Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Hot, fiery and bold


...and I mean dinner!

Actually a very rustic supper. I was testing a recipe idea for an article. Despite its appearance it was delicious. A few more tweaks and we'll be there.

In one pan shallots and a few ramps were cooked slowly in unscented oil, with black bean paste and a lot of dried chile. In another I browned some humanely raised pork. Meanwhile I cooked till just tender, young pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) shoots - they are ready to eat now, in our hood. The pork was added to the spicy onion mixture, and I stirred in a spoonful of Kiyoko's wonderful sansho miso paste (sansho is Japanese Sichuan  - Zanthoxylum piperatum, and she used the leaves and seeds). Finally I added the cooked pokeweed stems.

It was powerful, but pokeweed is very juicy and mild, and works well with serious heat.

In other forage-related news, today I strained and bottled two liters of rhubarb-spruce syrup, three liters of autumn olive flower cordial (very fizzy - if you hear a muffled boom it is Brooklyn, exploding) and a liter of pine tip-dandelion flower cordial - only fizzy after I added some of the dregs of my milkweed cordial for last year; that yeast was still alive and kick started the sulky pine tip infusion. Fascinating! (I know, I am talking myself.)

________________________________




2 comments:

  1. Hey, will you post or share your recipe for rhubarb soda? I take it from the pictures that you steep and don't cook the rhubarb. Curious about this…xo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Will get on it. Super simple, cut up stems, sugar, water, stir every day. Strangely, one batch that did not fizz then, is now fizzing weeks later, so it is burped daily. I'll be more precise when I have a moment :-)

      Delete

Comments on posts older than 48 hours are moderated (for spam control) . Yours will be seen! Unless you are a troll. Serial trollers are banned.