stage when the buds are also ripe for harvest.

An older sow thistle with buds

The buds don't taste all that different from the rest of the plant, a mellow sweetness within, sort of like corn, would be the only difference. Otherwise it's that same rich green, slightly bitter flavor, rather like kale. 

One of the most popular ways to eat any slightly bitter bud is to pickle it, and make sort of a mock caper--it's really crazy how much they tastes like them when done!

I've had sow thistles this way, but I've never made my own, so when I was on my evening walk and saw 5 large plants on the corner, I figured it was the perfect opportunity.

Foraged Japanese Knotweed Fridge Pickles Recipe

When first added to the jar they are very pretty, but unfortunately they loose
their bright green color, and become a dull olive

So I happen to be a pickle-a-holic. My parents tell a variety of stories about my early experiences with pickles; but my favorite is how, at 18 months old, I was such a terror--crying and fussing--that they couldn't go out anywhere. Their favorite restaurant, The Hungry Lion, discovered that if they fed me baby gherkins non-stop, I would shut up, and actually be a pleasant dinner companion. After that, my parent's went there every Friday, and the staff would have a bowl ready-to-go on our table before we were seated.

Knotweed stand, ripe for the picking!

There are knotweed pickle recipes out there, but they tend to be pretty basic--vinegar, knotweed, maybe a spice or two. I tried to get a lot more flavor into my pickles, and I really think it paid off. I made 3 flavors of pickles that I want to share with you: tart & sour, hot & sour, and sweetly exotic. The sweet & exotic were far and away my favorite, and the preferred flavor overall. The knotweed holds up well textually, staying crunchy; and it keeps its slightly tart flavor, albeit somewhat mellowed.

Fridge pickles are pickles that haven't been canned (either by water-bath canning or pressure canning). I don't know if I would try canning the knotweed, since canning involves boiling, and knotweed can get pretty mushy when boiled. These pickles can be stored in the fridge much like any open jar of pickles, for about two weeks--but I seriously doubt you will be able to keep yourself from eating them all in less than half that time!