Exploring Taste

Last summer the founders of Sahale Snacks approached me about participating in a film shoot in a remote location to highlight their passion for quality portable food. They started by telling me the origin of their business. Josh and Edmond, old friends, had climbed Mt. Rainier a few years back and while sitting on a glacier heating up nasty, freeze-dried camp food, they vowed to produce something better—healthier and tastier—that outdoors enthusiasts could eat in the harshest, most abject conditions. Or in the most splendid, beautiful conditions. This was the birth of Sahale Snacks.

The story resonated with me. I had experienced a similar food letdown while climbing Mt. Rainier. A package of ramen at 11,000 feet hardly seemed like the right way—nutritionally or spiritually—to prepare for the summit. So I signed on, joining ranks with a few other hand-picked recruits: Eric Rivera, a young and wildly ambitious sous chef at Blueacre Seafood; Jennifer Adler, a kelp-eating kayaker, teacher, and sought-after nutritionist; and Scott Heimendinger, the mad scientist in the group, aka Seattle Food Geek, who would be an aide-de-camp to Eric.



We spent three days in an out of the way corner of the San Juan Islands, foraging, frolicking, and camping on a hidden, cliff-lined beach in preparation for the Big Meal that would take place on the final day. The foraging wasn't always literal—notably that bottle of Glen Livet found in Edmond's duffel that produced a late night '80s singalong by the fire (sadly not captured on film). But by and large, the ingredients for our meal came either from the woods and surf right outside our tents, or else—as in the case of some delicious free range duck eggs—from locally produced sources nearby.



That meal is etched into my memory along with a few other all-time favorites that transcend the idea of dinner. Part of it was the atmosphere. We ate on the beach at a table fashioned by Scott from found driftwood, with kelp candle holders made by Jennifer, and the fickle San Juan weather gods smiling sunshine on us despite ominous weather reports. Eric pulled off an epic 10-course extravaganza that combined local and foraged foods with his madcap imagination and a fitting sense of the absurd.



Riffing on our location, Eric, with help from Scott and Jennifer, produced dishes like Angry Crab (Dungeness crab claws mounded up as if ready to strike and bathed in a spicy red sauce), High Tide (you can see my version here), Low Tide (manila clams plated on edible sand made from Redhook malt), and a creative take on Pasta Carbonara using squares of kelp frond as the "pasta," the aforementioned duck eggs cooked sous vide, and morel mushrooms poached in locally cured bacon fat. The entire meal was cooked on the beach over a campfire. Shortly afterward, not surprisingly, Eric got lured away by Chicago's renowned Alinea.



The videos for this adventure in foraging and food were professionally shot and edited by a film team from Austin. You can watch them here.

Nettle Green Curry

This was more or less an experiment. I wanted to see how the flavor of stinging nettles might accompany a traditional Thai green curry. I modified a typical recipe for green curry paste to my own liking and then added boiled chopped nettles a little at a time to the food processor until I could taste a change in the overall profile. At that point I added a little more nettle and called it good.

The result was a green curry with an earthier, woodsier flavor. You can adjust this earthiness to your own palate by playing with the proportions of nettles, basil, and cilantro. The paste is incredibly easy to make, and it tastes so much fresher, brighter, and greener than a store-bought paste. All you need is a food processor or blender (or a mortar and pestle if you have the time and stamina).

Nettle Green Curry Paste

1 cup stinging nettles, boiled, drained & chopped
1/2 cup basil, chopped
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1 stalk lemongrass, chopped
1 kaffir lime leaf, chopped
1 shallot, peeled
4 large cloves garlic
1 large thumb ginger, peeled and sliced
1 jalapeño pepper, sliced
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp shrimp paste (or salt)
2 - 3 tbsp lime juice
3 - 4 tbsp fish sauce
6 tbsp coconut milk

Add more coconut milk to the paste in the food processor if it's too dry. For the finished curry I used a small saucepan to cook a few heaping spoonfuls of the paste in a tablespoon of peanut oil for a minute to unleash the flavors, then slowly stirred in less than a cup of coconut milk until desired consistency and added a few more splashes of fish sauce and a sprinkling of brown sugar. Meanwhile I broiled a fillet of local sablefish for 10 minutes, which got plated on a bed of rice. The curry was deliberately thick so that it could be dolloped on the broiled fish with a garnish of thinly sliced red bell pepper, green onion, and cilantro on top. Crushed peanuts completed the dish. You can adjust the texture, spiciness, and sweetness of the curry to whatever you're cooking. The paste should keep for a week in the refrigerator, or longer if frozen.

Northern California Workshop

I'm honored to be part of Marin Organic's "Food for Thought" series this spring. Join me on March 31 in Bolinas for a foraging and cooking workshop that's sure to be a nourishing day for all. We'll spend a few hours outside identifying and gathering wild foods before returning to a nearby hearth to cook our catch and enjoy a local libation.

The workshop is 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. and costs $80 (including a copy of my book, Fat of the Land). Local forager Kevin Feinstein will be on hand as well to offer advice and sign copies of his new book, The Bay Area Forager. Accompany us for a fun day split between the field and kitchen, with a chance to learn handy skills, make new friends, and enjoy the regional bounty.

Hunting in the New Millennium

Taking up arms in order to take down dinner is no easy feat in our modern world of mixed messages and changing demographics, particularly for those of us who didn’t inherit the culture of hunting at birth. 

Tovar Cerulli and Georgia Pellegrini give us hunting rookies hope. Both came to the hunt later in life, not as a rite of passage but through an adult choice. One was a vegan starved for protein; the other, a former chef who wanted to live closer to the bones she made into stock. Their experiences, told in The Mindful Carnivore and Girl Hunter, are instructive for a new generation of would-be hunters.

Cerulli stopped eating meat after dispatching one too many brook trout as a young man. In a land of such plenty, it seemed somehow immoral to take a life. His vegetarianism led to veganism and finally, years later, to a trip to the doctor, who advised him to start reintroducing animal protein for health reasons. "I had more energy, felt more alive," he writes of his change in diet. His philosophical qualms were not so easily assuaged, however, so he resolved to kill and butcher his own meat—humanely, and with deference to the environment. Fortunately for Cerulli, he had mentors to ease him on the path. Along the way he reminds us of the many ironies that attend contemporary discourse on hunting and meat-eating (for instance, deer are routinely killed to protect organic crops). Trying to live in harmony with our bodies and the natural world is harder than most people want to believe.

Pellegrini's journey is one that will resonate with foodies determined to know where their sustenance is sourced—and how. Killing your own, after all, is the ultimate expression of this desire. She gives up a plum job in the wilds of Wall Street to go to cooking school, and one day finds herself faced with the sort of predatory act that is consistent with her new line of work: slaughtering turkeys. "The experience awakened a dormant, primal part of me," she writes.

And so both Cerulli and Pellegrini embark on age-old transformations, learning what it means to be at the top of the food chain. Cerulli's journey is mostly set in the Vermont woods of his home, where he patiently learns how to kill and eat the big game with the biggest payoff for a hunter trying to live in harmony with nature: white-tailed deer. Pellegrini's journey is more episodic and includes far-flung hunting expeditions in pursuit of a variety of feathered and furred game and with a variety of mentors, a few of whom turn out to be less than savory. Both Cerulli and Pellegrini address head-on the popular image of the "redneck hunter," but Pellegrini has personal run-ins with this species, and even in more upscale environs she confronts sexism and menace. Conscientious hunters will bridle at some of the situations she unwittingly falls into while trying to gain experience. She endures more than a couple canned hunts, and at one point gets bamboozled by a poacher. Implicit is the danger that faces a woman in an arena largely governed by men.

The ethics of hunting is a recurring motif in both books (and for those who want to delve deeply into this tricky realm, Cerulli recommends books by Ted Kerasote). What do we make of the fancy Texas "hunting" ranch, for instance, where the game is all exotic and hardly prepared for anything resembling the doctrine of "fair chase"? Or notions of the Great White Hunter in Africa (Pellegrini reminds us that trophy hunting pays for much needed conservation in poorer countries)? Or, closer to home for most hunters, the wounded animal that escapes only to suffer a long, drawn-out death? This latter conundrum is one of the events that weighed on my own mind after a hunt in Arkansas.

The point is, this hunting thing ain’t easy. About the moment of ultimate truth, Cerulli writes:

Holding the deer’s torn-in-two heart in my hand, I knew that oblivion had come swiftly. It was the shot I had hoped for: no more than a few seconds of shock, no time for pain to take hold. It was easier than most other ways a deer’s life was likely to end: in cold and starvation, across a car’s front end, at the teeth of four-footed predators. Yet that swiftness did nothing to alter the raw fact. I had killed this graceful creature.

Beginner and experienced hunters alike will find much to admire in these soul-searching accounts of learning how to kill for meat. Even though the authors are after somewhat different game—Cerulli wants to provide for his table while, as the title of her book implies, Pellegrini wants to take a seat at a table that was until recently not even available to her gender—the heart of the matter is how to live and eat honestly.

Stinging Nettle Gnudi with Sage Butter & White Truffles

Stinging nettles are emerging right on schedule in Puget Sound. I've written reams in the past about my weed crush on nettles, so click on the link above if you want to learn more about their natural history and culinary applications.

Figuring the dastardly yet oh-so-tasty greens were bound to be up by now, I went for a walk this past weekend in a Seattle green space with my son to check on signs of life. Spring premonitions were everywhere: Indian plum leafing out, towhees trilling their cat-like songs, street corner sandwich boards advertising little league tryouts. Sure enough, stinging nettles—always one of the first splashes of chlorophyl on an otherwise drab, mid-winter floor—peeked out from the leaf litter like groundhogs nosing out of burrows on shadow patrol, some of them just barely tall enough for harvest.

Riley demonstrated one of his favorite skills learned at Wilderness Camp: he carefully picked a nettle leaf with his bare hand by pinching its hairless top and folded it over several times into a little package which he then popped into his mouth and ate. Look Dad, no sting! We went to a regular spot and harvested a grocery bag worth of tender young nettle tops.

This time Riley wasn't so lucky. He got stung on his calf, his youthful skin immediately turning red with little raised welts. Nearby he found a frond of licorice fern with visible spores underneath and rubbed it vigorously on the affected area. This noted folk remedy has never worked for me personally, but Riley insisted that the fern did the trick. I took a look and was surprised to see that the redness and welts were really gone. Next time we might harvest that licorice fern for food, too.

Nettle Gnocchi has been a go-to recipe in recent years, but until the other day I had never made...

Nettle Gnudi

Yep, naked—as in naked ravioli. Gnudi are basically ravioli fillings without their pasta clothing. You mix a bit of flour into the cheese filling and shape it into little balls or pillows. You can serve them boiled, but I like adding one more step and pan-frying the gnudi so that the rich, creamy inside is contrasted by the fried exterior. Finely chopped nettles (or spinach or herbs) add an extra dimension of flavor. It's up to you how much herbage to add. I didn't want my gnudi to be overpowered by the nettles, so I limited mine to a scant, loose cup; you could double that amount and end up with much greener, woodsier gnudi.

2 cups ricotta
3/4 cup grated parmesan
2 eggs
1 cup boiled and chopped nettles
1/2 cup flour, plus more for rolling
1/8 tsp nutmeg
salt and pepper
olive oil
butter
fresh sage, chopped

1. Blanche stinging nettles in boiling water for a minute. Drain, shock with cold water, and squeeze out as much excess water as possible. Chop finely to fill a loose cup.

2. Drain ricotta and stir into large bowl with parmesan, eggs, chopped nettles, a dash of nutmeg, and seasoning. Slowly add flour. Mixture should be damp and tacky without sticking to hands. If a half cup of flour doesn't do the trick, keep adding a little more at a time until you can form a wet ball in your hand without it adhering.

3. Sprinkle work surface generously with flour. Take a snowball-sized handful of cheese mixture and roll in flour until thoroughly coated. Roll out into a snake with a half-inch to inch diameter depending on preference. Cut into pillows. Dredge the cut ends in flour and shape each pillow as desired. Set aside on floured plate.

4. Boil gnudi in batches in salted water. They're done when they float to the surface. Use a slotted spoon to remove from boiling water to a clean plate. Place cooked gnudi on wax paper on a cookie sheet. I like to boil a batch after each snowball's worth of filling is shaped. While that batch is boiling (it only takes a couple minutes), I move the previous boiled batch from plate to wax paper. Then I continue with another handful.

5. Pan fry gnudi in olive oil and butter with chopped sage leaves until nicely browned. Leftover boiled gnudi can be refrigerated.

Nettle Gnudi with Lamb Ragu, Carrot Puree & Sage Butter Crumbs

For a more involved dish I made a lamb shoulder ragu by browning diced lamb shoulder in olive oil with shallot, deglazing with a splash of white wine, and stirring in a teaspoon of tomato paste. This got served over the pan-fried gnudi along with a sauce of pureed stewed carrots and a sprinkling of sage butter crumbs.

Gnudi are easier to make than potato gnocchi, and the melt-in-your-mouth inside is a truly wonderful thing. Another reason to get yer weed on.

Celery Root Soup with Shaved White Truffles

I've been on a tuberous jag lately. It seems that each winter I adopt a different root vegetable for extra attention in the kitchen. Parsnips, beets, turnips, burdock, and yams have all had their due, among others, and let's not forget those tuber-like fungi, truffles. This year the winner is the homely looking celery root. Seems I'm not alone. Celery root, or celeriac, is more prevalent on restaurant menus than ever, usually shaved fresh in salads, roasted with a root medley, or in soup.

Celery root, it's true, is not much for the eyes. It looks a little like some intergalactic critter from the cantina scene in Star Wars, with tentacles and tendrils snaking around. But once you slice off the exterior you're left with a pearly white block of goodness that takes on a pleasing silky character when cooked, not to mention a deep earthy flavor that's reminiscent of a more rough-hewn conventional stalk of celery on steroids. My friend Brad makes cream of chanterelle soup with celery root; the root thickens and softens the soup so much that no actual cream is required.

Celery root marries nicely with other roots and gourds. You'll often see it paired in soup with parsnip or butternut squash. Recently I combined it with leftover roasted acorn squash along with yellow curry powder, fresh ginger, and garam masala, then served it with sour cream and cilantro. My favorite way to use celery root is solo. A celery root soup is about the easiest soup you can make and the payoff is well beyond the ease of preparation. The flavor is jaunty and rich enough to stand up to a healthy shaving of truffles, which happens to be a classic combo.

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 large yellow onion, chopped
2 - 3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large celery root, peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch cubes
salt and white pepper, to taste
4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
2 cups water
white truffles, shaved at table (optional)

Saute onion in butter and olive oil over medium heat until softened. Add garlic and cook another minute or two before adding celery root. Cook together, stirring occasionally, a few minutes. Season with salt and white pepper. Add stock and water. Simmer until celery root is soft and ready for blending, at least half an hour. Use immersion blender or food processor to blend thoroughly. Soup should be velvety smooth. Serve hot with shaved truffles on top if you got 'em.

Truffle Nirvana

The woods were alive with the sounds of trufflers. Dozens of humans and canines barked and yipped and hollered their triumphs and failures through a gloomy grove of 25-year-old Douglas-firs. They ran to and fro, scratching in the dirt with paws and garden cultivators. Most were amateurs, brought together by the 7th annual Oregon Truffle Festival. Longtime truffle researcher Dan Luoma of Oregon State was on hand to offer guidance. Just about everyone found winter white truffles (Tuber oregonense), though the season's odd weather patterns meant that most of the truffles were still small and less than perfectly ripe.

Later, at a luncheon at Willamette Valley Vineyards, I ate one of the best truffle dishes I've ever had: a Pinot Noir-braised pork belly with white truffle-onion jam, dried cherries, and a frisee with raspberry-black truffle vinaigrette (see below). It was a perfectly balanced blend of flavors and textures that was expertly knitted together by the truffle jam. This was proof that an Oregon truffle experience could be a culinary epiphany rather than a shrug.

Eating our home-grown truffles is not always so revelatory. Truffles get raked up too young, sold to retailers who don't know any better, and then passed on to customers who have no benchmark for comparison.

Fortunately this is not the case with the Oregon Truffle Festival, which aims to educate as well as nourish. The talks and lectures from truffle experts the world over were illuminating, and though not every single dish served over the course of eight different multi-course meals throughout the weekend was a resounding success, most of the dishes used generous amounts of ripe truffles in toothsome ways that showed off the fungi's singular qualities.

The Oregon Truffle Festival is held at the end of January each year in Eugene, Oregon, in the southern Willamette Valley. The valley is ground zero for our native edible truffles, though they can be found from the Fraser River Valley in British Columbia south to Northern California, in low elevation coastal Douglas-fir forests. This contrasts with European truffles, which are generally found in hardwoods.

Photo: Jen Reyneri

During our bus ride to the truffle patch, Luoma, a forest ecologist, explained that the Willamette Valley offers the best climatic conditions for our native truffles (not too hot in summer, not too cold in winter) and that truffles in general seem to prefer habitats near human activity, in particular cleared agricultural fields replanted with orchards. Truffles have long been associated with wine country, and this association is true for the vineyards of Willamette Valley, many of which have nearby Christmas tree farms or planted groves of Douglas-fir for timber or water retention.

In addition to the guided forays and lectures, the festival included dog-training workshops, cooking classes, and a grower's forum for the brave cultivation set.

Saturday night's Grand Truffle Dinner, the coup de grace, was as over the top as promised. I arrived, along with 300 other guests, at a hotel ballroom suffused with the aroma of Oregon black truffles (Leucangium carthusianum). Three-hundred plates covered three long prep tables as the first course made its debut, each plate decorated with a square of Celery Root & Black Truffle Panna Cotta topped with Dungeness Crab Salad & Parisian Pears. The kitchen staff, armed with mandolines, roamed up and down the line, shaving away. The scent of black truffles hung in the air like a heavy fog. Indeed, it was nearly disorienting.

My favorite dish of the night was probably the second course, White Truffle Scented Red & White Quinoa in a Creamy Risotto Style with Riesling Poached Hen's Egg, Shaved Coppa, Wild Winter Herbs, Lemon Thyme Emulsion & Shaved White Truffles. My favorite dessert of the weekend was a chorus of truffled sweets served earlier that day at Willamette Valley Vineyards: White Truffle Panna Cotta, White Truffle Raspberry Mousse, White Truffle Infused Tapioca, and White Truffle Brittle.

If you're a lover of truffles who can't afford a trip to Italy (and who can these days?) or simply curious, I highly recommend the Oregon Truffle Festival. Though not exactly inexpensive, the festival delivers plenty of value for the cost, and as far as I could tell there was no scrimping on the truffles. Festival founders Charles Lefevre and Leslie Scott run an action-packed weekend and the attendees are fun people who enjoy a good time. I made a lot of new friends at the festival, which is reason enough to spend a weekend in the beautiful and bounteous Willamette Valley.

Puree of Parsnip & Watercress Soup

So often in our land of plenty, opening the refrigerator risks a trip to the culinary version of the Island of Misfit Toys. In keeping with the leftover theme from recent posts, a hearty soup is always a good way to provide a home for the forlorn knickknacks hanging around well past their due-date, especially when you can combine the old with the startlingly new.

Recently we signed up to get a weekly box of fruits and vegetables delivered to our door by Full Circle Farms, near Seattle. This is a modified CSA, with plenty of locally grown produce and a smattering of other items that one isn't likely to harvest in Washington State in January—or any other month, for that matter (satsumas, anyone?)—almost all of it organic. The kids love racing to the door each Wednesday morning before school to see what the farm fairy has left us.

This system is not without its challenges, however. If you're not on top of your game, the boxed goodies can start to accumulate. Looking through the fridge the other day I found, among other things, an old parsnip, two onion halves in separate baggies, a peeled Yukon Gold potato, and a partial head of celery that was beginning to go limp. There was also a nearly full quart of chicken stock that needed to be used immediately or chucked. To these disparate ingredients I added the beautifully robust wild watercress picked in California and some black trumpet mushrooms from the same trip.

2 - 3 tbsp butter
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 medium parsnip, chopped
1 potato, chopped
3 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1 large bunch watercress, stemmed
salt and white pepper, to taste

1. In a soup pot, saute onions in butter over medium heat until slightly caramelized. Add garlic and celery and cook another few minutes until tender, then add chopped parsnip and potato and cook several more minutes.

2. Stir in stock and simmer for 15 or more minutes until parsnip and potato are tender.

3. Add the watercress, allowing it to wilt. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup. Adjust seasonings.

As a finishing touch, I made a crouton with toasted and garlic-rubbed rosemary bread covered in melted mozzarella cheese and topped with a trio of sautéed black trumpets.

Cantonese Shrimp & Winter Mushrooms

Happy year of the dragon! We celebrated earlier this week with a feast that included this classic Cantonese preparation, adding to the wok a few handfuls of wild winter mushrooms from Northern California to make it even better. Black trumpets and yellowfoot chanterelles, though not typical Asian fare, are well suited to such a dish with their slightly fruity flavors.

2 tbsp peanut oil
1 tbsp ginger, diced
1 tbsp garlic, diced
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced into half-moons
1/2 lb yellowfoot and black trumpet mushrooms, cleaned and uncut
1/2 lb Chinese leafy green (e.g. bok choy, choy sum)
1/2 lb shrimp, shelled

White Sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp Shaoxing wine
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp corn starch
6 tbsp chicken stock
1/4 tsp sesame oil

Mix sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. Heat oil in wok over high heat. Add ginger and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add onions and garlic and stir-fry another minute before adding mushrooms. Cook together a few minutes, then add leafy greens and shrimp. When the shrimp begin to color, give sauce a stir and add to wok. Cook, stirring, until shrimp is tender. Serve immediately, then do a dragon dance.

California Is for Foragers

I dodged Seattle's Snowpacalypse 2012 for a week in NorCal, fleeing back home just as the volley of storms continued south and transformed the Chetco, Smith, and other coastal rivers into angry brown torrents. This was a "working vacation" spent gathering material for the next book, but it was also an excuse to see some of the best that the region has to offer.

In a brief week I managed to pack in three redwood hikes, including an amazing 12-mile loop through the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park that took me out to a lonely Pacific beach where my footprints were the only human presence for miles, and another in Jedediah State Park in a windy downpour that dumped lichens and branches down upon me besides the rain.

The redwoods earn all their accustomed superlatives and more. I recommend a winter visit when you can be alone among the thousand-year-old trees and contemplate the forces that bequeathed us a mere one percent of the original ancient forest. Talk about one-percenter.

I joined a wild harvester friend of mine for winter pick on the Lost Coast (pictured at top), where we gathered 25 pounds of watercress from a pristine spring, the season's first greens. (I've been eating a salubrious watercress salad pretty much every day since then.) Stinging nettles and miner's lettuce were just beginning to hit their stride at this latitude.

My friend calls the old-growth redwood forest "bad medicine," an expression he picked up from a local Indian man. If you're a mushroom picker, this is no doubt true—not much in the way of commercial mushrooms grows beneath the world's tallest trees besides the odd hedgehog here and there. On the other hand—and this is one of the great ironies of the trade—the cutover redwood forests are filled with, not surprisingly, redwood decay, and where there is decay there is fungus. Hundred-year-old stumps as big as Volkswagen bugs now fill woods mostly shaded by tanoak, madrone, and Douglas-fir. Mushrooms that prefer this decay include bellybutton hedgehogs and yellowfoot chanterelles. But even better, in this mycophagist's opinion, is a species that seems to be mycorrhizal with the deciduous trees and yet needs some of that redwood decay to really prosper: the black trumpet (Craterellus cornucopioides).

It's not a good year in NorCal for winter pick. Those weeks of high winter barometer up and down the Pacific Northwest conspired to stunt the fruiting of mushrooms. Places that one might expect to be loaded with fungi are strangely bare. It remains to be seen whether the recent storms can reverse the trend. Pickers I spoke to in the Brookings area just over the border figured that the late rain would actually put an end to their season, but farther to the south the effects may be the opposite. I can say that I found quite a few babies in one upland patch in Humboldt that will certainly be flourishing in a couple weeks.



Back home I returned to a fridge filled with half-finished stuff. Such unappreciated riches shouldn't be thought of as a burden. The dog's breakfast is perfect way to get creative in the kitchen, and sometimes you make something unexpected and delicious that becomes part of the regular repertoire. A quick inventory revealed a partially eaten package of prosciutto, two Italian sausages, a corner of parmesan, and a big yogurt container filled with an accumulation of leftover diced tomatoes. What a bonanza!

With the tomatoes I made a simple red sauce with garlic and olive oil and let this simmer for an hour, adding water occasionally as it thickened. I sliced the prosciutto (about two ounces) into strips and crumbled the sausage, browning both in a little olive oil. To this I added two huge handfuls of black trumpet mushrooms. Meanwhile I brought a pot of water to boil and add a pound of pappardelle. Just before the pasta was cooked, I added two handfuls of stemmed watercress to the meat-and-mushroom mixture and allowed it to wilt. The plated pasta got a ladleful of red sauce and a few spoonfuls of the meat-mushroom-watercress. Shavings of parm added the finishing touch.