forage & feast

After the success of the Cooklyn Improv event, Jonathan from Lab 24/7 and I decided to team up and do a spring Forage & Feast event. The concept was to get a group of fellow food fanatics together for a foraging trip up in Yonkers where we’d pick ramps, fiddleheads and stinging nettles then bring them back to The Lab to prepare a 5 course feast.

The spring bounty at this park is both beautiful and tasty with over a dozen edible plants in a narrow stretch of public park that runs along the Bronx River. Liz from Zested and I had a hard time choosing whether we wanted to forage or photograph, but we all had a good time.

It’s still early in the season, but the hillsides are already blanketed with pale green ramps. In case you’re not familiar with these springtime treats, they’re a member of the onion family and have broad tender tulip-like leaves and a small bulb at the bottom that gets bigger as the season progresses. They taste like a cross between garlic and leeks, making them the perfect onion to add to almost any savoury dish.

Because of their brief season and short shelf life, ramps tend to be very expensive in markets, but if you live in the North Eastern US, they grow like weeds in many parks. We ended up using them in a few courses, but I think my favourite preparation is grilled with a little sea salt and olive oil as seen above.

Stinging nettles have a wonderful green flavour that’s similar to wheat grass or mugwort, and is great for making teas, soups, purees or even pasta. As the name implies, they have tiny hollow needles that are filled with a toxic combo of formic acid, histamine and other nasty irritants that will burn initially and have you itching for hours. To avoid their angry wrath, gloves are a must when handling them and once you get them home, they need to be blanched or steamed before they can be eaten.

After Giff from Constables Larder patiently cleaned a whole bag of nettles, we turned some of them into tempura, others where blanched and integrated into pasta dough, and the rest were pureed into a custard we had originally planned to make ice cream out of. Unfortunately, the ice cream maker was a no-show, so we had to improvise. Keep reading to see all the dishes we made, including the fate of the nettle custard. continue →

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