Spruce Tips

It's already June, but it still seems a bit cool this year in southeastern Connecticut. Most plants are a bit behind schedule, extending foraging possibilities for spring plants. One item we have always nibbled but have yet to experiment with has been the new, fresh growth of spruce trees, Picea sp. Spruce trees are your basic Christmas tree, and we mostly have red spruce growing in the wild, along with lots of ornamental blue spruce and Norway spruce having escaped cultivation. By this time of the year, the new growth has usually gotten too large and toughed up for nibbling, but we are still finding tips in some areas. The flavor is slightly resinous and piney, citrus-y, and rather refreshing. Gillian will often keep a few tips in her pocket to chew on while we hike. Maybe next season we'll get a chance to do some of our own experimenting with this spring edible, but for now I can just share some recipes on the internet.

Punk Domestics is a greats site I contribute to, it collects recipes and methods for all kinds of preserving, pickling, charcuterie, recipes, and some foraging. I usually head over there to find tested, quality recipes made by experienced cooks with lots of love.

Spruce Tips Recipes

Morels Recipe - Morels and Ramps Biscuits

Living in Connecticut, we generally don't find too many morels. The soil is not right, the trees are not right, and historically, there just are not that many here. Last year it took six adults a few hours to find 27, this year those same six adults found only 12. On our forays with Connecticut Valley Mycological Society, most of the hunters return to the display table with a few specimens, rarely a dozen, and often the only morels in attendance were found off-site a few days before the foray, and brought out for observation and bragging rights. Last week I came home from work one afternoon to find Robert grinning like a fool, and he asked me to guess how many morels he found. Five? Ten? Nope, he found one hundred and forty nine. 149. He was out picking feral asparagus in one of the few patches we frequent in the spring, and realized he was surrounded by beautiful Morchella americana, the blonde morels. Since we had never had so many to deal with before, we wondered how to cook them up or preserve the precious harvest. Most were dried, some were added to scrambled eggs, some went into an asparagus and cream sauce, and the ugliest ones were chopped up and made into biscuits with ramps leaves (Allium tricoccum).

Morel and Ramps Biscuits                 makes 1 dozen

2 Tbsp butter
5 oz. chopped morels (by weight)
2 1/2 c. flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 Tbsp cold butter
3 Tbsp chopped ramps leaves and stems
1 c. buttermilk

1. Over medium heat, slowly sautee the chopped morels with 2 Tbsp of the butter for 10 minutes, until the morels are browned. Chill the butter/morel mix in the refrigerator until cold and re-solidified. 
2. Heat the oven to 425° F.
3. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and chopped ramps together. Slice the 4 Tbsp of cold butter thinly and add it to the flour, and crumble in the cold butter/morel blend. Mix it all gently, making sure there are still pea-sized bits of butter in the mix.
4. Pour in the buttermilk and gently mix together, just until it forms a crumbly ball.
5. On a generously floured surface, dump out the dough and press into a ball. To get lots of flaky layers, roll it into a rectangle, then fold it into thirds like a business letter, pressing it together. Make a quarter turn, and roll it back out into another rectangle. Fold it again into thirds like a letter, and roll it into a rectangle about 6" x 8". Using a knife or biscuit cutters, cut out 12 biscuits and place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
6. Bake at 425° F for 14-17 minutes, until lightly browned on top. Serve warm, preferably with gravy.

Foraging and Wild Mushroom Hunting 2014

 

A new camping season with friends has started, beginning with our first outing of the year, this past Mother's Day weekend. Sure, I didn't get flowers and breakfast in bed, but I did eat morels around the campfire and woke up to birdsong in the woods. Dinners were fantastic again, with communal cooking for the meals, our cooperation made mealtime easy and abundant. We had vegetarian chili, venison stew, beans and rice, fried dryad's saddle, and fresh bread for dinners. Potato pancakes, ramps and wild rice hash, and toad-in-the hole, plus bacon and toast filled our tummies in the mornings. We fished for a couple small brook trout, and gathered fresh ramps greens in the woods.

While our actual hunt only yielded 11 morels, 6 Morchella americana and 5 Morchella punctipes, we did find a good amount of tender Dryad's saddle (Polyporus squamosus) to slowly cook until browned and crispy. The season is late and chilly where we were camping, even the ferns were not yet unfurled and many trees were still leafless. Even with a thunderstorm and some night time rain, plus a flood in the screen house that needed to be drained, we still had a great time and look forward to the 2014 camping season with our fellow mushroom hunters and foragers.

Potato pancakes for breakfast

Garlic Mustard Recipe Roundup

Microgreens and larger leaves

Garlic mustard is another wild, invasive green we like to cook with, creating familiar and original recipes in which to use this sometimes bitter, garlicky/mustardy plant. We encourage gathering and cooking as much as you can! The teeny sprouts that come up in abundance in the early spring are mild and can be used like microgreens in salads and on other dishes. The rosettes of leaves that grow next are tender enough to eat raw most of the spring, but will toughen and get more bitter as the season progresses. They can be quickly boiled and used like any other leafy green in recipes, whole, chopped, or pureed. We also like to eat the flower stalks that will shoot up in mid-spring from the second year plant growth, bearing clusters of white flowers. The thinner, triangular leaves that grow from the flower stalk are very tender, and the unopened and opened flowers are edible as well, all with a garlicky-mustardy bite. In the summer, the seed pods will form, and we'll eat them as long as they are still green and flexible. After the seed pods dry out and turn brown, we gather the black, comma-shaped seeds quite easily in abundance. The seeds store very well, dried and in a jar, to use for dressings, topping breads, and grinding into fiery mustard all year. Finally, the roots can be dug up and grated into a horseradish-like condiment, with a touch of vinegar. While it is an annoying invasive plant in many areas, garlic mustard can be used as food during all points of it's two year life cycle. Use it simply, use it in complicated recipes, just use it!

Garlic Mustard Recipes:

Garlic Mustard and Cheese Ravioli
Garlic Mustard Seed Dressing
Green Felafels 
Garlic Mustard Hummus
Garlic Mustard-Mustard 
Garlic Mustard Roulade 

Steamed garlic mustard seed pods and greens with butter

Ramps Recipe Roundup

It's that time of year when Facebook is flooded with photos of ramps, requests for recipes, foodie blogs are trying to out-blog each other about their rampi-ness, and conservationists are preaching about sustainable harvesting. We are lucky to know of many, many places in Connecticut to harvest ramps, and we generally just snip the greens, anyway. Lots of folks ask why their bulbs are so small, and are erroneously told it's the age of the plant. The bulb size is small in spring because all the bulb's energy has gone into making the leaves and flower stalk. We don't bother to dig bulbs unless we have a very specific recipe that needs them, and even then, we wait until just before the ground freezes to get the largest bulb after the greens and flower stalk have long died back and the plant is storing it's energy for the winter.

Here's my conservationist preaching: Don't pick more than 10% of any large patch of ramps you come across, snip only one leaf from each plant, don't take more than you will use unless you plan on freezing the greens, and respect the land and don't pick in public parks or private property without permission.

Cattail Pollen and Ramps Biscuits
Ramps Langos
Stuffed Ramps Rolls
Ramps and Greens Stuffed Bread
Ramps Pesto
Ramps Pesto Potato Salad
Three Onion and Beer Soup
Ramps Bagels
Ramps Pickles
Ramps and Roasted Garlic Jam
Chinese Styles Ramps Pancakes
Morel and Ramps Biscuits 
Ramps Pasta

Spring Foraging for Early Greens

Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta), one of the earliest spring greens

Foraging is very popular right now. I find myself on Facebook quite often, reading through post after post of people just discovering the shoots and greens of spring and asking what they can do with the bounty. I see seasoned foragers promoting new books, and posting really simple uses for the edibles that are found right now. I thought I would do a round up of previous posts I have made about the early wild foods of spring, instead of rehashing what I have written before.
Click on the link below to view the post.

Hairy Bittercress:

Hairy Bittercress Identified 

Hairy Bittercress Recipe - Yogurt Bittercress Dressing

Wild Onions/Yard Onions: 

 

Field Garlic, or Yard Onions Identified 

 

Field Garlic Recipe - Cottage Cheese & Field Garlic Bread 

 

Can I Eat Those Onions in My Yard?

Chickweed:

Chickweed Recipe - Creamy Chickweed Dressing

Japanese knotweed:

Japanese Knotweed Identified

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Knotweed Fruit Leather

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Knotweed Muffins

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Knotweed Summer Rolls

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Knotweed Jelly

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Knotweed Wine

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Knotweed Dessert Bars

 

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Cold Dessert Soup

 

Japanese Knotweed Video with Russ Cohen

Violets:

 

Violets

 

Violet Recipe - Violet Jelly

Chaga Recipe - Chaga Tapioca Pudding

Using the sterile conk of the chaga (Inonotus obliquus) fungus as a miracle heal-all remedy is really popular throughout the alternative medicine community right now. Many claims are made as to the medicinal capabilities of chaga, from reducing inflammation, boosting the immune system, treatment of diabetes, all the way to a cure for cancer. I just received  a back issue of Fungi magazine, featuring chaga, to read about its careful harvest, its life cycle, its self-regenerative capabilities, and the lore and historical use of this fungi. I personally am not making any claims as to the efficacy of chaga, but encourage you to do your own research.

We drink a chaga decoction because it tastes good, and the fungus is easily found in our area of New England on white, yellow, and black birches. Especially now, in the middle of a deep freeze, it is noticeable on the leafless trees of mixed forests. We made this dessert from a plain chaga decoction, and again from some already prepared, vegan Chaga Frappe we had in the fridge for a creamier pudding. Both were quite good, and the sweetener amounts can be altered to your taste. I also like to add a dollop of sweetened whipped cream or whipped coconut cream to the top.

Chaga Tapioca Pudding                     makes about 4 small servings

1 c. brewed chaga decoction (below)
4 Tbsp. raw sugar or maple syrup
5 tsp. quick cooking tapioca

1. Place the chaga decoction, sweetener, and tapioca in a medium saucepan and let it soak for 5 minutes.
2. Slowly bring the mixture up to a rolling boil over medium heat, stirring often.
3. Remove from the heat and chill, the tapioca will thicken as it cools. Cool overnight for a very firm tapioca.

Chaga Decoction           makes about 8 cups

8 c. water
3-4 Tbsp. ground chaga, with the black and golden parts mixed together

1. In a large pot, bring the water and ground chaga to a boil, and lower to a simmer.
2. Cover the pot and simmer the chaga for 45 minutes. Allow the decoction to cool, then strain out the ground chaga.
3. Sweeten or chill to taste.

Sterile chaga conk on yellow birch