Acorns, Nuts and Other Wild Starches
Photo by Hank Shaw
Wild starches are the toughest need for a forager to meet. Greens and fruits are everywhere, but starch can be tough to come by. I’ve begun with acorns, but I plan on adding recipes for other wild starches as well, such as wild salsify, arrowhead, sunchokes, cattail and tule tubers — as well as other nuts like the black walnut.
If you want to make these recipes, you will need to know about collecting and eating acorns. If acorns are just too weird for you but you want to make something similar, use chestnuts — even canned chestnuts make a good substitute.
MORE ON ACORNS
RECIPES
- A simple Acorn Soup, with porcini mushrooms and brandy
- Acorn Flour Honey Cake, also good with chestnut flour
- Acorn Flatbreads, in the style of an Italian piadina
- Acorn or Chestnut Flour Pasta
- Acorn spaetzle, good with German or Austrian dishes
- Farro or Spelt Pasta Dough
- Sunchoke salad with persimmons
- Sunchoke Pickles
- Salsify (Scorzonera) Croquette
NUTS
- Black Walnut Snowball Cookies, with orange flower water
- The best Black Walnut Ice Cream ever! Trust me.
- Black Walnut and Parsley Pesto
- Wild Pine Nut Cookies ,with rosemary and acorn flour
