Happy June, food & foraging friends!
DC is an urban jungle right now, bursting with heat-loving edibles like purslane, chicory, and mallow, and I’m here for it (minus the mosquitoes)! I have lots of news and events to share (skip to the end for that) but I promised to share deets from my foraging & food trip to Slovenia… so let’s start with their schnapps.
Yes, schnapps – but not this is not the peach schnapps snuck from family liquor cabinets for Fuzzy Navels. We’re talking the spectrum of flavors from every branch of the plant kingdom, as it’s done in Slovenia. Schnapps start with a base of apple or pear brandy, then are infused with botanicals. Root and fruit, everything is fodder for schnapps, which range from bitter to sweet, floral to fruity. We sampled versions made from spruce tips, echinacea, wild strawberries, currants, beech leaves, green walnuts, acacia flowers and even the common weed plantago (more on that below).
My Atlas Obscura adventure was billed as a Forest to Table tour, and it was quite literally so, as we spent two mornings trailing forager Katja Rebolj (see her featured in this Netflix episode of Restaurants on the Edge) around the forest and alpine meadows collecting flowers, herbs and greens to flavor our dinners. One meal featured a buckwheat flour flatbread topped with a ricotta-like cheese called skuta, pumpkin seeds (ubiquitous in Slovenian cooking), pestos made from wild chervil and a cousin of ramps called ramson, and a sampling of wild pickles made from daylily bud, ramson bud and bamboo. Our flatbreads got the perfect crisp in a wood fired oven in a 400 year “black kitchen,” which was essentially a room without ventilation used for home smoking and curing (so called because everything in the room was blackened with soot and smoke).
In contrast, our second forest-to-table meal got the white linen treatment at Restaurant JB, the first Slovenian eatery to make the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Here, chef and owner Janez Bratovž incorporated our forest finds into fine dines – delicate elderflower, finely minced thistle leaf and a green pop of ramson seed pods sprinkled like flower confetti onto Jerusalem artichoke on a bed of ramson sauce. The daylily and lacy chervil leaves got a Japanese tempura treatment that made them extra light and crispy; other forest herbs flavored an extra buttery risotto. It was an inspiration to see these humble ingredients elevated and presented so artfully; I vowed to dress up at least one meal a week back home to eat more mindfully.
There’s far too much to say about Slovenia’s wild food traditions for this short format but I encourage everyone to check out Atlas Obscura’s offering (and my posts on Instagram with more photos)!
I do want to highlight a few plants that I encountered in Slovenia we can also find right at home, most being Eurasian immigrants:
Plantago is a weed I talk about on my walks as a poultice to fight itching and inflammation from insect bites. I was surprised to see it featured in Katja’s cookbook as a culinary plant and especially that she likes to eat the flowers, which have a mushroomy flavor. Her cookbook has a beautiful presentation of plantago pressed whole into a quiche. We saw at least three species, two of which are very common in the US: Plantago lanceolata, with longer, narrow leaves, and Plantago major, with fatter leaves. Plantago is also commonly used to soothe throats: you can find this plant incorporated into lozenges in every pharmacy in the region.
Spruce tips is another spring forage sparingly used in the US, though not hard to find. The tender young spruce shoots can be easily spotted in spring, as they have a much lighter green color than the older needles. I sampled them in pickles, schnapps, and syrups in Slovenia – lucky for us you can sample them in a cider at ANXO right now, infused by my forager friend with Arcadia Ventures.
Dandelion greens are also commonly gathered by Slovenians and others in the region, and fermented into sauerkraut or fried with potatoes. A Croatian told me it’s also enjoyed as a simple salad, especially in lean times. It’s not too late to find young dandelion greens here – I like to sauté them with a fried egg for a light yet nutritious breakfast.
Elderflower is another hugely popular plant to forage. I heard more than a few Slovenians and Croatians talk of making syrup and running out a few months later as they couldn’t ration their stash well enough. The berry is also used but the flower seems more commonly utilized. I enjoyed this several ways in Slovenia, from an apple-elderflower cider to an elderflower lemonade. And of course, schnapps!
Left/top: Gather herbs and flowers with master forager and chef Katja Reboj in Slovenia’s Velika Planina, with two different schnapps from spruce tips grown at high and low altitudes. Right/bottom: Wild flowers, herbs and pickles topped a buckwheat flour flatbread cooked in a 400-year “black oven.”
I was truly sad to leave the forests of Slovenia (the country is 58% forested!), but happy to return to so many treasures blooming back at home, from milkweed to mallow. I’m delighted to share that some of my foraged finds will soon be hitting the plates at DC’s Michelin-starred The Dabney, whose chef and owner has a keen interest in foraging and bringing forgotten local foods to their tables. I’m excited to see how some of my favorites get incorporated into their tasting menu – stay tuned!
Other news and upcoming events:
This Thursday June 23, 6-8 pm, final Forage & Cider Tour of the season at ANXO. There are plenty of spaces as of now; please spread the word!
Next weekend, June 25-26, I’ll be posted up at the National Mall talking mushrooms at the Folklife Festival for MAW DC. Saturday at 3pm I’ll be facilitating a mushroom culinary demo with Chef Iulian Fortu of Arcadia Ventures and Sunday at 4pm I’ll be on a panel about foraging. The lineup for the weekend is so rich with performers and speakers!
July 4, I’m organizing a mushroom cookout for MAW DC at Watkins Regional Park. Must be a MAW member to attend, but memberships are only $20 annually, and you’ll get a free gourmet mushroom burger at the event and a wealth of knowledge for the months to come.
August 11-14: My friends at Unquote Travel and I are finally launching our weekend Forage and Feast Tour of Virginia’s Northern Neck! I can’t wait to share this special region on the Rappahanock River with y’all. Two years in a row we’ve hit the jackpot with chanterelles in this area but there is so much more to experience, from its seafood to its wineries.
Wildly yours,
April