Happy July, food & foraging friends!
Some places just instinctively feel like home. That, for me, is Newfoundland – a naturally rich, rugged island to Canada’s far east affectionately known by “Newfies” as the Rock. Culturally, it’s probably the closest place to my Norwegian heritage this side of the Atlantic, from cod fishing in the fjords to foraging for wild cloudberries and lingonberries (known in Newfoundland as bakeapple and partridgeberries, respectively) in the spruce and fir forests. Indeed, Vikings settled here a millennium ago, though their traces were only discovered by a Norwegian couple back in the 1960s.
While many travelers start their journeys on Newfoundland’s more populated Eastern side in St. John’s, I landed at a tiny regional airport minutes from the little historic town of Cormack. This fascinating farming community, located in Western Newfoundland’s woodsy heart, was settled by WWII veterans as a planned government project; many of the original homes and farms still exist today.
My home away from home, the Upper Humble Settlement, was one such farm, run by an energetic young couple eager to put their town on the tourist map. This working farm and B&B has a focus on farmed and foraged local foods, and a passion for the people and stories woven into Cormack’s rich fabric. There I found a kindred spirit in co-owner Lauralee, exchanging recipes for lambsquarters and plantain, edible and medicinal weeds found in our respective gardens 2,400 kilometers apart. “West is best,” Lauralee joked about the friendly rivalry between the two sides of the island seeking to capture tourist dollars and hearts.
Newfoundland is a quirky place, from its time zone (90 minutes ahead of EST) to its unorthodox grammar and lilting accent, to my ear, falling somewhere between Scottish and Dutch. The island boasts 6,000 miles of coastline and yet just 500,000-odd people – the perfect place for a nature-loving introvert. I didn’t see a single stoplight or building taller than two stories my entire stay, and the only crowds I saw were of the terrible black flies that suck blood from your neck like vampires, leaving angry welts like hickeys. Its unique geology includes a special place called the Tablelands, one of just three places worldwide where you can walk on the Earth’s mantle.
Newfoundland’s food too is something to treasure – as long as you avoid too much of what Lauralee called “brown food”: deep fried foods like fish and chips. Staying with Lauralee and following her restaurant recommendations, I ate the rainbow instead: tiny ripe red strawberries sampled from a seaside graveyard; deep green fiddleheads sautéed as crostini toppers with local goat cheese; and golden “bakeapple” jam smeared on homemade scones. Given the window between frost dates is a mere five months, the bounty the island’s long summer days produces is impressive indeed.
I signed up for Lauralee’s food and foraging package, learning much more about Newfoundland’s indigenous culture and native foodways than I can mention here – but to highlight a few of the island’s notable wild foods:
Partridgeberries: known elsewhere as lingonberries, these tart, flavorful red berries made an appearance on my plate and in my glass on many occasions – from Crooked Feeder’s craft beers to teas and baked goods. Partridgeberries also showed up on my backcountry picnic on the “barrens” (a taiga ecoregion) with an indigenous-run company called Under the Stump, which caters to people with disabilities. My host Trina made a gorgeous fuchsia-colored dressing from the berry, as well as a fancy sugar rim for a picnic mocktail made from dehydrated partridgeberry powder. (Check out this Instagram post for more on this adventure!)
Alder: Enjoying a “taste of Cormack” in my host’s greenhouse, one of my courses included caribou filets gifted from a hunter friend of Lauralee. This was a special treat, topped with a sauce made from an imported heritage food called Fussels cream, but the real star of the dish for me was the “cracked pepper” made from fire-roasted alder catkins (the male tassel-like flowers) and ground with sage flowers and local sea salt. Alder is sometimes maligned as a “trash tree,” but it has many uses, and I’d grow it just for the delicious condiment!
Fireweed: This hardy, humble weed is by no means unique to Newfoundland, but something I got to enjoy several ways chez Lauralee: a beautiful salad dressing from the flowers, a tea from the fermented leaves, and its young shoots sautéed as an asparagus substitute.
Spruce tips: I love gathering spruce tips in spring, an act that connects me with my Scandinavian ancestors. Spruce is more scarce in our neck of the woods, where pine is king, but prolific further north, along with fir and larch (which Newfoundlanders call juniper). Sharing traditions from her Mi’kmaq heritage, Lauralee showed us how to cook a simple bread called bannock with comingled Scottish and indigenous roots, over an open fire, which we sprinkled with spruce sugar once it was golden like a marshmallow.
Spruce is also often paired with meats and fish, and has a great flavor profile for ciders and beers too. I gathered some spruce tips at a provincial park where salmon were leaping over a waterfall, and brought them back to make a woodsy liqueur. (Speaking of boozy flavors, another natural treasure of Newfoundland: chaga! Since it grows exclusively on birch, which is abundant here, the island has more than their share of this sought-after medicinal fungus. I got to try a potent rum infused with it at a great local brewery called Boomstick.)
Left/top: Ripe dewberry, partridgeberry, caribou with alder pepper, fiddleheads, spruce tips, caribou moss, chaga, blueberries and sorrel (known by indigenous people as “sour dogs”) were just a few of the wild foods of Newfoundland I got to experience.
Right/bottom: Scallops, cod, and mussels are relatively bountiful on the island. The coas boasts forageable plants too, from seaweed to beach pea.
While I’m more of a forest frolicker than a beach bum, Newfoundland’s coastlines are incredible places to forage, fish and feast. After a few days eating local delicacies of the sea like smoked halibut & halibut gravlax, seafood chowder, and the freshest, finest scallops I’ve ever laid mitts on, it was time for me to explore the coves and fjords where they came from.
I started my seaside foraging learning a few sand- and salt-loving plants: beach pea, which has beautiful edible purple flowers and shoots, as well as peas that can be harvested later in the season, and sea rocket, a peppery beach plant like arugula, but with meatier leaves. Both went into my salad, along with nasturtium leaves and flowers and fresh strawberries from Lauralee’s garden.
My last night in Newfoundland, I got join my host to explore the Bay of Islands in a dory, a traditional flat-bottomed wooden boat with the company Four Seasons, boasting the island’s only dory certified for charter fishing. Immediately after dropping our lines we caught cod — a small one we threw out for a bald eagle who had a hungry baby waiting in its nest. I kissed one big cod on the cheek before it went flopping back in the water — kissing a fish being one of an odd list of requirements to become a resident Newfoundlander.
When Newfies say fish, they mean cod. That’s how important it is to their diets, heritage and economy. In recent decades, the cod industry has been absolutely gutted, leaving many Newfoundlanders needing to seek employment elsewhere. The government still allows a certain quota of cod to be caught per day, to allow locals to fill their freezers for the long, hard winters. This podcast episode featuring renown wild foods expert, chef and outdoorswoman Lori McCarthy (whom I hope to come back to learn from) goes in depth into the history, zoology and culinary arts of these and other local treasures of the sea.
As we went out on a weekday, all our cod fishing was catch and release, but our host Darren had filleted a fresh cod from his prior weekend on the bay to share with us. For an appetizer, plump mussels fresh from the sea were cooked in nothing but seawater, the juicy meat disappearing from the shells as fast as the plate appeared. When I say plump, these mussels were borderline obese!
Next came the cod. Being a fish-loving Scandinavian, I’ve had my share of cod, and felt meh about it, if I’m honest. Having cod this fresh, golden fried in bite-sized morsels with just a light dusting of flour, was a taste revelation! I also got to try the cod “peas” – their sperm sacs, which were rich and flavorful as foie gras. I couldn’t help but to think of my recently past father and remember our first (age 8, caught an eel!) and last (age 48, caught a shark!) fishing trips together, in addition to my Norwegian ancestors, who lived and died by cod.
Like it or not, I’m back to steamy DC now, but I’m happy to report that wineberries are at their prime and chanterelles showing their delightful apricot colors in the local woods too. If you didn’t get a chance to catch the “Get Out There” WAMU segment featuring me on foraging a few weeks ago, give it a listen here! And if you want to learn what’s popping in the urban wilds this summer, I’ve got a few spaces left on my forage & cider tasting experience at ANXO July 30. Hope to see you there — otherwise, see you next month… Savor your summer til then!
Wildly yours,
April
PS: it’s pronounced Newfound-LAND, not NEW-foundland, but Newfoundlanders were too polite to correct me!