Apropos of foraging

Mentioned in the Hexclad thread I immediately thought of the spring foraging which thrills me when I am home in the upper midwest. Ramps and watercress are soon to be in season with the cress likely popping in some areas already. The cress is prepared for immediate consumption but the ramps, if plentiful, are enjoyed fresh but also made into a raw pesto or a cooked soffrito and frozen for use throughout the year.
What seasonal foraging are you up to?

The cress is prepared for immediate consumption but the ramps, if plentiful, are enjoyed fresh but also made into a raw pesto or a cooked soffrito and frozen for use throughout the year.

Do ramps keep as well as, say, cipollini? Perhaps a par-boil then cover with olive oil? Or do the greens degrade too quickly for this?

What seasonal foraging are you up to?

None, but that's by inclination rather than lack of opportunity. A surprising number of wild edibles grow in NYC. Gingko trees are the most obvious but there are many others.

[Jenise]

Kind of like Jeff here. Wild chanterelles are possible but you have to know where to go and no good mushroom hunter ever reveals their spots--you have to find your own and I've never had the time nor inclination to suss those out. Ramps should grow here but I've never known of any. I harvest wild chickweed for salads when it comes up; that's about it. My foraging is limited to trying to find less common fresh ingredients in a town that's fairly white-bread in its tastes--all that has to happen in this town to guarantee that no one has any lemon grass is for Jenise to plan a dish around it.

Jeff,
After harvest I keep the plant intact with the rootlets in a bit of water. Bulbs are quite hardy and can stay a few days like that but the leaves are fragile. There are recipes that specify blanching the leaves but I've not done that.

What seasonal foraging are you up to?

I've not come across ramps but one when i was away from home and they were not worth harvesting.

Our foraging is done in autumn when we gather blackberries and apples for crumbles and various wild plum varieties (damsons, and bullaces) for stewing or making into jam. I also gather sloes for a friend who makes sloe gin

We harvested a good crop of bullaces and are still eating bullace jam.

20200915_Bullace-Grape-Jams.jpg

Beautiful Peter! We never see wild stone fruit. I had to look up bullaces for understanding and was reminded of the closely related sloe and the fantastic sloe infused liqueur, Patxaran, of the Basque region. I'm sure I would love sloe gin as well.

We're probably at least a month a way from ramp foraging (Betsy got very good during pandemic shutdown, unsure if she'll have as much time). I love them just grilled, but also in risotto, on pizza/foccacia, etc. We pickled when we had too much (Momofuko recipe). The greens last a few weeks that way, the bulbs much longer. A Blue Hill seafood box included mignonette using previous year's pickled ramps- I copied, not quite as good,but still delicious. Used the last of 2020 ramps last month in a Momofuko ranch dressing recipe, Betsy who despises ranch dressing liked it a lot (for me, one of best dressings in my life),

[Jenise]

Betsy who despises ranch dressing liked it a lot (for me, one of best dressings in my life),

Betsy and I have something in common. I better look this up?

Betsy and I have something in common. I better look this up?

https://peachykeen.momofuku.com/recipe/ ... -dressing/

I'm sure I would love sloe gin as well.

I hadn't heard of Pataxaran before, but it seems from the Wikipedia entry for sloe gin that several nations have the idea of making a liqueur by marinating sloes in spirits. Another source referenced is an American article that says "Sloes are little berries, about the size of a dime, that grow wild in hedgerows all over England."

The little ones may be the size of dimes but mostly they are larger. I haven't got a photo showing their size, but I took a photo of them growing - it's here
https://petes-pix.blogspot.com/2019/09/ ... sloes.html

The reason they are found in hedgerows are that the blackthorn, on which they grow, is a thickly growing bush/tree with large thorns, so it makes an ideal hedging plant to deter animal from breaking through.

I meant to say earlier that we had a pub with a foragers restaurant here in St Albans. You could book to be taken out foraging and then you were served with a meal made from plants foraged on that expedition. It went closed suddenly in 2019 and I never went there but their home page survives giving an impression of what they did - http://the-foragers.com/

Today The Observer published an article on the increasing popularity of foraging
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... mainstream

I have over time foraged chestnuts, blackberries, apples, mushrooms, samphire, seaweeds.
Now I have my own apple trees, blackberries are now much rarer and so widely sprayed as to be not worth the risk (they are ne of the many bad introduced species) and the sea veg are protected.
I still go mushrooming, last year in he verge in-front of my neighbours house, where there was an interesting mix of fields, yellow stainers and death caps! Sometimes there are pine mushrooms under trees around the corner from my local pub.
This autumn I might make a trip over the ranges where I know of a pine plantation where there are usually heaps of pine mushrooms (aka saffron milk caps)

Wow, you have chestnut trees? They're all gone from America, wiped out by an epidemic in the 1920s. There have been recent efforts to breed resistant cultivars but I don't think they've been widely successful.

Jeff, I haven’t been down to the feral chestnut trees for few years they were awkward to access and I’m less agile than I was then! Just buy them now, always plenty around in the season.
Introduced species seem to do very welll here, often to the detriment of indigenous ecosystems.

I am reminded that I gathered lots of sweet* chestnuts on a walk we did on October. There were so many on the ground. I roasted them at home. They were small but sweet. When I was a lot younger there were sellers on London streets with braziers selling freshly roasted chestnuts in a paper bag. Delish...


*sweet chestnuts are a different variety to the much more common 'horse chestnut' which grows abundantly here and isn't edible but at the end of a string through its middle was essential for a playground game of conkers. Sweet chestnuts have soft, more dense, spikes on their outer covering than horse chestnuts which have fewer but firm spikes . There are 5 or 6 sweet chestnut trees in a copse growing near us but someone always gets to them before I can. The ones I gathered are in a wood off the main paths.

The American chestnut is in the same genus as the European sweet chestnut and also produces edible fruit. It was the dominant tree in the Appalachian Mountain forests until the chestnut blight arrived from China in the early twentieth century. The American chestnut is now considered a critically endangered species. There are controversial plans proposed to develop a blight-resistant hybrid cross with Chinese chestnut trees and to use these to restore chestnuts to their original native range.

-Paul W.

I remember a black walnut tree on my grandmother's land (lots of staining power). And a horse chestnut tree outside the library when I was a kid.

Right. Horse chestnuts make conkers, but they are not edible (by humans). The 'sweet' chestnuts all died in the 1920s here. I once rented an apartment in a house made *entirely* of chestnut because it had become a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. It's a pretty wood, not so dark as mahogany and not so tight grain, either.

Yes, I like roasted chestnuts. My dad knew how to do it. I have tried various ways but I'm not satisfied with the results.

And I totally don't understand people who boil chestnuts or who buy them in a jar. Ick.

Shelled, boiled in water with a little salt and a bay leaf was the only way we had them growing up so that is the flavor and consistency in my taste memory. Usually served after dinner as a dessert. I do occasionally purchase the jarred ones from France when I want to add them to a winter salad or make a Monte Bianco. For the Monte Bianco I then braise them in milk before ricing them.

Thanks, Christina. I don't think I've tasted any of those styles of cooking chestnuts.

Yes, I like roasted chestnuts. My dad knew how to do it. I have tried various ways but I'm not satisfied with the results.
.

i Just put them on a baking tray in a hot oven till they stared to blacken. Tasted just like the ones cooked over a brazier in my childhood.