Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast - Hardcover

Shaw, Hank

 
9781605293202: Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1605293202 ISBN 13: 9781605293202
Verlag: Rodale Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

If there is a frontier beyond organic, local, and seasonal, beyond farmers' markets and sustainably
raised meat, it surely includes hunting, fishing, and foraging your own food. A lifelong angler and forager who became a hunter late in life, Hank Shaw has chronicled his passion for hunting and gathering in his widely read blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, which has developed an avid following among outdoor people and foodies alike. Hank is dedicated to finding a place on the table for the myriad overlooked and underutilized wild foods that are there for the taking—if you know how to get them.


In Hunt, Gather, Cook, he shares his experiences both in the field and the kitchen, as well as his
extensive knowledge of North America's edible flora and fauna. With the fresh, clever prose that brings so many readers to his blog, Hank provides a user-friendly, food-oriented introduction to tracking down everything from sassafras to striped bass to snowshoe hares. He then provides innovative ways to prepare wild foods that go far beyond typical campfire cuisine: homemade root beer, cured wild boar loin, boneless tempura shad, Sardinian hare stew—even pasta made with handmade acorn flour.


For anyone ready to take a more active role in determining what they feed themselves and their families, Hunt, Gather, Cook offers an entertaining and delicious introduction to harvesting the bounty of wild foods to be found in every part of the country.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

HANK SHAW is a journalist, former restaurant cook, and the proprietor of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, twice nominated for a James Beard Award and winner of an IACP Award for best blog. His work has been published in Food & Wine, Field & Stream, and numerous other magazines. He lives near Sacramento, CA.

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1 WILD GREENS ARE EVERYWHERE

The wonderful thing about wild greens is that they're all around us. Everywhere. Look out the window. I bet you're looking at some now. Even in a big city or a desert. And even in winter. That's why your first forays into foraging ought to begin at home, with something like dandelions or other wild greens. No treks through the uncharted wilderness, no danger. Not yet.

When I say "wild greens," I mean the leaves or stalk of a plant that is best eaten cooked. This separates it in my mental calculus from salad greens both wild and domestic. Some plants, such as dandelions, fit into both camps, depending on the time of year.

Why bother gathering greens when you can just buy them? First off, it's fun. There's a certain "wow" factor when you serve guests an elegant dish of, say, nettle pasta, or empanadas filled with cheese and lamb's-quarters, or dolmades made with mallow leaves instead of grape leaves. Wild greens taste better, too. They tend to be more substantial, stronger in flavor, and more vibrant.

The reason, I think, is nutrition. If Popeye had eaten amaranth or lamb's- quarters instead of spinach, he'd have been even tougher. Spinach is reasonably high in iron, vitamin A, and several other nutrients. But amaranth and lamb's-quarters blow it out of the water, and the vitamin content of nettles is legendary. Many of these greens have traditionally been eaten as a "tonic" in early spring, before new crops are ready and after the winter's storage food has become wan and sad.

You'd be amazed at how many edible plants are out there. Many hundreds, just in North America alone. Edible, yes, but worth gathering? Worth getting into your car, driving somewhere, and searching for them? That's a tall order for a plate of greens. But you rarely need to leave your yard when you want wild greens, and when you do gather greens when you're out and about, it can come as a bonus to go with whatever else you are hunting, fishing, or foraging.

Case in point: Not long ago, my girlfriend, Holly, and I were wandering along the California coast looking for good places to dig clams and catch Dungeness crabs and maybe a few fish. We were having a rough day, walking a lot and finding little, when a lurid green bushy thing caught the corner of my eye. It was a rambling, succulent plant, about 2 feet tall, draping itself over an ice plant.

"I know this plant!" I told Holly. I thought I'd seen it in my guidebooks, and it just looked edible. Once you learn what larger plant families look like--everything in the mint family has a square stem, for example--you can get a ballpark idea about whether a plant is edible. This plant looked to be in the spinach family. It had large, roughly triangular leaves that were a little fleshy and brittle. I did a test bite: salty (we were in the dunes) but otherwise good. It tasted like spinach.

I did not eat any more of it until I got home and went to my books. This is just common sense. Although there are not too many lethal plants around, it is better to be safe than dashing to the emergency room to get your stomach pumped. When I found the mystery plant in my guidebooks, sure enough, it was New Zealand spinach. (I write more about this particular green in Chapter 4.) That find helped make a tough day worthwhile.

Even if your main interest is looking for meat or fish or fruit, I highly recommend learning your area's wild greens, if only so you can salvage a potentially bad day of foraging with a plate of tasty lamb's-quarters or dandelions or orache.

What follows are some of my favorite wild greens. All are more than edible. They are delicious, pretty, and highly nutritious, and, in some cases, can cost more than $10 a £d in fancy markets. In most places, I will use the Latin names for the plants I describe, because many have all sorts of local or colloquial names; amaranth and lamb's-quarters are both called pigweed by some. Latin makes sure we're all talking about the same plant.

LAMB'S-QUARTERS, AMARANTH, AND ORACHE

Think of these three as wild spinach, which, in the case of lamb's- quarters, is biologically accurate. Their leaves are smaller than domestic spinach, usually no longer than the palm of your hand. All three are annuals, and all put out lots of little seeds, which some Native Americans ground into flour. You might know one domestic species: It's called quinoa. The leaves of each plant are good simply sauteed with olive oil, salt, and maybe some white wine and grated cheese.

If you are in North America, one of these species grows nearby. I guarantee it. All appear in late spring and last through autumn. You should be able to find these plants with little trouble between May and September.

All three plants start as compact seedlings with soft leaves that can be eaten raw, then grow into rather large sprawly bushes, with tougher leaves that bear a passing resemblance to spinach. If you are looking them up in a field guide, lamb's-quarters are in the Chenopodium genus, amaranth are Amaranthus, and orache is Atriplex patula.

Lamb's-quarters, amaranth, and orache all love to grow in disturbed places like roadsides. However, I don't recommend that you forage for them there, unless it is a quiet, largely untraveled road. Plants near highways and heavily trafficked areas can pick up heavy metals, and as a forager you run the risk of gathering a plant some road crew sprayed with pesticides yesterday. That could be deadly.

But fear not, this trio loves your garden, too. I get volunteer amaranth plants in my garden all the time, and I know a swath of lamb's-quarters that grows on the grounds of a nearby park. It's in an out-of-the-way spot, so I know it does not get sprayed. The edges of farm fields are an ideal spot to search for them.

Here are some tips on identifying them:

ORACHE. Orache is the easiest to recognize. It tends to like seaside areas or alkaline soil and has leaves about 3 inches long that are dramatically triangular--they look like a medieval weapon called a halberd or one of those wedge-shaped cheese knives. In some places, it's called mountain spinach; in others, saltbush. Its leaves often taste salty, which is pretty cool when you consider how bland most greens taste. It grows to about 3 1/2 feet tall and becomes a slightly woody shrub. Its seed stalks are weedy and sparse, not dense like those of amaranth. Incidentally, you can grow domestic oraches in your garden. I grow a red variety that is striking in a mixed greens saute.

AMARANTH. Amaranth is easily identified by a red tinge in the stalk and in the veins of the leaves. Be careful: Don't mistake it for pokeweed in the East, as eating the older leaves of pokeweed will send you to the hospital (although pokeweed's young shoots are delicious). You can identify pokeweed stems by their rich, dark purple; it's the color of blueberries. Amaranth (or pigweed) stems are a more strawberry red, like rhubarb.

Amaranth leaves are less triangular than either lamb's-quarters or orache. They are a gentle spear shape, with prominent alternate veins at regular intervals. It is most people's mental image of what a generic leaf looks like. The plant will grow to 5 feet, and once it sets seeds you can't miss it. The reddish brown seed clusters are dense and long, and often weigh so much they bend the whole plant over. They look a little like sumac. Amaranth seeds are best in mid-autumn, when the plant is dying and the seedpods are dry.

LAMB'S-QUARTERS. Lamb's-quarters share the same general look as amaranth and orache: tall, weedy, with clusters of little seeds and triangular leaves. But there is a telltale way to spot the plant. Look at the underside of the leaves: They should be silvery and ever-so-slightly fuzzy. Another tip? Water beads on their surface. If you drip water on the underside, it looks...

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Verlag
Rodale Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1605293202
ISBN 13 
9781605293202
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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