Happy September, food & foraging friends!
At first I envied the culinary judges, then I pitied them: Tables were mounded with pies, cakes, cookies, breads, biscuits, chili, mac-n-cheese, hot sauces and more, requiring the cross-training of a competitive eater with the discerning palette of a food critic.
Given my quirky day job peddling DC’s recycled poop fertilizer, I was tapped to judge the compost competition of the DC State Fair this month, which came with the perk of tasting the copious leftovers from the culinary categories. Who knew that banana pudding cake (with homemade ‘nilla wafers on top) could be something I wanted to marry — me, who doesn’t even like bananas?
My takeaway from the event: I need new friends. Friends who can cook.
Truth be told, I have some very fine food friends, and I treasure their talents. This past month, at “mushroom camp” aka MAW’s 35th Annual Sequanota Foray, my friend Chef Julian threw down an amazing wild mushroom banquet: Mushroom crostini, pasta with lobster mushrooms, chanterelle chicken and cornbread, mushroom burgers with ramp aioli, and the pièce de résistance, a chanterelle-candy cap maple cheesecake (I could be in a throuple with the banana pudding cake and that cheesecake, if they wouldn’t mind sharing me).
While some friends have been sending me brag pics of their pawpaw hauls (don’t share pics unless you’re willing to share pawpaws!), another forager friend sent me a photo of his foot. It had doubled in size from what was likely a copperhead bite, while out gathering said fruit on a local trail. Aaron spent several nights in ICU on morphine and an anti-venom drip, in excruciating pain. Two weeks later, he is still hobbling around on crutches. Please wear close-toed shoes, people. I’m guilty of wearing sandals off trail and myself have gotten into poison ivy and some unidentified arthropod bites that itched like hell for a few weeks this summer. Covering up in the woods is one of the easiest ways to protect yourself from bites of all kinds.
I haven’t had time to scour the trails for pawpaws and early fall mushies, but I have had a nice flush of edible weeds popping up in my neighborhood garden. Frankly I’ve been feeling in a little bit of a food rut, so I recruited two foodie friends, home cook Amar and pro chef Bert, to come up with menus based on my finds.
Left/top: A few of the star entries from the DC State Fair, plus my wild weed foccacia art (and that’s me sizing up the fair compost entries in the middle).
Right/bottom: Chef Bert (middle top) and Amar (middle bottom) whipped up edible weed feasts, featuring mugwort, shiso, mallow and pigweed.
Mallow (Malva neglecta): Mallow is a super common urban plant with some VIP siblings, including okra, cotton, and cacao. It’s got some curious culinary applications (“mallowmallows” made from extracting its meringue-like goo), and I’ve cooked it a few ways, but never found a style I loved it, until it got in Chef Bert’s mitts. He sauteed mallow with onion and turmeric in olive oil, served with fresh lemon and pita bread — which turns out to be a traditional Middle Eastern recipe called Khobeizeh. It tasted like candy. I still don’t believe he didn’t use any other spices. I also used its lovely lavender flowers to adorn focaccia, along with mugwort leaves and young wild onion.
Amaranth or pigweed (various species of Amaranthus): Another plant that grows prolifically in our garden beds, pigweed also just has not rang my bell until now. I enjoyed this two ways: one, in Chef Bert’s delicious multi-legume dal, and second, in Amar’s veggie mushroom stir fry, along with wild hedgehog mushrooms and a smattering of other wild greens. One of my favorite forager chefs Marie Viljoen has a whole chapter on this edible, utilized around the world as a treasured wild green, in her cookbook Forage, Harvest, Feast. Several other wild favorite greens of mine are in the amaranth family, including lambsquarters.
Shiso (Perilla frutescens): I normally see shiso, an Asian native, all over local wooded trails this time of year, but this year the dark purple variety popped up in our garden shared beds. This wonderful herb, used widely in Japanese, Korean and other Asian cuisines, tastes somewhere between mint and basil but with a punchier flavor. Both Amar and Bert did a fantastic tempura with its leaves – crispy and flavorful, while mellowing its raw bite. I also did a watermelon feta salad with wild mint and shiso that was a nice balance of salty, sweet and savory.
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris): Mugwort is another Asian staple, used in everything from mochi to tea. I find it popping up wild along the boardwalk near my office as well as along a high fence in my alley. Everything I’ve ever made with mugwort I’ve adored, from beer to crackers to salt. Now I can count two more ways I love thee. First, Amar and I made a very simple Japanese mugwort pancake, which was more sweet than savory and could be a star at brunch. Then, Bert stole the show with an incredible pureed mugwort soup, made with a base of potatoes and mushrooms, and a dash of cream. Yummy yummy in my tummy!
I interviewed some of my fungal food friends for a piece on “Mushroom Mania” in this month’s edition of District Fray magazine – check it out here! I also have a couple fun pieces out on local museums this month, including the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, where I will soon start leading a monthly series of wild food walks.
For being my beloved subscribers and reading to the end, I am giving away a few bottles of reishi tincture and plantain salve I just made — first to respond (and pick up) gets the prize!
Wildly yours,
April
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