Field Garlic Recipe - Cottage Cheese & Field Garlic Bread

Snipping off the smaller and more tender leaves of the field garlic (Allium vineale) will give you a oniony-garlicky substitute for chives. In the early spring, the leaves of field garlic are very tender, and would also make a nice addition to a potato salad. Later in the season when the leaves get a bit tougher and stringy, the leaves can be chopped and added to soups. The purple flowers produced at the ends of the leaves make a tasty and pretty garnish in salads. I give the full leaves a quick rinse, then pile them up to chop through with a sharp cleaver to get fine pieces. This bread recipe is more of a batter bread, since the dough is too wet to knead. Coming hot from the oven, it makes the whole house smell like an onion bagel, and pairs well with cream cheese.

This recipe is available in our book, available Spring 2016.

http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/book/?GCOI=60239108626260&

Maple Syrup Recipe - Maple Pudding Cake

This is the recipe I use to make the Maple Pudding Cake. It might seem a bit odd while you are making it, but it all comes together into a fantastic, self-sauced, sweet cake in the end. We serve it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Maple Pudding Cake                     makes 8-9 servings
1 1/2 c. flour
3/4 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 c. milk
1/2 c. chopped walnuts
1 1/2 c. maple syrup
3/4 c. water
2 Tbsp butter

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF, or if you are using a glass pan 325ºF. Grease a 8" x 8" pan.
2. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, and chopped walnuts in a bowl. Pour the batter into the greased pan.
3. Combine the maple syrup, water and butter in a saucepan. Heat this mixture just until the butter melts. Pour it over the top of the cake batter in the pan, but DO NOT stir. It will look weird!
4. Bake for 45 minutes.
5. Allow the cake to cool for about an hour. The sauce at the bottom will continue to thicken as it cools, forming the pudding at the bottom.

Sassafras Recipe - Sassafras Root Beer

This was the second time we tried to make sassafras beer, and the result was outstanding. I accidentally left one bottle in the fridge while on vacation, but it actually kept its fizz and tasted even better than it did three weeks ago. The beer was bottled in 4 quart sized hinge-lock bottles. The flavor was spicy and earthy, and the color was an odd orange. Adding in a few spicebush berries (Lindera benzoin) to the brew really added some character, and the lime juice added a good acidic taste. We used a commercial beer yeast, Munton's, available at the local brewing supply store. The roots are boiled to make a decoction, rather than steeped to make a tisane.

We gathered many sassafras roots (Sassafras albidum) during our mild autumn. This small tree grows in Connecticut abundantly, and gathering the roots, bark and leaves is relatively easy. It is easily identified in the summer by looking for its 3 different leaves: a mitten shaped leaf, an egg shaped leaf, and a 3-lobed leaf. The bark is green on the small saplings, but as the tree gets larger you can see a reddish-orange coloring in between the furrows of the grey bark. Small saplings for pulling roots will grow in dense clusters next to the mother tree. We grab the sapling and give it a slow, steady pull until about 12"-24" of root will come up before breaking. It's the roots that you will need for this recipe, and you can pull them fresh until the ground freezes.

This recipe is available in our book, available Spring 2016.

http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/book/?GCOI=60239108626260&