Pelzel Raquel - Preserving wild foods: a modern foragers recipes for curing, canning, smoking, and pickling

preserving wild foods

A MODERN FORAGERS RECIPES

for Curing, Canning, Smoking, and Pickling

Matthew Weingarten and Raquel Pelzel

photography by Stphanie de Roug

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Margaret Sutherland and Pam Thompson

Art direction and book design by Carolyn Eckert

Text production by Jennifer Jepson Smith

Cover and interior photography by Stphanie de Roug, except for 39 (background), 98 (background), 123, 132 (background), 157, and 223 by Mars Vilaubi

Photo styling by Heather Chontos

Botanical and how-to illustrations by John Burgoyne

Decorative illustrations by Heather Chontos

Indexed by Andrea Chesman

2012 by Matthew Weingarten and Raquel Pelzel

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weingarten, Matthew.

Preserving wild foods / by Matthew Weingarten and Raquel Pelzel.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-60342-727-2 (paper with flaps)

1. Canning and preserving. 2. FoodPreservation.

3. Cooking (Natural foods) I. Pelzel, Raquel. II. Title.

TX601.W45 2012
641.4dc23

2012024855

To my daughter, Sarah Zlatka, who dreams along with me through the wilds and to my wife, Katka, who somehow is still enamored of all our larking.

MW

I AM ENAMORED OF THE NATURAL WORLD. Beyond cooking, I like to be a part of the harvest and dream of what to do with the glorious produce, seafood, meat, or whatever else it is I am collecting. Even in densely populated urban environments such as New York City, where I live, its possible to have a strong connection to the wilds where food comes from.

I find chamomile growing in sidewalk cracks, mulberry tree limbs hanging heavy with ripe fruit, ginkgo nuts in front of million-dollar town houses and in rough-and-tumble public parks, and lonely quince trees holding ground in front of new developments. I get so much satisfaction from taking the bounty and preserving it to enjoy later. How nice it is to go into my pantry before I begin making dinner for my family and find inspiration in a jar of pickled mushrooms or anchovies cured with garlic and olive oil. Then, when I think about using my collected bounty in a dish, Im contemplating not only the flavors and which cooking methods to apply, but also the natural landscape from which the ingredients were taken. When harvesting food in this manner, its important to keep responsible stewardship in mind. As much as I am tempted to gather everything I find, the anticipation and hope for plentiful seasons to come remind me to not deplete a source beyond its ability to bear again next cycle. Take some, give some, leave some: its all a part of mindful foraging.

Because I live in New York City and not in a cabin in the woods, the Union Square Greenmarket is usually where I find inspiration and the raw resources for my restaurants menu. When Im trolling the Greenmarket for treasures, Im most often seduced by what others walk past, such as wild hearts of palm (otherwise known as cattails), a basket of angelica, or off-parts, such as the offal, heads, and bones that farmers have tucked away in coolers. I wear my excitement on my sleeve, and the farmer usually succeeds in selling me way more than I can possibly use. My solution is to preserve and to cure, to put up the bountiful now to enjoy with thrift later.

I didnt grow up with a pickling and preserving tradition; that came later in life. I was most influenced by my wife and her family from Slovakia. They eat compotes with certain kinds of meat and pickles with others, and a walk through the woods to forage for the ingredients for these treats is, depending on the season, part of their weekly, if not daily, routine. Routine, but never mundane: theres always a certain amount of ceremony to the anticipation and excitement of twisting a lid off a jar of preserved sloe plums or slicing up a link of homemade kielbasa. It is truly a celebration of seasonal food.

These occasions of wonder and joy have become a part of my tradition at home, providing context and meaning to the seasons. What could be more appetizing in the middle of February than frying up a chicken and serving it with a peach compote, or slathering a piece of hearty black bread with rose hip jam? Plan ahead by taking advantage of the season and capturing its essence, and later youll have the unexpected joy that comes from the spur-of-the-moment decision to pull out your last jar of homemade maraschino cherries to serve on top of a hot fudge sundae.

My fascination with curing and preserving was preceded by a love of food and its connection to our natural year. I went to Ohio University in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, where the farmland rolls along in gentle waves. During my junior year, some friends and I moved to a farmhouse about 20 miles out of town. It had a beautiful garden plot and a grape arbor. I was an English major and spent my days reading, writing papers, and cooking feasts for the whole house. I dabbled in wild yeast starters and got geeky-happy baking my natural-starter loaves.

Simultaneously, I fell in love with old herbal texts and began to see the world in a new light. So many remedies lurk in our landscapes, and so much beauty lies in the folk traditions of the herbal apothecary. I fell in love with the idea of food as medicine, and my favorite class became a science lab that focused on the medicinal foods of the southeastern Ohio valley. I vividly recall walking through the woods with this crazy-hippie professor hed do things like grab a big bunch of poison ivy, rub it all over his body, and then grab jewelweed (the natural remedy against poison ivy) and rub it wherever hed put the poison ivy. Jewelweed is filled with an aloelike jelly, and after coating himself with the sticky nectar, he never did get that unsightly rash and fearsome itch. One of the courses suggested readings was Euell Gibbonss