Recipe
Don't be fooled by the fancy name. These are your standard ricotta-spinach gnocchi, only made with wild cow parsnip greens, and the carrot consomme is fiendishly easy to make. A knockout dish that's pure simplicity.
Recipe
Fish meatballs! What's not to love? This is a German version, doable with pretty much any fish that swims, and it's served with a bright, herby green sauce that is traditional in Hesse. Remember the Hessians from the War of Independence? That's them.
Berries and Fruits
A Chinese style plum sauce made with wild plums. This stuff kicks the crap out of store-bought, and is even better on Peking Duck than the more common hoisin sauce. But hell, this stuff is so good it'd be awesome on an old tire.
Pheasant, Grouse, Quail
Quail barbecued slow and low with Arizona sauce. What is Arizona sauce, you say? All that is good about the wild foods of the Southwest: mesquite honey, tequila, and wild chiltepin chiles.
Salmon and Trout
Every spring I create a dish that celebrates spring's colors, which for me are green and gold. Here is this year's edition, a trout dish that is as simple as it is pretty.
Pasta, Risotto, Gnocchi
This might be the prettiest - and best-tasting - dish I've made this spring. You can really taste the ramps in the pasta, and the morels, cooked simply with ramps, butter and a little stock, compliment the pasta like sunshine on a pretty girl's eyes.
Preservation Recipes
Ever since I began studying Chinese food some years ago, I noticed how much fermented and pickled foods factor into…
Fish
Trout with morels, ramps and fiddleheads is a classic combination - all are in season at the same time, and in the same place. Even in the High Sierra, we have our own rendition, with bracken fiddleheads and Sierra wild onions. I call this dish Sierra Spring.
Recipe
Beef or venison tartare is the "trust fall" of the culinary world: Raw meat and a raw egg yolk. If your ingredients are not impeccable, things can go very, very wrong. But done right, this is at once a primal and exciting little appetizer.
Recipe
Behold, one of the most vividly beautiful recipes I've made in a long time. Salmon Swedish style, with vattlingon. It screams Christmas, right? Wrong. This dish can only be made in springtime. Read more to find out why...
Salmon and Trout
One of the cool things about salmon is that it is rich enough to make rillettes with, especially when you use belly meat and the trim from around the bones. This is a pretty classic version, with both smoked and fresh salmon or steelhead trout.
Pasta, Risotto, Gnocchi
Beyond the fact that stinging nettles are a superfood, they are just so damn pretty! Blanched, they lose their sting, and take on a lurid emerald. That green makes an exciting pasta -- and a great ravioli filling. Yep, this is a double dose of nettle goodness.
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