Forbes gone wild

Interesting little piece on wild foods...

How To Forage For Springtime Food - Forbes.com:

"Two scavengers head to the Catskills Mountains in search of a first-class meal. Plus, ten cross-country spots boasting the finest wild food."

More at Grub Grab - Forbes.com with links onward to other resources...

Potato Wild Leek Soup

Ramps (Wild Leeks) finally getting plump
Went "Into the Woods" to gather some up for supper (and more)

Dug about 1/2 dozen bunches, give them a good shake
About enough to fill a grocery bag without packing

Rinse under the hose and toss into a cooler
Then, I choose to trim them outside
Wonderful fragrance, but very strong

Another rinse for the bulbs once inside
(Save the tops/leaves for pesto ... later, and I save in cold water)

About the only changes I make to the following recipe is to hit the mix a couple of brief times with a hand blender, but not too much, keep some chunks. I also added about a cup of Pino-Gris.
Garnish with a bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano and chopped bacon.

Straight from "My North" (Traverse Magazine)
Stalking the Wild Leek - My North - April 2008 - Northern Michigan:

Potato and Wild Leek Soup

* 4-6 slices bacon (optional)
* 4 cups chopped wild leeks, including greens
* 4-5 diced red potatoes
* 3 tablespoons flour
* 4 cups chicken broth
* 1 cup heavy cream
* Salt and pepper to taste

In a large skillet, fry bacon until crispy. Set bacon aside. Add leeks and potatoes to the skillet; fry on medium-low heat until leeks are tender. Sprinkle with flour; stir until flour is absorbed. Stir in chicken broth and simmer until potatoes are tender. Stir in cream and heat thoroughly. Add crumbled bacon and salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with chopped leek leaves if desired. Serves 4-6.

A photo-set:


Potato Wild Leek Soup - a set on Flickr



Wild Leeks Dos and Don'ts

* Do preserve leeks by pickling, drying or freezing. Just blanch first for 2-3 minutes.
* Do use both the bulb and milder leaves
* Do use a tool like a long knife or dandelion digger to help loosen the root hairs that grow from the tip of the bulb
* Do store, unwashed, in refrigerator for up to one week.
* Don't leave piles of leeks on the kitchen counter too long or your kitchen will smell like a bus in Rome on a midsummer day"

Empire Asparagus Festival

You have to scroll down for info
Empire Asparagus Festival-6th Annual Empire Asparagus Fest!


Only had time or room for a few tastings

Guillame's risotto with morels and asparagus was good
Deering's asparagus brats with Food for Thought salsa and mustard's were good as always.

Right Brain's asparagus was ... weird, but I'm sure it was healthy

Shirley went with the soup from Joe's

Different take on Spring Mix

Of course I would go for the pasta, and would lean towards the olive oil vs cream...

Recipe Redux - Le Cirque’s Spaghetti Primavera - NYTimes.com:

"Meant to be an expression of spring, the mad jumble of vegetables over pasta was mostly an expression of the death match between French and Italian cuisine (cream versus olive oil, sauce versus pasta)."

Spring

I intend to try this one soon as we get home

The Minimalist - The Flavor of Spring - NYTimes.com:

"In an ideal world, here’s what a spring dish might look like: you take morels from your foraging trip, cream and butter from your cow, and asparagus, shallots and herbs from your garden. You combine them in any way that makes sense to you, and then you thank the forest, the cow and your backyard for providing you with such amazing bounty."

and

"Combining dried and fresh mushrooms is a reliable way to transfer the exotic flavor of truly wild mushrooms to tamer domesticated ones. Using the soaking liquid for the morels makes it certain that none of their essence goes to waste.

The procedure itself is straightforward, with one exception: half-cook the asparagus first, so that it finishes in the cream, therefore absorbing a bit of it and becoming tender yet not mushy."

Recipe - Asparagus With Morels and Tarragon - NYTimes.com:

Morel Safety

From the Detroit News
IF you are going to forage, follow some rules
If not ... buy from Earthy.com

Morel mania: Now's the season for Michigan's prize mushrooms | detnews.com | The Detroit News:

"Morel-hunting tips

# Don't hunt on private property without permission.
# Carry a mesh bag to release and spread spores along the way; leave plastic bags and buckets home.
# Pinch or cut the morels you find -- don't pull them from the ground.
# Clean morels by shaking them or brushing with a soft mushroom brush. Some suggest soaking briefly in lightly salted water and then cooking immediately.
# Store morels (and other mushrooms) in paper in the refrigerator for better air circulation; avoid plastic -- it makes them moldy."

SAFETY ISSUES:

Real vs. false morels

The only sure way to distinguish between morels and false morels, which can be poisonous, is to have years of experience or be accompanied by an expert. MushroomExpert.Com offers this advice from Michael Kuo:

Rule No. 1
When in doubt, throw it out! If you're not 100 percent sure your mushroom is a morel, don't even consider eating it.

Rule No. 2
If it ain't hollow, don't swallow! Morels are hollow. Slice open a black or yellow morel, and you will find only air (and bugs, if you haven't cleaned it), from top to bottom. Slice open a false morel and you'll find mushroom flesh. Sometimes the flesh of a false morel is interspersed with air pockets, creating a "chambered" effect -- but there is flesh present. Consequently, false morels weigh more than morels.

Rule No. 3
If it's wavy, don't make it gravy! The caps of false morels are often wavy rather than pitted. The pits on morels are not, on very close inspection, symmetrical, but they are very regular when compared to the lobed, wavy, brain-like structure of the false morel cap.

Rule No 4
If it's reddish, you could be dead-ish! False morels frequently (though not always!) have reddish-brown shades. Some yellow morels develop red stains, especially as they age (the stain usually begins as a stripe on the stem and then spreads), and when morels are growing under pine. So, this rule might eliminate some good-eating morels. But it is more likely to eliminate false morels.

Spring!

Piece on ramps, with some receipes

Found Food|Ramps - WSJ Magazine:

"Can’t you smell that smell? The real scent of spring isn’t the tulip or the cherry blossom but the stench of fresh ramps"

some things I never knew about asparagus

Like that it keeps growing after it's picked !

The Curious Cook - The Curious Cook - Asparagus’ Breaking Point - NYTimes.com

"Green asparagus spears, cut down just hours after they’ve hit daylight and turned color, are the most lively of all our vegetables, furiously turning the sugars absorbed from their roots into energy and new tissues.

The harvest doesn’t stop them. Even cut off from their roots, the asparagus spears keep growing at the tip. If they’re stored lying down, the tips rise away from the pull of gravity, and can bend 60 degrees or more from the stalk before they run out of energy."

Read the Lable

Last week, we picked up a fresh chicken at Cherry Capital Foods, Shirley roasted it up - delicious.
Far too much for the two of us, so it's now in soup.

Full disclosure : I'm an owner of CCF

Anyway - fresh is so much better than packaged.

What's Really in Many 'Healthy' Foods - WSJ.com:

"A lot of Americans think they're eating a healthy diet these days. But it's easy to be fooled by our assumptions and the ways that food manufacturers play on them.

Take chicken. The average American eats about 90 pounds of it a year, more than twice as much as in the 1970s, part of the switch to lower-fat, lower-cholesterol meat proteins. But roughly one-third of the fresh chicken sold in the U.S. is 'plumped' with water, salt and sometimes a seaweed extract called carrageenan that helps it retain the added water. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says chicken processed this way can still be labeled 'all natural' or '100% natural' because those are all natural ingredients, even though they aren't naturally found in chicken."

Blogrolling

Blogrolling is when you link back and forth

That said - Earthy is looking forward to being able to provide great pork products.

Wooly Pigs: Earthy Delights and Bakers Green Acres

Life Extension

No, not a health thing, just bookmarking Bitten on being sensible about saving extra foods ...freeze them

With comments on various foods.

The Minimalist - Freezer Helps Make Cooking Cheaper and Easier - NYTimes.com

Rampin up

An Earthy Breakfast

Collected a few ramps (wild leeks) yesterday - for regular Sunday breakfast
Becoming a "rite of spring for us"

Ramps are rather sparse on our acres, not sure why, I guess it's soils/sun
Ramps are among the first growth in the spring, and by far the biggest.



A bit early, Trillium not out yet, and the bulbs were a bit small
Give them another week or two.

Some shots I took a few years ago
Ramps Morels Fiddleheads Recipe - Wild Harvest



I use a version of this recipe : Ramps Recipe

As with most, this is just a start, I rarely measure, just eyeball







No shots of final plating ... it gets a bit busy with timing

Especially as I was making "bacon fried" potatoes (juillene potatoes, onions and apple grilled in bacon drippings), easy over eggs (farm fresh Bakers Green Acres), toast (I never manage to get the toast timing right).
Serve up with OJ and fresh (fair trade) coffee.