Happy August, food & foraging friends!
Every summer starts with an ambitious bucket list: camping under the stars, hitting a beach (even though I don’t really even like the beach), and a foraging wishlist featuring delicacies like black trumpets and chicken of the woods. So far I’ve done none of those things – but I’ve had a jampacked adventure- and wild food-filled summer. One of the things I love most about foraging is you never quite know what you’re going to find when you go out for a ramble, and if your eyes and mind are open, you’ll find many treasures, even if they aren’t the exact ones you seek.
This edition highlights a few of those odd end-of-summer treasures I’ve stumbled on looking for something else (ie, that daggone chicken of the woods I’ve yet to find).
Cauliflower mushroom (Sparassis genus) has long been on my hit list. I had nearly exited a trail when I came across a huge patch of these unmistakable mushrooms, which look more like a bouquet of el dente lasagna noodles than a head of cauliflower in my opinion. They can grow to a massive size; the largest in this patch was easily a few pounds of good eats. While the cauliflower mushroom doesn’t have a distinctive taste, its flat folds provide maximum surface area for pairing flavors. It crisped up nicely just with olive oil, garlic and thyme (my go-to when cooking a new species of mushroom) and made a great base for a red pasta sauce and quiche. I’d love to try cauliflower next time as a faux noodle in a drunken noodle recipe. Bonus: Sparassis are quite high in Beta glucans, purported to have anti-cancer properties.
Wild passionflower (Passiflora): I encountered a huge roadside swath of these showy beauties, otherwise known as maypop, walking from our hotel on the outskirts of Nashville on a recent family trip. Passionfruit flowers look like ballet dancers with lavender tutus, but they taste like nothing. That said, they are supposed to be good for everything from anxiety to ADHD, and I was sharing a room with my sister, who was working my last nerve, so I steeped this as a tea to help cool my jets.
Black-staining polypore (Meripilus sumstinei): I love when folks send me random mushroom pics to decode. A friend texted me a pic of this mushie on her birthday, to which I replied, “go get it!” Occasionally people will confuse this large lobed mushroom with hen or white chicken of the woods, but its defining characteristic is turning black upon touch. It’s often too tough to eat, but has a rich umami flavor that makes a good soup stock. I cooked this down into a dark broth that, with some soy sauce, made a delicious base for Shayla’s birthday ramen.
Left/top: Black staining polypore (middle pics – same day, before and after human touch) made a fantastic ramen broth, while cauliflower mushroom made a hearty quiche. Top and middle left, purslane two ways.
Right/bottom: Autumn olive, passionflower and black raspberries found on family vacay road stops. Reishi matched the ginger cat I found at the same time (my own kitty Ninjette examining the resultant tincture on the right).
Reishi (Ganoderma): I found this pretty baby while chasing tail – that of a stray kitty that crossed my path after a Mystics game. Pretty much all Ganoderma species (all known as Reishi) are prized for their medicinal properties in Asian medicine; this tough, bitter mushroom is believed to fight cancer, boost immune functioning, help regulate cholesterol and blood pressure, among other benefits. I doubt it really helps my wonky health condition (ME/CFS), but it probably doesn’t hurt, and it’s cheap and easy to make your own tincture compared to the often steep retail price. I take a dropperful of homemade Reishi and echinacea extract a day, and did stay pretty healthy this year throughout my many travels.
Purslane (Portulaca oleracea): Given all the aforementioned travels, my community garden plot has been a bust, but I can always count on the wild purslane to pop up. This slightly sour succulent has more omega 3 fatty acids than any other plant, among other nutritional benefits. Its tear-shaped leaves and juicy pickle-able stems are used in many culinary traditions, from Mexico to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. My go-to purslane recipe is to blend it into a cold yogurt soup with garlic and herbs—this season I also enjoyed it raw in a corn cucumber gazpacho and cooked in a split-pea soup. Its mucilaginous properties make for a good soup thickener.
Autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata): Waiting in a wooded parking lot on a family trip to West Virginia this weekend, I looked up from the car and yelped with joy to see the silvery leaf and red berry of autumn olive. These small tart fall berries are probably most often made into jam, but I think they are great on their own. I blended them with local maple syrup to serve over pancakes along with some bacon (and wild boletes in bacon grease) for a bang-up log cabin breakfast before walking the catwalk under the New River Gorge Bridge.
Summer’s winding down, but don’t dismay – wild fall flavors are just around the corner! My final ANXO Urban Forage & Cider tour this month just sold out, but next month I’ll share details of a year-long series of foraging walks I’ll be leading in conjunction with the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, so stay tuned for that. I’ll also undoubtedly have fun things to share from “mushroom camp,” aka MAW’s Annual Sequanota Foray. Hope to see some of you there – still a few spots left!
Wildly yours,
April
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