Dept. of Horn-tooting

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of introducing national NPR correspondent Martin Kaste to the woods—and all the possibilities for nourishment that await within. The segment was part of a week-long series devoted to "West Coast Innovators."Short radio interviews can be tricky, but I think Martin did an excellent job of capturing the many levels of awareness that go into foraging, from the sheer visceral pleasure of it to the culinary to the cautionary.

Listen to my NPR interview:



The following week, while in the Cascades hunting spring porcini, I took a break on the edge of cell range to speak with James Beard Award-winning food writer and personality Anthony Dias Blue. Listen to our conversation on "Blue Lifestyle" (starts around 18 minute mark):

Strawberry Shortcake with Elderflower Whipped Cream

These jaunty Independence Day colors seem appropriate for a July Fourth post—with a dash of green added to the red, white, and blue because we all know that true patriots are environmentalists trying to conserve the nation's resources and wild places. Right?

The strawberries came from our garden, and Martha made the drop biscuits. My contribution was the elderflower bouquet. Though I picked it more than a week ago along the Wenatchee River near Leavenworth, there should still be some blue elderberry trees blooming in the upper canyons of Eastern Washington.

Elderflower is one of those special tastes of late spring and early summer, right up there with cherries and porcini mushrooms.  I put up several pints of elderflower syrup each year to use in cordials and desserts year-round. Most recipes that rely on the singular flavor of elderflower fall back on a pre-made syrup, but while the flowers are in bloom you might as well do a direct infusion.

The dessert pictured is my friend Jon Rowley's recipe for Strawberry Shortcake, which appeared in Edible Seattle a couple years ago. We took it one notch higher with Elderflower Whipped Cream (plus an ample sprinkling of those delicate, star-shaped florets). To make your own, just immerse a dozen or so flowerheads in a bowl with a pint or two of heavy cream, either overnight or all day. Make sure you remove as much of the stem as possible, since most of the elderberry tree is toxic. Cover with plastic wrap. The cream should be suitably floral after several hours of infusion. Strain (you'll need to give the soggy flowers a good squeeze), add a spoonful of sugar, and whip just before serving.

Happy July Fourth everyone.

Spring Kings: Another Season, Another Lesson

It's getting a little late in the season to talk about spring kings, but it seems that every year I learn a little bit more about these tantalizing members of the bolete family that are so emblematic of the Kingdom of Fungi in general. For instance, even though it only received species designation in 2008, Boletus rex-veris has been picked and eaten by Italian-Americans for a hundred years. You can read the many spring porcini posts on this blog—from my first post to my experiments with freezing buttons to taxonomic clarity—as a record of my own progress.

Much of my understanding about how to cook and care for the the "little pigs" has been won through trial and error. There just isn't an operating manuel. As you might recall, I started "field dressing" my porcini a couple years ago in an effort to keep them clean and to combat the bugs that are as boletivoracious as us. Boletus rex-veris, in contrast to B. edulis, does much of its growing underground, so it can be quite a dirty mushroom. Dirt and duff-covered mushrooms piled together in a basket or bucket will share their dirt like STDs, making for a difficult cleaning proposition at home, particularly with the pores under the cap. Wherever I happen to find them, I clean them up and check for insect infestations, taking precautions to cover up the scene of the capture when I'm finished.

Field dressing consists of trimming the stem of any dirt, cleaning the cap as thoroughly as possible, and finally slicing the mushroom in half to check for worms. Even seemingly pristine #1 buttons can have fly larvae in them that will make a mess in no time. If I see any bug activity (as in the image at right and a closeup below, showing the culprit), I slice it out with my knife. This often takes care of localized infestations and saves a mushroom that would otherwise be ruined before dinnertime.

And don't be fooled. Bolete fly larvae can riddle a mushroom with their hungry tunneling in the time that it takes to drive your haul home from the mountains. As they warm up, the larvae become more active. Unless you crank your air conditioner, the temperature in your car will cause the bugs to stir. This isn't too much of a problem provided you don't dilly-dally along the way—and you get the mushrooms in the refrigerator asap.

Sometimes I'll camp in the woods and spread my mushroom hunting over a couple days or more. Usually, when multiple species are fruiting at the height of the spring season, I'll try to do my morel hunting at the beginning and save my porcini hunting for last. A load of porcini hanging around camp unrefrigerated is an invitation to disaster. A couple weeks ago I came home with several pounds of #1 and #2 buttons. It was cold and drizzly in Seattle and I was exhausted, so I left my basket of mushrooms on the front stoop overnight. Bad call. Even temps in the low-40's aren't cool enough. Plus, humidity is a killer. About half the load was beyond repair by the next day. Even a cold fridge doesn't completely stop the worms in their tracks; it just slows them down (though I suspect a really cold fridge can prevent additional larvae from hatching).

I've been paying close attention to a recent batch. A few mushrooms that got field dressed and looked absolutely spotless before the drive home ended up having some noticeable tunneling within three hours of picking. Others that still looked perfect got sliced in half again (i.e. quartered) in my kitchen. This revealed minor bug activity that required immediate action. Finally, even mushrooms that passed with flying colors required checking after a day or two in the fridge, and some of these showed minor infestation. The point is, if you want to pick and eat porcini and not cook up a panful of maggots, you need to be vigilant.

The bolete below has the appearance of a #1 button. It was firm and didn't show any signs of infestation when I trimmed the stem. I decided to keep it whole. After a week in the fridge, this is what it looked like. Look closely and you'll see that the worms attacked via the cap, not the stem. If I had cut the mushroom in half when I picked it, I might have been able to isolate the infestation and save it.

If this is all too much for some folks, who don't even want to think about extra protein in their food...well, mushroom hunting probably isn't your cup of beef.

P.S. If you're in British Columbia, I'd like to know whether you find B. rex-veris, and if so, how far north.

Porcini Bap

In 1998 I spent six months working in the UK. Martha and I lived in a flat in the dingy London suburb Slough (rhymes with cow) made famous by The Office (and, before that, by the poet laureate John Betjeman). Friends pitied us for our diet of English food, imagining slabs of gray, overcooked meat, soggy fish 'n' chips, and vegetables boiled into limp submission.

But those in the know, such as my colleague Rebecca (now jam goddess at Deluxe), told us not to worry, that the UK was in the midst of a major gastronomic overhaul. She was right. We arrived to find food-crazed Brits long before Top Chef landed on American soil.

We watched—along with everyone else—TV episodes of Delia Cooks, Ready Steady Cook, Two Fat Ladies, Nigel Slater, and the beautiful, tragic Nigella Lawson. We ate extraordinary Indian food (acknowledged as the national cuisine) on trips to London, and on Sundays I would ride my bike through the countryside, pulling over for a pint every so often and eventually stopping to sup on afternoon roast before wobbling back home.

We amassed a collection of contemporary English cookbooks. One of our favorites was Nigel Slater's Real Food, the title appropriated long before Michael Pollan and the New World locavore movement. Real food meant both English standards (e.g. Toad in the Hole) as well as the many ethnic influences bubbling up across the country, all of it made with fresh ingredients and updated preparations. Twice we blew up our little English oven while mistakenly cooking one of our mainstays, Nigel's 40 Garlic Chicken, on gas 9.

One of our favorite quick meals was called a bap. It was a hot vegetarian sandwich recipe that Nigel attributes to Nigella. I confess that I still don't know exactly what a bap is (a type of bread?), but I like the sound of it. Nigel roasts the caps of large field mushrooms with garlic butter and parsley. This simple sandwich is excellent—and with a haul of spring porcini mushrooms foraged the other day here in the USA, I decided I'd give it a new spin.

Spring kings, as they're sometimes known, are fruiting in my patches right now. I've written about the "little pigs" before. You can read more about them here, here, and here. They're fun to forage and a joy to cook.

To make the sandwich, pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Chop together some garlic and parsley and mix into a large dollop of softened butter with a generous sprinkling of salt. Slather each mushroom cap with the garlic butter and roast for about 20 minutes. When the mushrooms are cooked and starting to brown a little at the edges, you can melt some cheese such as provolone or mozzarella as a finishing touch.

Choose good bread. I picked up a ciabatta from the Columbia City Bakery. When it's time to assemble the sandwich, make sure you rub the cut ends of the bread in the pan juices.

You want to use large porcini buttons if possible, buttons with caps that haven't fully opened yet. Placed upside-down on a roasting pan, the concave caps will hold the garlic butter. Nigel says a good bap should drip down your hands and arms when you eat it. I concur.

Thick and Creamy New England Clam Chowder

I get asked about chowders a lot, especially by transplanted East Coasters, many of whom fondly remember a thick and creamy boardwalk-style clam chowder from their youths, when they went down to the shore on family vacations.

Here on the West Coast, razor clams and butter clams—large, meaty, and loaded with bivalve flavor—are the chowder clams of choice (though geoduck makes a good chowder, as does the horse clam).

But smaller hardshelled clams like the native littleneck and non-native manila can be used for chowder, too. The manila in particular is a bread-and-butter species around Puget Sound and can be easily collected on some beaches virtually every day of the year. Most of the time I steam my manilas and eat them out of the shell, as in Pasta alle Vongole, Black Bean Clams, Thai Red Curry Clams, Clams with Herbed Wine Sauce, and so on. Sometimes, though, the New Englander in me demands a chowder.

I usually turn to my grandmother Mimi's chowder recipe, which you can find in Fat of the Land. This was a recipe used mainly for flaky, white fish, notably cod, which we ate every summer at their home on Cape Cod. It uses salt pork, and it's relatively thin. I also understand the appeal of the sort of thick and creamy chowders that we've all had at clam shacks one time or another. The recipe below is one of those chowders, based on a recipe developed by the local Seattle fish 'n' chips house, Ivar's. It's a piscatarian chowder, which is to say it doesn't rely on bacon or salt pork. A couple limits of manilas will make this chowder.

1 cup white wine
3 - 4 cloves garlic, smashed
several sprigs parsley
1 1/2 cups clam meat
2 - 3 cups clam broth
2 cups peeled and diced potatoes
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced celery
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup flour
4 cups half and half, warmed
salt and pepper
dash red pepper flakes

1. Steam 80 manila clams in wine, garlic, and parsley. When clams have opened, strain broth through fine mesh sieve and save; you should have at least 2 cups. Remove meat from shells and roughly chop; you should have between 1 - 2 cups.

2. In a medium saucepan, simmer onions, celery, and potato in clam broth until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, in a heavy-bottomed pot, melt butter over medium heat. Slowly add flour, whisking, to make a roux. When roux is golden, slowly pour in warmed half and half while continuing to whisk. Add clam broth and vegetables and continue to stir. If chowder is still too thick, add more warm milk or half and half (or warm water, chicken stock, or clam juice).

4. Season with salt, black pepper, and red pepper. Garnish with oyster crackers. Wear your lobster bib.

Coral Mushroom Tempura

They look like something from the deep, or even outer space. Coral mushrooms, also called deer antlers or doghair, are a family (Clavariaceae) of multi-colored fungi that resemble the sort of undersea coral you might find while snorkeling in warm equatorial waters. There are many species across North America, and they can grow quite large.

I've been reluctant to post about coral mushrooms for a couple reasons. First, they're difficult to identify to the species level. And second, as edibles, they have a mixed track record. Some sources suggest that there are no deadly poisonous corals; others say that some corals can cause gastrointestinal distress and that even the choice varieties can have a laxative effect. One species, Ramaria formosa, also known as the beautiful clavaria for its yellow and pink coloration, is thought to be mildly poisonous. But careful foragers can rely on a few rules of thumb when gathering coral: avoid species with a gelatinous base; that bruise brown when handling; that taste bitter.

In my region the popular edible varieties tend to be spring mushrooms, in particular the pink-tipped coral Ramaria botrytis. Another is the yellow coral, both Ramaria rasilispora and Ramaria magnipes. These are large, meaty mushrooms with a stout, fleshy base (especially R. magnipes, which is also called bigfoot). Both yellow and pink corals begin to emerge after morels and in advance of the spring porcini flush in the Pacific Northwest, and given good conditions they'll continue to fruit throughout the summer and into fall in some locales. Fortunately, these are the dominant species where I pick spring porcini, and I'll find the mushrooms cohabiting, but harvesters should learn the particulars of their own patches.

Look for corals that have just emerged from the duff and leaf litter. As they grow, the tips elongate and continue to trap all manner of forest debris in their clutches, making them a chore to clean. I look for tightly clustered corals that resemble cauliflower more than weird sea creatures.

I picked some corals the other day while scouting spring porcini. When I got them home I decided to try to keep their cool looking profiles intact by slicing up for tempura. The porcini went into the mix as well, along with other assorted veggies and shrimp. Use your favorite tempura recipe; I like this one.

Lamb Ragu with Morels & Fava Beans

It's a tough year for morels—and morel hunters—in the Pacific Northwest. My guess is that there isn't a person on the planet who knows why. We had good snowpack this winter, the wettest March on record, average moisture in April, and some nice warm days in May. Yet the morels remain coy. The ones that are up are very nice indeed: large, heavy-bodied naturals, most of them bug-free. But they're few and far between. Mostly I've been finding singletons like the five-incher below: big, beautiful, white-stemmed, cold to the touch, wormless—and lacking friends. The other image below is the exception for the most part. From what I've been hearing, this is the case for both Oregon and Washington. Montana is starting to put out burn morels, a different story altogether.

The point is this: Morals are a mystery. We don't fathom them. Neither morel hunters nor mycologists fully understand what makes them tick, and so guessing at why some years are more productive than others is just that: speculation. But hey, at least we have some new taxonomy to ponder as of this April. Morel geeks have been waiting for the DNA verdicts for a long time. It's no surprise that the morels of Eurasia differ taxonomically from our North American morels, and now we have new names to learn. For instance, we have a name to go with the confusing morel that hunters call the western mountain blond: Morchella frustrata (and, perhaps more relevant, DNA sequencing tells us it's in the black clade). Click here for the lowdown on new species designations across North America.

I had a pretty good outing this past week, all things considered. I got nearly a basket (just shy of 12 pounds) after putting some serious milage on my boots on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. I hit one good spot that produces every year; otherwise it was a matter of finding the right habitat at the right elevation with the right slope aspect, and then walking, walking, and more walking. I covered some ground, which is what you need to do on a year like this.

When I got my hard-earned treasure home, all the morels gathered on Wednesday went straight into the dehydrator because they'd spent too much time in a warm car. Thursday's haul got high-graded (even a single wormhole meant shunting to the dryer), bagged up (in paper bags), and immediately refrigerated. Luckily the high-graded mushrooms still represented the lion's share. Now, what to cook? Omelets, of course.

Next I bought some local lamb shoulder, a pound of fava beans, and picked a bunch of fresh herbs from the garden. Lamb, morels, favas, and herbs. Hello springtime!

1 lb orecchiette
3 tbsp olive oil
1 lb lamb shoulder, cubed
1 medium onion, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup white wine
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 cups or more, chicken stock
fresh herbs, chopped (oregano, thyme, rosemary)
1 lb fresh morels, halved
1 lb fava beans, shelled
butter
salt and pepper
parmesan cheese at table

1. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat in a skillet. Brown lamb thoroughly. Remove lamb.

2. In the same pan, sweat onion, carrot, and celery for several minutes until soft. Add garlic and another tablespoon of olive oil if necessary. Cook together for a minute. De-glaze with white wine. Stir in tomato paste and fresh herbs.

3. Add 1 cup of chicken stock, return browned lamb to pan, and simmer. Add another cup of stock when the first cup has mostly reduced and continue to simmer. Allow to reduce again, at least by half. Season with salt and pepper.

4. Bring pot of salted water to boil. Add pasta.

5. Saute morels in butter for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add fava beans and cook together another few minutes, until favas are tender but not too soft. Season.

6. Spoon ragu over pasta and top with morels and lava beans. Serve with parmesan cheese.

Miner's Lettuce Smoothie

It's not too late to gather miner's lettuce. The lowland varieties are flowering now, which isn't a problem in terms of taste, though as the season progresses they'll get increasingly pocked and leggy. Turn your attention to the mountains, where higher elevation varieties are just coming on line.

While gathering vanilla leaf the other day at around 3,000 feet on the far side of White Pass, I found good quantities of what I assume is Siberian miner's lettuce (Claytonia sibirica). It certainly looks like Siberian, though a commercial forager I know refers to it as alpine miner's lettuce. This is an especially succulent variety, with bright red coloration near the base of the stem and thick, crunchy leaves. I found it growing in the flood plain of Indian Creek, right out of the gravel, where it could be easily hoisted by hand and snipped off at the base, unlike woodland varieties which are frequently lassoed up with other plant life.

After surfing around the web in search of new recipes to make with miner's lettuce, I came across a site devoted to raw foods, with several smoothie recipes featuring wild ingredients. My daughter Ruby is a fan of smoothies, often putting a big glass of the stuff away before school in the morning. Smoothies are both a great way to deal with leftover fruits and yogurt, and a way for parents to disguise nutritious foods that might otherwise get snubbed. Into the blender went some vitamin c-packed miner's lettuce, in case scurvy was going around at school.

1 cup miner’s lettuce
1/2 ripe pear
1/2 ripe banana
1/2 cup blueberries
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup milk
Yields 1 tall smoothie

This smoothie retains a bit of the wild green bite that you'd expect from the miner's lettuce, but the fruits—the banana in particular—tone it down so that the flavor is fresh, sweet, and probably unlike anything you've tasted before. Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Vanilla Leaf Tea

If you have spent even a little time wandering lower and mid-elevation trails in the Pacific Northwest, you've seen vanilla leaf (Achlys triphylla), a common native plant that can grow in lush, luxuriant carpets of jaunty green on the forest floor.

Now is the time to collect some. As snow melts in the mountains, the woods awaken from their winter slumbers and begin to stir with energized green shoots of all kinds. Sometimes the forest floor looks like it has a bad case of bed-head after the snowmelt, all matted and olive drab. But fast-growing greenery like vanilla leaf brings a sense of alert vitality back to the woods, a vitality that I try to incorporate myself this time of year.

When you find a good dense patch, it doesn't take long to collect enough for a year's supply of tea. Just grab the young leaves in bunches and snip the stalks with kitchen shears. When you get home, you can trim the rest of the stem if you prefer. The other day I filled a couple garbage bags, most of it for Jeremy Faber over at Foraged and Found Edibles. He uses the vanilla leaf in several wild tea mixes that he sells at Seattle farmers markets. Jeremy had a good laugh when I told him I averaged about 45 minutes to an hour per bag; he picks the stuff about three times as fast. And I must have cut myself in at least three places with the scissors. Good thing I don't usually forage for pay!

Native Americans used vanilla leaf as an insect repellent and to perfume their homes. Once in the dehydrator, the plant's common name rings true: the room fills with the slightly sweet and calming aroma of vanilla. As a tea, it has the same affect. Vanilla leaf tea is not like stinging nettle tea—it doesn't announce itself loudly at the door as a nutrient-laden heal-all with punch. It's more laid back, with a reserved herbally essence that's mellowed by the hint of vanilla. Really, it's a wonderfully soothing tea, like a chamomile. You can adjust the flavor to suit your own taste by mixing in other wild ingredients such as rose hips.

Sustainable Eats May Challenge

Over at Sustainable Eats, where you can find the excellent new guide The Urban Farm Handbook, with advice and helpful tips on everything from backyard chickens to container gardens, May has been officially deemed the Foraging Challenge Month. Take the challenge to learn some useful new skills and give yourself a chance to win prizes.

Here's the deal. Make a meal in which all the main ingredients are wild and/or foraged. It's that simple. Then, at the end of the month, leave a comment on the Sustainable Eats blog about your experience to be included in a prize drawing. Even better, include a link to your own blog post about a wild and foraged meal.

Prizes include a copy of my book, Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager; Jennifer Hahn's book, Pacific Feast: A Cook’s Guide to West Coast Foraging and Cuisine; and Hank Shaw's book, Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast. Speaking of Hank, last week over at the Hunter Angler Gardener Cook blog, he offered his own foraging challenge: go find morels.

If you're new to foraging or always wanted to give it a try, this is a good month to get your feet wet. Across the continent, May is bursting with wild greens, spring mushrooms, and, depending on where you live, fish and shellfish. In my neck of the woods, we have the return of iconic runs of spring run chinook, known as springers, considered the tastiest of all salmon because of their high fat reserves. In addition, the Alaska salmon fisheries kick into gear with Copper River sockeye and chinook. May also marks the last razor clam dig of the winter/spring season in Washington as well as the first spot prawn opener. There's usually a tide low enough to dig for the wily geoduck. In the woods, meadows, and city lots, edible weeds are popping up everywhere, not to mention native greens such as fiddleheads and miner's lettuce. And let's not forget those wild spring delicacies, morels!

For my own challenge meal, I joined 14 high school students and two teachers last week to cook a wild feast after several days of foraging around Seattle and beyond. This is the second year I've been invited by the Bush School in Seattle to teach a week-long "experiential" class. Over the course of the week we visited a state forest to forage for native greens, picked weeds in an urban park, went clamming in South Puget Sound, and even hopped over the mountains to find a couple pounds of morels just as the mushroom season was kicking into gear.

On the last day we cooked up our harvest. Or rather, the kids processed and cooked the feast. Our meal is testimony to the varied and delicious menu that can be put together with a little knowledge of one's own habitat and some healthy tramping around in the outdoors. On our menu:

• Pickled Fiddleheads
• Dandy Bread and Muffins
• Clam Chowder
• Wild Green Salad (with miner's lettuce and wood-sorrel)
• Dandy Burgers
• Penne with Stinging Nettle Pesto 
• Beer-battered Lingcod (recipe in my book)
• Wood-fired Pizza with Nettle Pesto & Morels (at right)
• Dandelion Pancakes

Yours need not be so extensive. Just make sure the main ingredients on the plate are wild and/or foraged. Things to think about after you harvest (or purchase), cook, and eat your wild meal: How did it taste? Anything different? Was it worth your time and effort—and if so, why? Take the Foraging Challenge!