David Smith 2/14/15 David Smith 2/14/15

Acorns, manna of the forest

I could begin almost every entry with "When I was a kid...".

When I was a kid my fondness for acorns was almost romantic, if that's the right word to describe a never waning curiousity and compulsion to gather and fill my pockets with the magic little capsules. I loved the artful look and contrasting texture of them (a smooth and shiny sphere topped by a course and fuzzy beret). But even more appealing than their outward appearance was the promise contained within. Inside each shell was the promise of not just a single giant tree, but the potential for a whole forest of giant trees. One kernal, if it fulfilled its individual potential could lead to countless more trees, more acorns, more forest. More deer and squirrels, and other animals and birds too.

Acorns also carry the promise of food, whether it be food for those deer and squirrels, who in turn provide food for we humans, or immediate food for us as we consume the nuts directly. In that regard acorns remind me of domestic corn, where a single cob offers the promise of a meal and many future meals.

Oak trees can produce truly astonishing amounts of acorns. Read any article on the subject and you'll likely get figures from between a couple hundred up to 700 or more pounds of nuts per tree, depending on various factors such as tree species and the quality of the mast in any given year. That's thousands of pounds per acre. In my opinion, no other wild nut embodies the concept of nature's abundance so succinctly as does the acorn.

I wrote about processing acorns into flour a couple years ago (Oct. 30, 2013). You can click here: Acorn Flour, to view that process. I used basically the same cold leach method this year as I always do, although I did also hot leach* a portion of the acorns and then dried them in the oven before fine grinding, just to compare the two methods again. Other than a slight difference in color in the finished products I noticed no significant difference in quality between the hot and cold leaching methods this year. The expected additional bitterness sometimes associated with the hot leach method did not manifest. I also performed the final grind in a commercial coffee grinder, set at both espresso and turkish grinds, which produced a wonderfully fine flour. However, as excellent as the flour quality was the oils in the nuts did result in some caking and extra post-grind cleaning of the machine.

Leaching is necessary to rid the acorns of the bitter tannins they contain. They're pretty well inedible without going through the leaching process. You use water to leach the bitter stuff out of the nut, just as you leach the good stuff from tea leaves with water. Cold leaching is the preferred method if flavor is a more important consideration than time. It generally takes at least a week of cold leaching, with daily water changes, to sufficiently remove the bitterness. Hot leaching is quicker. It can be accomplished in a single day, but has the disadvantage of occasionally resulting in a bit of residual bitterness even though most of the tannins may be removed. Heat can alter some of the internal compounds of the nutmeat and result in an off-taste, just as overheating garlic, for example, can result in a bitter taste. I took my time and regularly tasted the acorns during the hot leach, to make sure I didn't go too far with the process. My diligence paid off and the flavor was fine. Again, please refer to the blogpost I linked above for a more detailed review of the cold leaching process.

I ended up with 4 large jars of fine quality acorn flour, storing it in the freezer until ready to use. Acorns can become stale, like any nut, and freezing significantly slows that deterioration. We use the flour most often in bread, pancakes and pie crusts, but I've also used it in cookies and donuts, breakfast gruel, dumplings* and as a thickener in soups. The acorn "milk" that comes from the cold leach process, particularly after the first day or two of leaching, can also be used as a liquid ingredient in bread-making or anywhere else you might use water as an ingredient. It can also be drunk straight up or with a bit of sweetener such as honey and/or maple syrup. There are nutrients in that milk, why waste them? I'm also planning to be experiment with acorn milk this year in my homebrewing efforts. Acorn Beer sounds like a winner.

We love the bread that acorn flour produces. It's flavorful, filling and richly satisfying. I generally use a loose 1:2 ratio of acorn flour to bread flour when adding no additional dry ingredients (e.g., cattail pollen, flax or corn flour). If you want a bread that acts more like a bread then you do need to use wheat flour, as acorn flour doesn't have the gluten required for bread to rise. The resulting bread is denser and has a more compact crumb than regular wheat flour bread.

Basic Acorn Bread Recipe

Ingredients:

1 heaping cup acorn flour
2 generous cups bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp dry yeast
1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cup lukewarm water

1. Thoroughly mix dry ingredients in large glass bowl.
2. Add 1 1/2 cups water and mix thoroughly. Add more water if needed, to create a wet, somewhat shaggy mass of dough.
3. Cover bowl with cling wrap or a tea towel. Set in a warm place and let rise for 10-12 hours.
4. After the initial ride scrape the dough out onto a floured surface and quickly knead into a flattened ball or oval, depending on the shape of the final loaf you prefer. Wrap the ball, seem-side down, loosely with cling wrap, or place back in bowl and cover again. Let rise again for an hour or two (it won't rise too much the second time).
5. Heat oven to 450 degrees. If you want the normal store-bought loaf shape, oil a bread pan and place the oval-shaped dough in it. Or, if you prefer a rustic, round-shaped loaf you'll use the rounder dough ball. In that case, place a dutch oven with lid into the oven and allow to heat to oven temperature. When the dutch oven is hot, place the risen dough ball gently into it, cover and place back in the oven. Bake for approximately 30 minutes. Remove dutch oven lid and bake for an additional 20 minutes. If using the regular bread pan, simply place in oven and bake for approximately 45 minutes. Check interior of bread with wooden skewer to assure that it's done. Let cool on a wire rack.

Acorn Flour Pancakes

1/2+ cup all-purpose or bread flour
1/2 cup acorn flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup whole milk
glug of vegetable oil
1 egg

1. Mix dry ingredients in bowl.
2. Whisk together milk, veg oil and egg in another bowl. Add liquid to dry ingredients and mix quickly and roughly with a fork.
3. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Pour a small glug of oil in pan and spread it around.
4. Pour about 1/3 cup of batter for each pancake. Try to fit as many as you can into the skillet.
5. When the surface of the pancake gets a little bubbly, then gently flip and cook the other side for a couple minutes until browned and interior isn't doughy.
6. Top with a bit of butter, maple syrup, berries, whatever you like.

*Hot leaching: I filled a deep sauce pan about 1/3 to 1/2 full with shelled nuts. I then ran hot tap water into the pot, set it on a burner and brought it to a boil. Once the water came to a boil I stirred the nuts for about a minute, drained the water and repeated the process. It took 10 or so water changes before the nuts began to taste tannin-free and bland. I continued the process a few more times until they were bland and palatable. I drained the acorns and patted them dry with a towel on baking sheets. Then, I set the oven on low, placed the baking sheets into the oven, propped the door and allowed them to dry over several hours, giving the pans a shake every so often. After the nuts dried completely I chopped them up on a cutting board with a chef's knife, dried them in the oven again for a couple hours, and finally ran them through the grinder to turn them into flour.

* The recipe for acorn dumplings may be found here: Squirrel & Dumplings Soup.

Acorn flour bread with wild grape jelly.

David Smith 2/10/15 David Smith 2/10/15

Mango Habanero Hot Sauce

What I like about this sauce is how the heat and the sweet so comfortably balance one another. It has a lovely, soft fruity and maple syrupy sweetness as it hits the tongue. A moment later the heat slides in and you get that nice habanero burn that fills your entire mouth and lingers for around a minute before it's gone. I love the surprise of...

Almost everyone enjoys a good hot sauce, and some of us are hot sauce freaks and aficionados. There are so many fantastic hot sauces on the market today, with as many flavors and levels of heat to keep your palate interested for many years. It's also easy enough to make your own hot sauces: the foundational recipe of vinegar, hot peppers and salt offers a framework for a practically infinite combination and variety of ingredients. What kind of vinegar? What variety and combinations of peppers? Sea salt, smoked salt, pink salt, etc., etc.. A teaspoon of this or a cup of that? Let's add some sweetness with agave syrup, honey, fresh blueberries or pineapple. How about carrots, or tomato, or nasturtiums. The possibilities truly are endless.

That being said, I made a couple of fresh batches of hot sauce over the last week, one of which I'll share here. I'm going to give you the recipe for this hot sauce, with the perhaps irritating caveat that you probably won't be able to replicate it. Heck, I don't think I'll be able to replicate it even though I was quite specific in recording the ingredients and amounts. Some of the ingredients were what I'd call "one-offs". That is, they were unique ingredients that I just happened to have on hand and likely won't have again. For instance, I pickled some habanero peppers from my garden a few years ago, and I had one jar left on the shelf. I'll be darned if I remember what recipe I used at the time. I also had some hot pepper pulp in a jar in the fridge from a batch of hot sauce I made last week. That pulp came from a larger jar of shredded hot peppers I got from my friend Marty three years ago and that have been fermenting in the back of the refrigerator ever since. I have no idea what variety of pepper they were either; all I know is that they were hot and delicious.

Those two key ingredients are non-reproducible. But that doesn't really matter. You can still follow this recipe, using reasonable facsimiles, and still turn out a fabulous hot sauce.

What I like about this sauce is how the heat and the sweet so comfortably balance one another. It has a lovely, soft fruity and maple syrupy sweetness as it hits the tongue. A moment later the heat slides in and you get that nice habanero burn that fills your entire mouth and lingers for around a minute before it's gone. I love the surprise of that delayed heat sensation. It's not real hot; I'd say it falls somewhere in the middle (a 4 or 5) on a 1-10 heat scale. But you can certainly increase or decrease the heat by manipulating the quantities of peppers and/or honey and maple syrup. That's the beauty of making hot sauce: everything is adjustable, and your results will almost always be good (and if they're not as good as you had hoped, you can still go back in and add things to adjust it further).

1 ¼ cup distilled white vinegar
½ cup water
1 tbls mustard seed
1 tsp coriander seed
1 ½ cup small sweet yellow peppers, chopped
4-6 garlic cloves, smashed
2x2-inch piece fresh ginger, chopped
½ cup honey
¼+ cup maple syrup
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
5-6 fresh serrano peppers, chopped
10-12 pickled habaneros with pickling juice
2 heaping tbls fermented hot pepper pulp
1 mango, peeled & seed core removed
1 banana
½ tsp fish sauce
1 ½ tsp sea salt

1. Simmer first 13 ingredients (up to and including the fermented hot pepper pulp) in sauce pan for approximately 10 minutes. Allow to cool enough to be safe in a food processor.

2. You're going to use the food processor now, so figure out how many batches you'll need to divide the sauce in order to process it all. You don't want to do too much at one time. For my processor I did it in 3 batches. Peel and chunk up the mango and banana and divide that into the number of batches you're going to process (again, it was three for me). Add the appropriate amount of mango and banana to each batch and pulse until liquified. Return to sauce pan.

3. Add the fish sauce and salt. Mix in thoroughly.

4. Fill sterile bottles with the hot sauce and store in refrigerator. I save and re-use old hot sauce, kombucha and other similar bottles for this very purpose.

note: I like my sauce to have a little thickness and texture to it. If you're one who prefers a silky, Tabasco-like sauce you can strain out the little chunky bits (and you might want to save that pulp for another batch down the road).

David Smith 1/21/15 David Smith 1/21/15

Roast Squirrel with Orange Blackberry Cranberry Sauce

...a dish that's simple, is most excellent and has some real nice visual appeal. Blackberries have always been a good match for squirrel in my book, and when I...

What do you do when you've got a package of dressed and quartered squirrel in the freezer, a bowl of still-pretty-fresh cranberries hanging out in the fridge, a pile of leaves and stems from a just-pruned thyme plant, and fresh blackberries on sale at the grocer...and you're hungry? You get creative, that's what.

squirrel w orange blackberry cranberry sauce

Here's a dish that's simple, is most excellent and has some real nice visual appeal. Blackberries have always been a good match for squirrel in my book, and when I bought them the other day pairing the two was exactly what I had in mind. I ate an orange this morning just to get something in my stomach right away, and that gave me the idea to make an orange blackberry sauce for the squirrel.

As an aside, I rarely immediately dispose of things that smell good, and I like to keep a bowl of aromatic bits and pieces on the bathroom counter. Orange peels, herb clippings, twigs from the Christmas tree, discarded soap wrappers...anything dry and "pretty" smelling. The peels of my just eaten orange went into the bowl. Our thyme and rosemary plants are also doing very well since we brought them inside for the winter, with plenty of new bright green growth bending towards the windows. I've cut them back at least twice already since late November. Today I trimmed the thyme and ended up with a cup or two of great smelling twigs and leaves. I separated the good from the bad, tossed the leafy hard twigs into the potpouri bowl, and set the soft stuff on the kitchen counter for use in this roast squirrel dish.

As I was prepping everything I recalled that we had a bowl full of fresh cranberries in the fridge that had been waiting patiently for a couple weeks. There were a few undesirables in the bunch but most of them were still in fine fettle. Why not add those as well?

Here's the recipe. It's really just a normal orange sauce such as you might use with duck, but with the berries added. Duck and squirrel are similar in some ways and I think this sauce would make a great compliment to either one.

Ingredients:

a couple of squirrels, cleaned and quartered (I had a package of thighs and forequarters from three or four squirrels, so that's what I used here)
stick of butter
1 or 2 yellow onions, thickly sliced
half-dozen or so whole garlic cloves, smashed with the side of your knife
about a ¼ cup fresh thyme
1 orange, skin-on, sliced into ¼" circles
1 or 2 cups of fresh cranberries
about 1 cup orange juice
orange peel from one orange
about ¼ cup light molasses
½ cup light brown sugar (you could use honey too, but cut back on the amount)
piece of fresh ginger about half the size of your thumb, grated or diced
½ cup Grand Marnier orange liqueur
salt
cracked pepper
at least a cup of fresh blackberries

1. Heat oven to 350°.
2. Gently melt about ¾ of the stick of butter in a large cast iron skillet (I'm using cast iron for just about everything these days). Line the bottom of the skillet with a single layer of onion slices and all but one or two of the smashed garlic cloves. Toss in a handful of the cranberries.
3. Lay the squirrel on top of the onion/garlic/cranberry bed, in a single layer and evenly spaced. Salt and pepper the squirrel. Sprinkle the thyme leaves evenly over the squirrel. Lay the orange slices on top (you don't need to completely cover with the orange slices, a few should do the job).
4. Into the oven with the skillet. Set the timer for 30 minutes.

Squirrel thighs and forequarters layered over onions, garlic, cranberries.

Now for the sauce.
1. Combine the orange juice, orange peel, molasses, brown sugar, ginger, a couple cloves of smashed garlic, orange liqueur, and a big handful of cranberries in a sauce pot. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Once it hits boil turn the heat down and let it simmer, stirring regularly. Salt and pepper to taste, about a teaspoon each.

2. After simmering for 10-12 minutes, strain the liquid from the chunky stuff through a strainer, pressing the juice through the strainer with a rubber spatula. It doesn't have to be completely clear of the little bits, at least not for me. Return liquid to sauce pan and put on a low simmer. Add most of the blackberries and loosely smash them to break them up a bit (save a few to add to the final plating). Reduce until you get the thickness you're looking for. You could add that last ¼ stick of butter here if you wish, to give it a little more richness. I chose not to.

Back to the squirrel.
5. After 30 minutes, remove skillet from oven and with tongs turn each piece of meat. There should be a good amount of liquid in the bottom of the skillet, but the meat should not be completely submerged. Cook for another 30 minutes.

6. After 30 minutes, turn the pieces of meat one more time and set the oven on broil. Broil for only 5 minutes or so, just enough to give a nice browning to the surface of the meat.

7. Plate it up, pour the sauce, eat it up. A couple of wine recommendations for this dish: Von Stiehl Winery in Algoma, WI makes a Cherry Bounce that is to die for, and Door Peninsula Winery in Sturgeon Bay makes a wonderful Blackberry Merlot. Both do nicely here.

Roast squirrel with orange blackberry cranberry sauce.

David Smith 1/6/15 David Smith 1/6/15

"Ever eat a pine tree?"

Euell Gibbons helped me to see that pine trees offered so much more, in the form of culinary adventure. I looked for and thought about other edible aspects of pine trees. What did Gibbons mean when he said, "Many parts are edible?" Could you just pluck a twig and start chewing?...

That's the quote that immediately comes to mind whenever I think of Euell Gibbons, naturalist and father figure of the modern foraging movement. I was just a kid when Gibbons was all over television hawking Grape Nuts cereal. "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible." became one of those popular cultural catch-phrases that kids and grown-ups repeated when passing a pine tree, decorating the Chistmas tree or simply having cereal for breakfast (and a heckuva lot of us had Grape Nuts in the kitchen cupboard, though truth be told most of us kids much preferred Captain Crunch, Cheerios or Frosted Flakes; the Grape Nuts were really for Mom).

But Gibbons was spot on in heralding the pine tree as a good source of nutrition and sustenance, as he was with just about everything he wrote about in his popular series of foraging and back to nature books. As a kid I knew that pine trees carried nuts/seeds in the cones but could never find any with seeds big enough to make the labor of picking the cones apart worthwhile.

I also knew from my youthful readings of early American history and adventure stories that the needles (or more accurately, the leaves) helped early Americans stave off scurvy, which I only knew as the "sailor's disease", and its relevance to mountain men and pioneers was lost on me at that time (once people reached land and got off the boat, scurvy - whatever that was - was a non-issue, or so I incorrectly assumed). And of course we knew that pine pitch, that impossible-to-remove super-sticky gunk leaking from the trees, was used by the Indians to make their birch bark canoes. Beyond that all I knew as a kid was that Christmas treees were pine trees, they were great to play under and build forts around in the winter snow, and they smelled good.

But Euell Gibbons helped me to see that pine trees offered so much more, in the form of culinary adventure. I looked for and thought about other edible aspects of pine trees. What did Gibbons mean when he said, "Many parts are edible?" Could you just pluck a twig and start chewing? (Yes, you could, I discovered, but who in the world would want to. It was gawd-awful in every way.)

I did learn about using the leaves to make tea, and that some pine trees did have seeds large enough to harvest, even if they weren't readily available in Wisconsin. I also learned that pine pitch was used as a kind of chewing gum by American Indians, though that too proved to be a once-is-enough experiment for me.

It wasn't until years later, as my culinary skills evolved professionally and I began to marry them to my foraging, hunting and fishing pursuits, that I revisited Euell Gibbons old TV commercial catch-phrase. The first culinary experiments I did with pine were simple infusions. I stuck fresh pine sprigs in bottles of extra virgin olive oil and grapeseed oil, and in vodka, and allowed them to infuse over several days or several weeks. The olive and grapeseed oils developed piney, citrusy notes (more promounced in the grapeseed oil) that were great in salad dressings, and we used the vodka to make some really wonderful "Christmas martinis" (complete with spruce tip garnish) at our coffee house restaurant, Stumpjack. The piney vodka could be a key ingredient in any number of cocktail recipes. That's really where it's at with pine, leaching the the aromatic, oily essence for use as a flavoring agent. Other than pine nuts and its use as an herb or spice, there's really not much of the tree itself that you'd want to consume wholly on its own.

We also make a simple syrup using pine needles that we use in coffee drinks, tea, and some other cocktail concoctions. A favorite winter morning coffee drink is a riff on Irish Coffee where I add a splash of pine infused simple syrup to the coffee and whiskey, topped with a lightly pine infused whipped cream using a whipped cream charger. You've got to taste and keep track of how much and how long you infuse things with pine however. A little goes a long way here, and it's not hard to go overboard with pine flavor and aroma. Too much and you might find yourself drinking something more like a mug of furnisher polish. You really want something that has a subtle citrusy flavor and just a whisper of pine aroma. Enough to make you feel warm and cozy, but not enough to curl your hair.

You can also use pine needles much as you would an herb like rosemary (they share similar attributes and flavor profiles) or sage. Pluck them from the branches and sprigs and use them fresh, or dry them and store as you would any other dried herb or spice. Unless I'm using them in a bouquet garni where the whole sprig is the way to go, or in an herb or spice satchel that is removed from a simmering soup before serving, I will mince the leaves on a cutting board. For example, the other day I made a loaf of Irish Soda Bread into which I incorporated a couple tablespoons of minced pine needles, along with pine infused buttermilk, to give the whole thing an aromatic, piney essence.

This post is getting a bit lengthy, so I think I'm going to make this a two-parter with a couple more recipes, next week perhaps.

Recipes

Pine simple syrup:
1 cup water
1 cup cane sugar
Half-dozen pine sprigs

1. Gently heat water and sugar, stirring constantly, until sugar is dissolved.
2. Add pine sprigs and bring to a boil. Let boil for a minute, turn off heat and allow to cool.
3. Remove sprigs, strain and bottle, refrigerate.

Pine flavored whipped cream:
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup powdered sugar
Handful of pine sprigs

1. Give the pine sprigs a few wacks with a meat hammer or press them with the side of your chef's knife. Just rough them up a bit to facilitate releasing their oils.
2. Place the sprigs in a mason jar and add the heavy cream. Screw a lid on and set in the fridge for a few days. Taste the cream after two or three days to see if it's where you want it. If not, add a couple more sprigs. The pineyness of it depends how much and what kind of pine you're using and even the time of year (pines seem more or less aromatic depending on the season).
3. Once it's to your liking remove the sprigs and strain the cream. Add the powdered sugar and mix very well.
4. Add cream to whipped cream charger, shake and serve.

Piney Irish soda bread:
This is a basic soda bread recipe.
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 tbl sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1½ tsp salt
½ stick butter, cut into ½" pieces
2 heaping tbl minced fresh pine needles
1½+ cups cold pine infused buttermilk plus a bit extra for brushing
1 egg

1. To infuse the buttermilk, follow the same procedure as with the piney whipped cream recipe, except of course use buttermilk instead of cream and ignore the whipped cream charger. This means you'll have to plan ahead a few days before making the soda bread in order to allow enough time for the buttermilk to become properly pine flavored.
2. Line a large cast iron skillet with a piece of parchment paper (cut paper in a circle a bit larger than the skillet).
3. Mince fresh pine needles. Depending on the type of pine you're using (I prefer a fraser fir or a balsam) the leaves can be pretty oily and will easily stick to your knife, so it'll take a little time.
4. Heat oven to 375°
5. Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, butter in a big bowl. Add minced pine needles and mix again. I do this in two steps because it's just a little easier getting the pine needles distributed into the flour after the butter is incorporated.
6. Whisk the egg and buttermilk together then work into the four mixture.
7. Flour your counter and turn the dough out onto the counter. It will be sticky. Knead it just enough to form it into a ball, flouring your hands as you go.
8. Place the dough ball onto the parchment-lined skillet. Cut a large X into the surface of the dough. Brush surface with buttermilk.
9. Bake for about an hour, giving it a brush of buttermilk once or twice during the bake. Check doneness with a toothpick or wood skewer.
* You could, if you want, add a cup of golden raisins or currants to the batter as well.

This bread has an almost biscotti- or scone-like quality to it. It's quite nice with coffee and perhaps a bit of fig jam.

David Smith 12/11/14 David Smith 12/11/14

Squirrel & Dumplings Soup (acorn dumplings too)

...chicken noodle soup became squirrel noodle soup, and I decided to make it even more traditional and belly warming by adding dumplings. I remember with great fondness the dumpling soups my mom and grandma would make: giant kettles of soup (grandma had 11 kids of her own and always an assortment of cousins and grown-ups wandering in and out of the farmhouse on any given day) with big white, glistening dumplings floating on top. They were wonderful.

My wife and I each caught a cold virus last week. Chicken soup and plenty of fluids is the traditional good remedy, but we had no chicken. We do, however, have a freezer full of dressed squirrels (yes, from casual to evening wear...ba-dop-bop!). So, chicken noodle soup became squirrel noodle soup, and I decided to make it even more traditional and belly warming by adding dumplings. I remember with great fondness the dumpling soups my mom and grandma would make: giant kettles of soup (grandma had 11 kids of her own and always an assortment of cousins and grown-ups wandering in and out of the farmhouse on any given day) with big white, glistening dumplings floating on top. They were wonderful. Hot and doughy on the outside, soft and bready on the inside. Arguably the pinnacle of comfort food.

BTW, this recipe is for friend Tim Suchoki, whose birthday it is and who asked me to share the recipe. Happy birthday Tim.

I made two separate batches, two days apart, one with regular white flour dumplings and one with acorn flour dumplings. I used two squirrels, plus their giblets, per batch (hearts and kidneys) (the livers wouldn't go well here, so I sauteed them and ate on toast while the dumplings were simmering). The second batch that I made the following day, was more of a stone soup recipe, as I decided to use a few things off the cuff, so to speak. I'll give the basic, extremely-loose-on-amounts recipe, understanding that the second batch really only differed in a few spices and the addition of acorn flour to the dumplings.

Ingredients
Soup:
* 2 squirrels, cleaned, with hearts & kidneys
* stock, about 2 quarts. Chicken stock is preferred, but I used some turkey stock I made from the Thanksgiving turkey for the first batch. Second batch I used a combination of turkey, squirrel and beef stock, as I had some partial containers of each to use up.
* 4 or 5 carrots, diced about ½"
* 1 or 2 white onions, diced about ½"
* 3 or 4 garlic cloves, fine dice
* any other veg you might want to add (I added peas to the second batch)
* egg noodles
* spices (I used fresh thyme & sage, as well as dried cayenne, celery seed, red pepper flakes, basil flakes and of course sea salt and crushed peppercorns. a bay leaf or two doesn't hurt either.)
* butter or bacon fat
* water

Dumplings:
* 2 cups flour (for the acorn dumpling I used about 1½ cups reg flour and ½ cup acorn flour)
* 4 tsp baking powder
* 1 tsp baking soda
* pinch salt
* pinch of grated nutmeg if using acorn flour
* ¾ cup milk
* couple tbl butter or lard

Cover squirrels is salted water and bring to a hard simmer until the meat is falling off the bones. Periodically skim the scum from the surface. Remove the squirrels and allow them to cool enough to handle. Save the water as you'll be able to use this in the soup.

Once the squirrels are cool enough to handle remove the meat from the bones. Pay particular attention around the spines and ribs. There are some small bones in those areas, so take your time when picking everything clean.

Sweat the onion and garlic in bacon fat or butter until the onion is soft and translucent. Add the squirrel meat, giblets, and spices, and saute just long enough for everything to make a first impression, just a few minutes. Add stock to the pot with the squirrel broth (you should have only a cup or two of the broth), add the meat/onion/spice mix, any veg you might want as well as a bay leaf or two. Heat to simmering.

I like to cook the noodles separately and add as I bowl it before eating, otherwise they tend to get a bit too soft. But you can do that now if you wish, or wait until you're ready to eat. After all, egg noodles only take 5 or 6 minutes to cook. There apparently is some debate over the appropriateness of having both noodles and dumplings in a soup. I like both, so that's what I did, convention be danged.

You can, of course, bowl it up and eat right now. It's great just like this. But if you do want to add dumplings it's easy enough to whip up a batch.

For the dumplings, mix together all of the dry ingredients. I added a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg to the acorn dumplings because I think it adds a little magic in bringing out the acorny goodness. In a small pot add the butter or lard to the milk and gently warm until the fat melts. Whisk to blend. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and roughly and quickly mix until the dough just comes together in a rather ragged manner.

The dough should be ragged, loose and sticky.

Roll the dough out into rough balls, but don't work it too much or compact the dough balls. Rough and quick is the way to go.

Gently drop the dumplings into the simmering soup, cover and cook for 10 or 12 minutes. When done the insides will be like freshly baked bread: kind of between moist and dry, and bready in texture.

That's it. I like my dumplings best right away. If they sit too long in the liquid they get heavy and doughy. My wife, however, likes them heavy and doughy. To each his own.

David Smith 10/2/14 David Smith 10/2/14

Shaggy Mane Mushrooms

As my work season is winding down I've got a slew of blog posts in the bag that I plan on posting semi-regularly - two or three times a week I think - over the next four or so months. I've been sharing images and a few thoughts on our facebook page over the summer, and maybe I'll pull some of those into something more blog post-like over fall and winter too. Lately I've been sharing images of shaggy mane mushrooms we've been finding over the last week, and one of my FB friends just asked, on my personal page, how to prepare them...just as I was finishing making soup. Well, the Packers are just about to kickoff against the Vikings and I've got the time to share that recipe right now while the game is on (Go Pack!).

Shaggy Mane, aka Inky Caps, are popping up all over town right now. I've been hopping out of the car pretty regularly to cut them from the grassy edges of sidewalks, parks, unmowed fields, under lone trees in gravely parking lots, close to fish cleaning stations and even on the lawn by the Post Office. They're easily identifiable (I won't go into identification details in this post; you can find that information in lots of places online), very fragile and ephemeral. Once you pick them you better be ready to prepare them asap or clean and freeze them, or you'll have an inky mess before long.

They are self-digesting, going from a soft though semi-firm state to a dripping, black inky liquid. You'll find them from small, little button-sized knobs to large, 6-inch-plus, shaggy vertical torpedoes. You'll also often find them in various states of disintegration in the same spot. You want the ones that are semi-firm, white and as closed as possible at the stem and cap junction. Their outer skin may be a little rough in appearance and texture, or peeling in numerous curling flakes not unlike the appearance of a fat, whittled fuzz stick, the kind used by Boy Scouts and woodsmen to get a fire going.

These are really not the kind of mushroom you saute' or fry like you might a button or morel mushroom. They're too insubstantial for that, too water-bound. But I've had good luck slicing the firmest ones into ¼ inch length-wise chips and flash frying over high heat in bacon grease til browned. We'll do that very thing for a garnish with this soup. These are very mild mushrooms, and have a soft, gentle earthy flavor not unlike the button mushrooms you might get at the grocer.

To clean the mushrooms simply rinse under cold running water with a little thumb rubbing to remove grass and dirt. Sometimes the outer shaggy surface skin will very easily peel or rub off, leaving you with a smooth, egg-like mushroom. There's no need to remove the stalk, so keep the cap and stalk together. Here's the super simple and tasty soup recipe. My brother stopped over as I was finishing cooking and he declared it to be "Excellent! Delicious."

Ingredients
5 to 7 cups shaggy mane mushrooms, roughly chopped
1½ to 2 cups chicken or beef stock (I used beef this time, because it's what I had on hand)
1 to 1½ cups whole milk
couple tbl spoons butter
couple onions or shallots, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, diced
Sea salt and cracked pepper
Sour cream
Chives
Handful of small, nice, firm mushrooms, sliced length-wise, ¼" thick

1. Saute' over medium heat the onion/shallots and garlic in a stock pot until soft.
2. Add chopped mushrooms and continue cooking for several minutes. If it looks like you're getting too much water in the pot, raise the heat and cook some of that off quickly, but don't compromise the integrity of the mushrooms.
3. Salt and pepper.
4. Add the chicken or beef stock, turn the heat down a bit and continue simmering for several minutes.
5. Add the milk and continue simmering, being careful not to burn or curdle the milk.

Once everything in the pot is well acquainted turn the heat off and allow to cool a bit. While cooling, add a tablespoon or two of bacon fat to a skillet, get it hot and gently lay the sliced mushroom pieces in the hot fat. Let the pieces brown on one side before gently turning them over to brown on the other side. It shouldn't take but a few short minutes. Place the pieces on paper towel to drain.

When the soup mixture cools enough to blend in a food processor go ahead and blend in small batches until smooth. Return to pot and if the soup looks too watery you can make a roux and add to thicken it up. Heat and serve, adding a dollop of sour cream, chopped chives and a few browned mushroom slices for garnish. Shaggy Mane Soup...it's quick, simple and very mushroomy.

David Smith 6/19/14 David Smith 6/19/14

Waxworm breakfast wrap

Part of my interest in foraging, survival skills and food in general has included insects as food. When I was a "kid" I used to spend hours while camping harvesting ant eggs and adults from ant colonies, grasshoppers from fields, certain water insects and a few grub-type critters. At that time I wasn't much of a cook and so my culinary experiments mostly consisted of simply sauteing things in a little oil or butter with onion. That's still a great and simple way to approach entomophagy, the eating of insects as food (although I didn't know there even was a word for it back then, and just looked at it as something that was in line with the technology-scarce lifestyle I was attracted to at the time).

Anyway, I'd kind of let that part of my foraging/self-sufficiency interests dwindle over the years, as I guess I came to look at it as something borne more of occasional curiosity than of any truly practical application. I've recently come to change my mind on the subject, and realize that there is indeed much genuine practical, ethical and culinarily satisfying reward to be got from entomophagy. I thank Daniella Martin's new book Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet for recharging my batteries on the subject of insects as food.

I decided to get my feet wet again with a simple breakfast wrap using a common and easily acquired little beast known as a waxworm.

Waxworms are the caterpillar larvae of wax moths. You may acquire waxworms from just about any place that sells live bait for fishing, which is where I got mine and is how I've always used them up to now. They are a great panfish bait and are a staple during the ice fishing season especially.

Wax moths also happen to be one of the unwelcome insects that give beekeepers fits, as they feed on the comb in hives and generally make a mess of things once they get into a hive. As a small time beekeeper this aspect of their behavior made their attendance on the menu even more satisfying.

By themselves waxworms have an almost bland and uninteresting flavor. They remind me of potatoes in that regard, in that they are good vehicles for the flavors of whatever they may be prepared with. Some describe their flavor as slightly nutty, and I suppose that's fair, but it's a very mild nuttiness if at all. The biggest hurdle you might have to overcome, if you're at all squeamish about eating insects like this, is their texture, which is soft and juicy prior to cooking. But cooking does indeed address that issue; as the larvae saute they stiffen up, gain some nice firmness and even get a little crispy if you saute them long enough.

Here's all you do:
Rinse the waxworms and gently dry them. Toss them into the freezer for a while to kill them if you're averse to putting them into the pan while they're still alive. Saute a bit of onion and/or garlic (I used ramp bulbs and onion) in a tablespoon of olive oil. Add a couple tablespoons of chopped greens such as kale. Once those things soften and mellow add the waxworms. Periodically flip the worms and saute until they become firm, gain some color and get well acquainted with the other ingredients. They'll stretch out and stiffen up as they cook, whether you put them in dead or alive, but their tiny screams will be minimal (I'm kidding!). Pull one or two of the waxworms as you cook and give them a try; that'll not only help you discern whether they're done or not but will also give you a good idea of their flavor and texture.

I then scrambled up a duck egg with a little cheese, set the egg and cheese onto a tortilla, added some radish sprouts and topped it all with the waxworm/ramp/onion medley. Mighty tasty in every respect.

So, you can expect more posts and maybe even a video or two on the subject as I dust off the old butterfly net and make space in the freezer for new, albeit smaller packages of "meat."

David Smith 6/15/14 David Smith 6/15/14

Getting the garden in bit by bit

Got a few more things planted yesterday, but still have two full beds and the long side fence bed yet to plant. I've got grand plans this spring and summer for the garden and yard but fear the time I actually have to accomplish them may argue otherwise. So, sleep less and work longer, that'll do. Still, I wonder if I've bitten off a little more than I can chew for the summer.

The compost bins are full to the brim, so I think I'll put together a vermiculture bin or two to take some of the succeeding organic matter we produce. A vermiculture bin is just a $5 word for worm bin, where a whole lot of red worms eat the organic matter you give them, in a hopefully faster and more efficient manner than a compost pile sitting in the corner of the yard just doing its thing naturally.

It feels good to get dirt under the fingernails again. It even feels good to pull a few weeds (the ones I don't purposefully let grow for the table) and pick a few stones from the garden beds (I keep hoping to find an old coin or ring or other small treasure, although I suppose stones and weeds are treasures in their own right). My day job offers me the chance to occasionally get some good fish slime on my hands too, as I weigh and measure salmon, trout and other fish anglers bring in from the big lake. Dirty fingernails mixed with a little fish blood and slime, that's how a man's hands ought to look and smell if you ask me.

Sidenote: Gave some small assistance to a fellow yesterday as he landed the biggest fish he'd ever caught, a 27 lb. carp. Sure, it wasn't a big salmon or some other glamour sport fish, but it was big and beautiful and a helluva lot of fun to watch as he battled it. He was very happy, and after we weighted and measured it he released it back into the water. I congratulated him as we shook slimy hands. It was a fun moment.

It was raining pretty good just a little while ago and I was thinking it'd be nice to take a brief nap after posting this entry. Long day already as my work shift started at 5:00am...could use a cat nap. But now the rain has suddenly stopped and I feel like I should take advantage of it. So, back out to work on those garden beds and set some onions.

David Smith 5/14/14 David Smith 5/14/14

Just a few images from this morning

Took a quick walk through the woods this morning (still waiting for morels to appear). No mushrooms yet, but did grab a few other edibles for today.

(left to right) Ostrich fern fiddleheads, ramps, trout lilies, virginia waterleaf and one garlic mustard plant (with root for photo purposes, otherwise I'd have got more).

Trout lilies and virginia waterleaf. Trout lily bulbs go into a salad; I've always used the waterleaf as a sandwich green...that'll be today's lunch.

Ostrich fern fiddleheads. Image a little grainy, as I enlarged the top pic.

Garlic mustard with its peculiar angled root (at the base of the leaf cluster), an identifying characteristic (they don't always angle like this, but often enough).

Garlic mustard. Note the difference in leaf shapes: roundish or kidney-shaped near the bottom of the plant, pointed or arrowhead-shaped near the top.

Lunch. Steelhead sandwich with waterleaf and ramp greens (and Carr Valley cranberry chipotle cheese), salad with added trout lilies, garlic mustard, ramp greens, and chaga tea.

David Smith 5/12/14 David Smith 5/12/14

Thunder and lightning are a beautiful thing

I'm lying in bed at 5:00am on Monday morning, catching the flashes of light from lightning and counting the seconds until the thunder that follows. 4-mississippi equals 4 miles away, that's how it works, yes? How many sounds are cooler than than the sounds of thunder and rain in the dawning light of morning? Well, maybe the sounds of thunder and rain on the roof of a tent, while your snuggled deep into a heavy, warm sleeping bag are cooler, but I'm in the house this morning and it'll do.

It's been three months since my last post on the blogsite here. Three months that went by in a blink it seems. It's been a busy spring, if you could reasonably call it spring. It's only been in the last week that it's felt like spring, with the trees budding and ramps popping up in the woods in the last five or six days. Everything is late. Don't even have the garden in yet, because it's been too cold. And now suddenly that it's warmed up in the last week I'm behind already.

We've been editing videos from last year, which has taken longer than I thought it would. But we've got some great footage. I'm even more impressed with Josh's film skills than I was before, if that's possible. I'm excited to get this stuff out there and to get rolling on more new stuff this year. Soon.

Big news, and the biggest reason I haven't stayed on top of the blog lately...started a new job. Working with the Wisconsin DNR right now as a Fisheries Technician for the county. That means I do creel surveys of fishermen (is it ok to call women anglers fishermen? "Fisherwomen" seems cumbersome. I think fishermen should be a gender-neutral term, so that's what I'm going with).

GIANT, cracking thunder! That one was closer than 4 miles.

Nice catch of steelhead and browns recorded while on the job.

I do angler counts at specific times along specific routes, interview anglers to see what they're fishing for, what they're catching, how long they've been out, what they're using, and so on; weigh and measure catches, look for tags and fin clips; write reports on each week's conditions and angler success. It's a great gig for me. I get to be outside and on the water. I work alone all day, and get to meet a lot of people, some of whom are pretty hardcore fishermen and have good tips and techniques that have proven successful for them, so I'm also able to increase my own knowledge base and mental tackle box, so to speak.

Daughter Cheyenne with one of the steelhead we caught last week.

I'm well into the groove of the job now, and now that spring seems to be really here at last, I'll get back to regular blog updates. In addition to ramps, several other wild edibles are starting to pop. I picked a small bunch of stinging nettles while fishing a few days ago, just enough for breakfast, and noticed that the ostrich ferns were beginning to make their appearance as well, so we should have fiddleheads soon. Trout lilies and Virginia waterleaf are up in force. Burdock and evening primrose rosettes are everywhere, and dandelions are almost thick in some spots...all in just the last few days. For as many years as I've been doing this, the wild edible thing, since I was a kid, I am still amazed, each and every year, at how quickly new green life bursts forth each spring. One day everything is brown and gray, the next day, boom! there's green poking through the earth! It always seems surprising.

Simple breakfast: stinging nettles & egg on toast.

My wife and I went for a long walk through a wood several days ago, ostensibly to look for morels, although I knew that it was still a little early for them in our area, given the late spring we've had. Maybe this week, if we can get a couple warm days to light a fire under their little mushroom behinds. Until then, there are more fish to be caught, plenty of other greens to make room in the fridge for, and a garden to plant.

Going to shut my eyes and listen to the rain and thunder now.