As the saying goes, there are bold mushroom pickers, and old mushroom pickers, but there are no old, bold mushroom pickers. Wise words indeed, ones that have kept me on the sidelines, at least until now. I made my first fungi forage under the tutelage of an experienced guide, a friendly Spaniard with decades of successful picking under his belt. His preferred picking patch … [Read more...]
BEACH PLUM JELLY – OLD SCHOOL RECIPE
Late August in East Hampton is beach plum season. Maybe it was the weather (wet early on, then sunny, temperate days in July and August) or that we went a' pickin' a week or so earlier than usual, but the crop was especially bountiful. We snagged three gallons of plums in under an hour. There was also a nice mix of ripe, deep red and purple plums, and not-yet-ripe … [Read more...]
WHITE CLAM PASTA WITH SEA BEANS – LINGUINI ALLE VONGOLE
Freshly foraged briny little sea beans pair beautifully with just-dug quahogs for a hearty, down-home tangle of linguine alle vongole. And the best part is out here in East Hampton the ingredients are only as far away as the water. At water's edge of our favorite clam bed in Three Mile Harbor is a healthy stretch of sea beans. Also known as salicornia, glass wort and … [Read more...]
SAMPHIRE ASPARAGUS VINAIGRETTE
One of the thrills of foraging is tapping into Mother Nature's limitless abundance. While some treasures of the earth are hard to come by (see: truffles) wild samphire is abundant here on eastern Long Island and at its peak now, in early summer. Samphire, a.k.a seabeans, sea asparagus, salicornia, or picklewort, thrives in the marshy, sandy shores of Three Mile Harbor in … [Read more...]
PAPER SHELL PECANS
Right before Thanksgiving the New York Times warned us that "Ill-timed rain, marauding animals and a growing love affair between the Chinese middle class and the pecan has resulted in the worst pecan supply in recent memory. As a result, grocery store prices are up by about 30 percent..." (No Pecans? Thank China, rain and pigs.) Which is how we found ourselves by the side of … [Read more...]
SOUR CHERRY BEACH PLUM JAM
The abundance of this year's beach plum harvest filled nearly a whole shelf with jelly jars. This bounty is providing an opportunity to incorporate the piquant plummy flavors of beach plums into jams and jellies of other fruits. It turns out that sour cherries and beach plums are a match made in heaven. Luckily there was a pound and a half of sour cherries resting … [Read more...]
Beach Plum Jelly – Reduced Sugar Recipe
It's been a banner year for wild beach plums. We returned to Maidstone Beach up in Springs where the pickin' was easy, more so than ever. In this case foraging seems too austere a word to call harvesting nature's wild bounty. The bushes were laden with plump plums. Clear sky, gentle breeze, boats on the bay, perfect. We gathered twice the amount of beach plums in half the time … [Read more...]
WILD CRANBERRY AND ORANGE SAUCE
The wild in this recipe for Wild Cranberry Sauce with Oranges refers to freshly picked crimson berries from your local natural bog. Napeague, the untamed stretch between East Hampton and Montauk, is home to the majestic Walking Dunes. Why "walking?" The undulating series of nearly 100' tall sand dunes, created by hurricanes and nor'easters, continually creep southward, … [Read more...]
DECORATING CAKES WITH FLOWERS — WIN A STEM GEM PRIZE!
What's prettier than a cake decorated with flowers? A rhetorical question of course, but the Taj Mahal, Jeff Aquilon as photographed by Bruce Weber in the late '70s and your own newborn baby are equally acceptable answers. But India is a long way off, it's been 30 years since Jeff hung up his Speedos as captain of Pepperdine's water polo team and making a baby … [Read more...]
A DAZZLING MUSHROOM CENTERPIECE: THE GLORY OF FUNGI
The New Year's Eve party invite was billed as "A Finger Food Through Down." The crowd would be a collection of serious NYC foodies. Feeling confident I could hold my own in the culinary contributions department, I pondered a way to pull focus from the accomplished competitors. Eureka! Knowing there would be an abundance of … [Read more...]