Leda’s Urban Homestead

You can see my fingers through the recently unfurled linden leaf (Tilia a.k.a. basswood tree), right? At this translucent, young stage they are one of my favorite wild salad greens. Soon they’ll be offering their honey-scented blossoms that make exquisite tea and can also be used to flavor homebrewed wine.

The garlic mustard is already at its most delicious, “broccoli rabe” stage right now in BK. Tomorrow I’ll sautee it up with some field garlic and red pepper flakes.

Garlic Mustard

Ramps!!! Be careful if you’re foraging for these. As exciting as it can be to find a ramps patch, they are overharvested in many places. Even if you find them in abundance, graze rather than decimate. A few here, a few from there, leaving plenty in between.

The violets are at their peak. I made violet blossom syrup a couple of days ago, might get around to a candied violets project, and have been enjoying the leaves in salads. The color of the syrup is amazing:

Tonight’s dinner is going to be creamed oyster mushrooms and ramps with scalloped Adirondack red potatoes and a salad of linden leaves plus violet leaves and flowers. The ’shrooms are from a previous haul that I dehydrated. Sounds fancy, but that’s no cred to the cook: with ingredients like these, it’s easy to impress.

I can’t vouch for elsewhere, but in Prospect Park this morning the redbud blossoms were at the “any day now” stage.

Shameless plug for upcoming foraging tours and classes - hope to see you at some of them, and if I don’t I hope it’s because you’re out foraging delicious, healthy wild foods.

We’re so close to spring, and yet still looking at the same few wild winter crops like winter cress and evening primrose plus cold-hearty cultivated greens and root vegetables from last year’s harvest. But that’s not necessarily boring.

I had some friends over recently and the feast included initial nibbles of fermented cherries with goat cheese, watermelon radishes, and bread made with locally grown grains and sunflower seeds (yay, local sunflower seeds! Wish you’d been here when I was doing The 250), plus some very non-local za’atar from my most recent trip to Israel. Oh, and some good ol’ refrigerator pickles.

There was also some beet risotto that used the greens as well as the roots.

And of course, we needed some wine to drink with all of that. My guests brought decanter-deserving and decanter-needing wine. Alas, I do not possess a decanter (now you know what to get me for my next birthday). We made do.

My guests that night included Anne Fifield, who took these pics except for the first one, and Melina, her mom, and Jim. Melina did an awesome interview with me  recently, and if you haven’t seen her Valentine’s dinner pics, prepare to swoon.

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Botany, Ballet, and Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

My freezer is less of an avalanche threat than it was a month ago. I’ve used up some of its stored haul of locally grown and foraged ingredients by making food gifts for the holiday season. Seriously, a month ago it was so jammed full of food - and it’s an old top-of-fridge model - that you risked a deluge when you opened the freezer door.

Raspberries were one of the items in my over-stuffed freezer. The raspberry patch in my garden was super-generous this year, so I had plenty for making raspberry curd as well as raspberry jam. Note the spoon hovering over the jar. Yes, I happily eat this straight out of the jar.

Actually (she said, showing off a little), I even had enough raspberries to share with last night’s holiday gift food preservation workshop participants. We made the raspberry curd, as well as a classic whole cranberry sauce with apple and orange, and a jellied cranberry sauce that is like the stuff that slides out of a can, only better.

I’ve also got lots of red currants in the freezer, and that’s a fun gift because currants aren’t supermarket regulars and so homemade red currant jam is something even your foodie friends may not have in their kitchens. I grow mine and wholeheartedly recommend that you do the same if you have any kind of growing space. I have just a few plants in partial shade and I still get at least a couple quarts of fruit each year.

Quince jelly and quince paste (membrillo) are pretty, tasty, and the fruit is in season now. These are show-off food gifts that, like the cranberry sauces, you can make now from fresh late fall fruit even if you didn’t preserve a lot of other fruit crops earlier in the year.

Rose hips are in season now, too, and even tastier for having withstood a frost or two. Rosehip freezer jam is a good and unusual holiday party offering.

…and on and on. This is one of the best parts of growing, foraging, cooking, and preserving food - sharing it!

Food Gifts for Gourmet Tastes

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet, and Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

A few of you have asked whether I try to eat local when I’m travelling. Absolutely!  I think it’s just plain culinary common sense to eat local when you travel. As I’ve pointed out before, you don’t go to Italy to try the hot dogs.

Plus my food choices impact local farmers and communities, and the environment whether I”m in Brooklyn or the Middle East.

I know, I know - I”m eco-guilty of a lot of travel lately. Here are a couple of pics from Istanbul. The guys in towels are at the airport, FYI:

And here’s the hammock I bought in El Salvador and sent to Jerusalem:

Today I was reminded of just how local my local food knowledge really is. I was at the souk (market) in Jerusalem and Ricky asked if I wanted to get some corn. The corn looked quite good, but on reflex I said, “No, corn season is over.”

“It’s just starting here,” he answered with a smile.

“But is it as good as Farmer Ted’s?” I asked a little peevishly, thinking of my New York State CSA farmer’s short growing season compared with Israel’s (but also of how fabulous Ted’s sweet corn was this year).

Another example of how localized my botanical knowledge is: Ask me to name a month for daffodils, and I would unhesitatingly say “April.” But there are daffodils coming up here now in October as the rainy season is just beginning.

So I’m listening and learning, and eating some mighty fine food. Today we stopped by a goat farm in the Judean hills to buy some cheese, and not far from there visited Soreq Cave with its impressive rock formations:

Afterward, at the souk, I was seduced by the unfamiliarity of yellow pitaya fruit …

…and raw olives that I intend to cure using my grandfather’s recipe (or my best approximation from memory).

Ricky says he will take me to some olive trees we can shake the fruit from. I’ll use what I remember of my grandmother’s recipe for those. The olive harvest season here runs through November. No olive trees back in Brooklyn - better make the most of them here where they are both local and in season.

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Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

There are only a few weeks left to photograph the rest of the plants I need for the field guide I’m working on.

Most of them will go dormant for the winter soon. With that in mind, this past weekend I headed out to Shohola, PA to visit Ellen.

We set out in search of silverberry,

black walnuts,

watercress and more.

A foray with a foraging buddy is always fun, especially when it’s someone as knowledgeable as Ellen. Just as good, maybe even better, is getting creative in the kitchen afterward. We came up with Sassy Royale aperitif cocktails (champagne and sassafras twig syrup),

a main meal of goat marinaded in beet wine with a blanket of Japanese knotweed and Greek yogurt, roasted potatoes, and wild watercress salad with goat cheese, preserved lemons, and blackberry vinaigrette.

Dessert was a pear and California bay nut crumble spiced with ground magnolia buds, wild ginger, and spicebush berries with dulce de leche ice cream on the side.

I rolled into bed feeling as full as I do after a Thanksgiving celebration, and not regretting a single forkful.

My next foraging tour includes a wild edibles-inspired dinner afterward at The Farm on Adderley.

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The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet, and Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

Vegetarians may want to skim past this first bit and pick up again near the tomatoes.

Today was Day One of Northeast Organic Farming Association - New York’s (NOFA-NY) month-long local eating challenge. Each day has a featured ingredient or challenge that they email out, and today’s was…drum roll, please…bacon.

I found the choice of bacon for day one amusing and wondered if NOFA-NY would take any flak from disgruntled herbivores. I also wondered, why bacon?

Well, it turns out that the Royal Bacon Society dubbed September 1, 2012 International Bacon Day. I swear I’m not making this up. In honor of the occasion, I’m reposting my recipe for homemade bacon.

But seriously folks, DIY is one way to keep costs down while you’re keeping it local. Pork belly from a local farmer is way cheaper per pound than already cured bacon at the farmers’ market.

Vegetarian friends, I hope you didn’t abandon this post by yet. The same principal applies to “value added” fruit and veggie products.

For example, it is now possible to purchase frozen locally grown tomatoes in winter to use in sauces and salsas. These products cost around $5 lb. Right now local, organic tomatoes are $1.50 lb at the markets near me, and I’ve seen them elsewhere as low as $1 lb. Granted, it takes more than a pound of fresh tomatoes to end up with a pound of home-canned, but I still come out ahead if I preserve them myself.

Even better and cheaper if you grew your own.

So can, dry or freeze some produce now, and save some money while sticking to your locally grown convictions this winter. And don’t get me wrong - I’m not knocking the farmers who are offering the value added preserved stuff. If you can afford it, go for it. But if, like me, you need to keep costs down, make your own.

Sounds great but you don’t know how? If you’re in NYC and want some personal instruction, I’m giving a food preservation workshop on Sept. 16.

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The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

This post is going to be a quick sharing of food preservation and foraging recipes and info because, well, that’s what I’m up to in these final days of summer. There have been some beautiful wild mushroom finds recently, including oyster

and cinnabar chanterelles

and more chicken.

In case you’re blessed with similar abundance, here is how to dry shrooms in your oven or (better) in a dehydrator.

I need a small mule or something to carry my weekly Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share home at this time of year, and this year does seem more abundant than last. Stuff I’ve been making with it:

Cantaloupe - Peach Preserves

Home-canned Roasted Tomatoes

Naturally Fermented Pickled Cherries

Okay, gotta get back to it. I still have green beans, beets, and peaches to can before next Tuesday’s CSA distribution!

Join me for some foraging tours and food preservation workshops if you’re in the neighborhood.

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

I was going to show you this awesome dinner plate of  a Caprese salad with a mix of tomatoes and cheese from my CSA plus basil from my garden, the first tasting of my homemade bacon, and Farmer Ted’s corn. I started with an ear of Ted’s corn.

I ate the whole thing raw, standing there over my kitchen sink.

I had just husked one of the five cobs of corn that were in my share this week and nibbled a spot to see if it was sweet enough to do simple boiled corn-on-the-cob with it. If not, I knew a bunch of other cooking methods that would work better. I took one bite, then another. I didn’t stop until I’d eaten the whole thing.

The next cob of corn did make it into a pot of boiling water.

It went perfectly with the single slice I’d cut, the first slice, of my homemade bacon. I sizzled it up in a small frying pan. I’ve never made bacon before. This was my first batch that I’d cured at home from Lewis Waite Farm’s pork belly.

Homemade bacon and fresh, sweet corn…almost there. Basil from my garden, plus some crazily juicy dark purple and bright yellow tomatoes from Windflower Farm. Mozzarella from the guys up the street.

Oops. Took that pic before I’d picked the basil to add to the tomatoes, but not before I’d started eating.

That’s it. Corn, a strip of homemade bacon, and a salad for dinner. There’s not a restaurant in NYC serving better than what I ate tonight.

Wild Edible Plants tour in Central Park this Saturday

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

Can you guess which part of this summer’s vacation made me whoop with excitement?

Okay, I did whoop a little from the shock of the temperature of this cold water just above a waterfall in Yosemite;

And I was happy to be sous chef for Ricky’s yummy shakshuka at one of our campsites.

Having one’s toes nibbled on by a squirrel is fun,

though not as fun as the deer that crossed my path while I was foraging wild catnip, raspberries, and elderberry blossoms.

Hanging out with Ricky, friends, and family was really the whole point of my travels this summer,

which included going up north to Mt. Shasta, near where my mom and her husband live.

There were breathtaking views, loving company, and delicious meals throughout the trip, but I confess I whooped loudest when I found this chicken mushroom just a few feet away from the picnic table at one of our campsites:

Not saying that was the best moment of the trip, but it was an unexpected treasure find. I cooked it over our campfire and turned it into a pasta sauce.

Heading back to Brooklyn tonight.

Foraging tour in Central Park August 18

Food preservation workshop in Brooklyn August 25

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

A couple of nights ago I posted on Facebook and Twitter the following update: Gotta be out the door at sunrise to do something soggy and vaguely illegal. It’s time to explain.

On a recent foraging tour I’d noticed a pond in a park where the pickerel weed was in peak, perfect bloom.

Pickerelweed, Pontedaria cordata

The cattails looked quintessentially cattail-like:

Cattail, Typha

There was a sturdy fence around said pond.

There was a spot where said fence could be easily breached.

A bit of backstory to make sense of what happens next in this tale:

I am working on my third book, and it requires taking photos of wild edible plants. Naturally, I want to capture images of those plants when they are at their peak. So when I saw those two picture-perfect wetland plants, I knew I had to photograph them asap, but…

Fence.

Water.

(I would have to wade into the pond to get good shots).

Hmm.

I was at the pond at 6:30 a.m., which I’d arbitrarily decided would be before any park rangers would show up. As I walked towards the pond I didn’t see anyone except dog owners, runners, cyclists, and one other intrepid forager who was collecting lamb’s quarters.

I jumped the fence and hid under some branches while I put on my rubber boots. Once I stepped out into the water I was completely exposed to the view of any passersby, but they paid me no heed (thank you, text message obsessed New Yorkers).

The pond was stinky. Other than that, I felt suddenly peaceful as I focused my camera on the pickerelweed and cattail. A frog croaked nonstop while I did my deed. I guess I was intruding on her turf.

On the way out, I stopped - again under branch cover - to take off my wet boots and put my hiking sandals back on. While doing so I found wild parsnips and northern bayberry.

But I was dismayed to spot reed a.k.a. Phragmites along the water’s edge. It’s a non-native grass that is choking out native Typha (cattail) species in some places. If I could work this particular pond without worrying about park rangers, I would be less interested in harvesting food from the cattails than in clearing out the reeds to give cattails a chance (don’t worry - the overall reed population would survive that act just fine).

So yeah, I hopped a park fence. But I didn’t harvest anything…this time.

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The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes