The long flower stalks of curly dock can be cooked like asparagus

Curly dock, Rumex crispus, is one of the most versatile and abundant wild plants around. The broad, vitamin-rich leaves are the most-known part of the plant, and can be used like spinach or kale. 

As a biannual plant, curly dock produces only energy-gathering leaves over its first growing season. During the second season, the plant will shoot up a central stalk that will flower and eventually go to seed. 

These stalks are a very tasty and unique vegetable, similar in texture to asparagus, but with a sour/tart flavor, more pronounced than the leaves, but less than lemon or rhubarb. Due to the look and the texture, foragers sometimes call this part of the plant "docksparagus".

For dinner last weekend used  made teriyaki-marinated, steak-wrapped wild veggie bundles, topped with a teriyaki glaze, inspired by negimaki. I used docksparagus, wild garlic scapes, and some bell peppers for color and texture. The rolls were very easy and quick to put together, not counting marinade time, with a pretty early clean up as well. 

You can even do the bulk of the work (preparing the marinade) in advance, and store in the fridge.

They came out delicious, while still being healthy: low calorie, keto / low carb, full of nutrients, and dairy-free. 

Using the bulbils of wild garlic is super easy: no peeling required!

I opted to use wild garlic bulbils (i've been calling them bulbettes al this time) heads instead of store-bought garlic here. I love using this garlic stage, it's so easy. The skins on the garlic bulbils are so incredibly thin you don't have to peel them for cooked applications, just mince everything -- bulbils, skins, flowers, stalks, flower stalks -- together and use in place of commercial garlic.  

Teriyaki steak rolls with wild plants 

Makes around 12 rolls 

2lbs sirloin, flank, top or bottom round, sliced to 1/8 thick

24 long, thin docksparagus stalks, remove tough or dried-out leaves

1 red, yellow or orange bell pepper, or 2 half peppers for variety 

Around 36 wild garlic scapes&

For the marinade / glaze

Beef stock 3/4 cup

Soy sauce 1/2 cup

Rice wine vinegar 1/2 cup

Garlic chili oil 1/4 cup, more or less for your spice level

Olive oil 1/4 cup

Sesame oil 2 tbs

Whole bulb garlic or equivalent wild garlic, minced 

2tbs fresh grated ginger

1 tsp white pepper 

1 tsp. corn starch or other thickener

1. Mix all marinade ingredients together in a large bowl or 9x12 baking pan. 
2. Add in the sliced beef and marinade at least one hour, or overnight. Marinade in the fridge if marinating longer than a couple of hours.
3. If you've marinaded in the fridge, remove and allow the beef to come to room temperature before cooking
4. Preheat the oven to 375.
5. Cut the docksparagus and garlic scapes into spears around 4inches long. Slice the bell peppers into long strips. 
6. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Remove the sliced beef from the marinade and lay out on the parchment. Do not discard the marinade

   Next time I would only use garlic scapes inside the rolls,  no garlic heads with bulbils

   
   
7. Place a mix of veggies on each strip of beef. I used 2 bell pepper slices, 3-4 docksparagus spears and 3-4 garlic scape pieces.*
8. Roll the beef around the veggies and fasten with a toothpick. Repeat for all beef slices. Drizzle with marinade. 
   
   
   
9. Roast in the oven for 15 minutes, then flip each roll and roast for another 10 minutes. 
10. While the rolls are roasting, bring remaining marinade to a rolling boil over high heat. Boil for at least 2 minutes. 

    For real though, remove the toothpicks before serving.  Don't make the same mistakes I did

    
    
11. Mix 1 tsp. Corn starch in a small amount of water. Add to the boiling marinade and reduce heat to medium. Allow to thicken, stirring, and remove from heat. 
12. Remove the rolls from the oven, plate, REMOVE THE TOOTHPICKS and cover with the teriyaki glaze. Serve hot.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays. With such an abundance of wild winter mushrooms in the woods this year, I feel like I've already unwrapped tons of presents. I've found nearly 10lbs of one of my favorites: Pleurotus ostreatus, aka the winter oyster mushroom! Oyster mushrooms are found in temperate regions, and even in the tropics, world-wide. They are fairly easy to identify, have medicinal qualities, and frequently fruit in abundance, making them a great wild food. And, of course, you don't have to forage for them, you can get them at almost any market!

The rain finally came to Texas, and broke the breeze-less 100+ degree heat. With that kind of weather, I hadn't been seeing many edible wild plants, except for heat-loving purslane. Even purslane needs water though, and the plants were wilted, shrunken, and unappetizing.

I served roasted milkweed shoots as a side--instructions below

Dryad's saddle mushrooms (Polyporus squamosus, also called Pheasant's Back mushrooms) are generally not very highly thought of. They are often considered tough and lacking in flavor, especially when not very, very young (under 3-4 inches across). I have been struggling with this mushroom for some time, and I refuse to give up on it. I found a nice haul last year, and experimented with a recipe on Steve Brill's website, but I have to admit--I really didn't care for it.

Gorgeous fruiting from last year. This is how they look when they haven't been rained on.

Then I found this website's recipe for a jambalaya, and I regained hope in the humble dryad's saddle. The jambalaya helped me figure out what dryad's saddle mushrooms are all about: though they are lacking in flavor, they have a nice, meaty richness to them--one of the meatiest mouth feels I have ever had from a mushroom. I wanted to play that up more, find away to enhance the meatiness and add flavor which the fungus lacked. This teriyaki was my first successful attempt!

The real struggle with this dish is the cutting. You want everything to be more or less even in thickness, otherwise some will burn when you roast them, while others will be undone. The ideal pieces are just this side of too tough--they have that nice meatiness, but will also be toothsome, even chewy. If you don't like that texture, you probably won't enjoy these mushrooms prepared this way.

Even though I am a little hung up on Japanese knotweed this time of year, it doesn't mean I forget about my other spring time favorites. Garlic mustard is getting to the stage where I like it best--the flowering stage, where the leaves are large, less-bitter, and very easy to harvest without a whole lot of bending over. Bonus--you are more or less guaranteed to encounter some while hunting for morels, fiddleheads, or ramps.

Ohitashi is a Japanese side dish which apparently means "soaked". It features blanched leafy greens, usually spinach, which are then soaked in Dashi and soy, garnished and served. The treatment enhances the greens with umami. Dashi is traditionally made with kelp and bonito (a fish), but vegan versions with just kelp (kombu dashi) or with shiitake mushrooms (shiitake dashi) can be purchased or homemade. Traditional garnishes include toasted sesame seeds and bonito flakes, I opted to be a bit non-traditional here and use garlic mustard flowers along with the sesame seeds.

For a dramatic presentation, Ohitashi is frequently rolled with a sushi mat into logs or towers, but the "lazy person's" way of just presenting as an attractive stack (the way I did) is just as delish and authentic. However you present it, Japanese side dishes are traditionally served on a separate plate than the main dish.

It has been forever since I have blogged. I have been feeling really down for the past month and more, in part because of things like work, but also because I have been just feeling very run down. I have every hope that things will turn around within the next few months, however, and I am trying to stay upbeat. My wonderful (in terms of picture--not performance) camera is also on the fritz, again, so that isn't helping. It seems to preferentially like to fail in the field, where I can't immediately address the issue. I also have the world's cheapest phone, so my camera phone pics have been less than stellar.

Back in the spring I predicted that this would be an insane year for the Chicken Mushroom, or Sulfur Shelf, Laetiporus sulphureus. And indeed, it has been. . .for everyone else. Somehow, throughout all of September, I have managed to just miss every single one of my chicken mushroom patches, and shown up a few days to a week late, to find a rotting, buggy mess. I missed out on easily over 100lbs of choice mushrooms this year, just from going to the wrong spots on the wrong days. It's a shame, because, in addition to being delicious, chicken mushrooms are extremely versatile.

Case in point: easily 30+ lbs of mushroom that was decayed and full of bugs, and there was more on the other side of the log

A little old and dried out, and the edges needed to be trimmed--but at least it wasn't buggy. (shot with my phone's camera)

Anyway, last Sunday I found a smallish haul of Chickens. They were a couple of days past their prime, somewhat dried out, and with the edges starting to mush. Any other year, I would have passed them by. This year though, I was desperate. At least, since this is October, they hadn't gotten buggy yet, and simply needed to be revitalized. I was determined NOT to be disappointed, and decided to view the somewhat dried out mushrooms as a challenge.

I am glad I did, as this dish proved to be just what I needed to cheer myself up--easily rivals buffalo "chicken" mushroom for my favorite dish with this fungus.

Beautiful, isn't it?

This dish came about a bit by accident. My husband loves to make sushi, and he does a fantastic job. We had some ramps, and decided to use them in place of scallions.

Then I thought of modern fusion sushi dishes, that use cucumber, rice wraps, etc. in place of nori. I really wanted to try it with ramps, since I love new ways to use them raw--besides the ubiquitous "slice and toss into salads". Raw ramps have an intense oniony sweetness, sweeter than the newest, youngest pearl onions, so sweet as to be almost berry-like.

The only thing better than one wild ingredient is two wild ingredients, and my thoughts immediately turned to knotweed. After all, it's Japanese, right? Get it? See what I did there? I crack me up.

Finally, most of the wasabi we get in the States is just colored horseradish anyway, and what foraged item tastes like horseradish? Yup, garlic mustard root.

So all the ideas flew together pretty quick, and I ran out to the park on my lunch break to gather the knotweed and garlic mustard (we did a ramps trip earlier this week).

One word of caution: you really have to enjoy the taste of raw knotweed to like this recipe, but if you do, then the crunchy tartness of the knotweed, mixed with the sweet oniony-ness of the ramps and the stickiness of the rice is really, really good. Alternatively, you could use pickled or blanched knotweed, for a milder flavor and softer texture.