Showing posts with label foraging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foraging. Show all posts

Friday, October 13, 2017

Farm-to-Post Foraged and Wild Dinner at Post 390 (Back Bay, Boston, MA)

Farm to Post is the dinner series at Back Bay's Post 390 that showcases the local farmers and New England producers the restaurant works with. I attended a pork dinner last year featuring Dogpatch Farm and I had another opportunity to attend a special dinner recently. In September, Post 390 held a "Foraged and Wild" dinner featuring (you guessed it) foraged ingredients.

Each Farm to Post dinner always starts with a cocktail reception with passed hors d'oeuvres. This year's most popular appetizer was probably the fried Damariscotta oyster (from Maine) with creamed wild spinach and bacon.
Post 390 Foraging
The first cocktail is a sparkling Cocchi Americano drink with wild peppermint and sweet fern tea
Post 390 Foraging

First course: "Secret spot" mushroom vol-au-vent
Marsh greens, spiced black walnuts, blackberries, wild flower petals, Solomon's plume vinaigrette.
This was paired with Oxbow Brewing Farmhouse Pale Ale from Newcastle, ME.
Post 390 Foraging
The pastry for the vol-au-vent was perfectly flaky. The mushrooms, and other foraged items in the dinner were foraged by Nicholas Deutmeyer. The mushrooms came from his secret spot (hence the name). We had black trumpet mushrooms, lobster mushrooms, and chanterelles. The greens also featured foraged sea beans and sea arugula. Perfect start to a foraging dinner!

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Learn, Forage, Taste

Did you know you can pick sage at a public park - for free? If you know where to find it and what it looks like, of course! But most of us think of foraging as a stone-age activity, except for the highly specialized art of wild mushroom foraging. I know of people who have foraged for nettles, but I never did nor knew how. Under the radar, the duo Urban Outdoor Skills and Transitional Gastronomy have taught small groups of people how and what to forage nearby and how to prepare not just edible, but gourmet dishes from the pickings.

The class meets at Hahamongna Park, just east of the 210 Freeway in La CaƱada Flintridge. When you enter the park, keep driving until you see the restroom building. The class meets at a picnic bench next to that building. Pascal Baudar of Urban Outdoor Skills then takes the students around to forage while Mia Wasilevich of Transitional Gastronomy stays behind to prepare lunch.

Until our foraging class, I had never heard of chickweed. The edible chickweed looks similar to purge, which isn't. The difference is that chickweed has pointy leaves, lighter green color, and fine hair and buds that look like bells. Its flowers are white with what looks like 10 petals but actually 5 split unto 2. To make distinguishing them easier, if you snap the stem, purge will release sap.

chickweed
Chickweed is actually very nutritious and filled with vitamin c, calcium, and iron.

He showed us how to pick stinging nettles without getting pricked (thorn prick can cause skin irritation). They're edible after being blanched and can supposedly lower cholesterol. They make a nice sauce too, Rustic Canyon has a pasta dish with nettle pesto.

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