The Wine Forest Blog — harvesting wild foods

When you spend lots of time wandering about in the woods, the odd things you find yourself doing there sort of sneak up on you.  Many many springs ago I had taken a chef for a hike about the woods. I’d sort of forgotten them when a voice yelled “what the hell are you chewing”.  I turned and realized I had fir tip bits stuck around my lips.  Uh oh, trust me, no one was doing that then.  Plucking and tasting the delicate apple green little tips from one tree and then another, had always been a private pleasure. Each...

Rich, elegant, and intense, our native American black walnuts and the magnificent tree they rain down from – embodies so many of the qualities that we admire and take pride in.  Just a taste of the rich depth of their flavor makes me feel more grownup and worldly.  If the English walnuts are Hugh Grant then black walnuts are Sean Connery ( What American actor fits? Gregory Peck? Robert Mitchum? ).   Sadly, most Americans have never tasted black walnuts.  The simpler English walnut is all they know. Black walnuts’ oily richness is magnificent in pastries and is famously great...

Elderberries are one of the true crown jewels of wild foods.  Not so very long ago, elderberries were a food that I could use to separate out the more adventurous, open-minded chefs with.  If the chefs were worth their salt, they could mess about with the elderberries I provided and quickly recognize the complexity great depth of elderberries’ flavor. The port-like and cassis flavors would just astound them. Even now, many chefs don’t have the opportunity or imagination to really go wild with this remarkable fruit.  After all, elderberries are not impressive if just tasted fresh from a cluster.  It...