Juniper and Garlic Potatoes

Juniper berries are common here in Middle Tennessee.  They are often used in game and pork dishes, as well as many German and Danish dishes.  Juniper is what gives Gin it's flavor.  This is a great side dish and smells wonderful cooking!

Juniper and Garlic Potatoes

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves minced
1 tablespoon juniper berries fresh or dried, crushed
1 teaspoon salt
4-5 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced thin

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Arrange sliced potatoes in baking dish, overlapping for nice effect.  Depending on pan, you may have two layers.

Mix olive oil, garlic, juniper and salt in a separate bowl. Spread over potatoes. An easy way to crush the juniper is to put them in a plastic bag and roll over with a rolling pin.

Bake for 45-60 minutes until desired browning on the top.

Great served with pork chops!

Foraging Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving just seems like a great time to put all your foraging skills to work.  I am sure there were many a foraged foods on the first Thanksgiving table.  Thus, I challenged myself to come up with and produce a Thanksgiving using foraged foods both fresh and preserved throughout the year.  I hope you enjoy the recipes as much as I did producing them!

Menu

Wild Greens Salad with Za'atar Dressing
Black Russian Dock Bread
Autumn Berry Orange Jam

Cream of Watercress Soup

Roasted Duck with Crab Apple Onion Sage Glaze

Prune and Juniper Dressing

Mustard Greens with Onion and Bacon

Blackberry Crab Apple Sauce

Apple Cobbler with Acorn Crust

Black Locust Blossom Wine

Mint, Motherwort & Mulberry Leaf Tea

Wild Green Salad with Za'atar Dressing

Salad Ingredients:

Dandelion Leaves
Field Pennycress
Chickweed
Wood Sorrel
Cucumber
Dehydrated Red Bud Flowers


Dressing:

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons Za'atar seasoning


Black Russian Dock Bread

Ingredients:

1 cup and 1 tablespoon milk
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons oil
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 cup ground curly dock seeds
2 1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
egg white

Directions: 

In a medium bowl, mix the ground dock seeds and flour.  Premixing these ingredients before adding to the bread machine insures an even distribution.

In your bread maker, add all ingredients (except final egg white for coating) starting with the wet and finishing with the dry.  Set to dough cycle.

When the cycle is complete, briefly turn your oven on just to warm and then turn off. Remove dough from machine and roll flat.  Roll up flat dough from one side to the other so that it is a round.  Place in bread pan. Put plastic wrap loosely over loaf and place in slightly warmed oven.  Allow to rise for 30-40 minutes.

Remove from warmed oven.  Preheat oven to 340 degrees.  Paint loaf with egg white.  Place in oven and bake for 30 minutes 

Serve with Autumn Berry Orange Jam!

Cream of Watercress Soup

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 potatoes, peeled and cubed small
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 quart of chicken or turkey stock
2 cups of milk
1 cup of heavy whipping cream
4 cups of watercress, larges stems removed (about 1 gallon baggie loosely packed if picking)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
sour cream (optional topping)
dried parsley flakes (optional topping)

Directions:

Add potatoes, onions, garlic and oil to stock pot and stir to coat.  Cook, stirring frequently, at medium heat until onions are soft but not browned.

Add stock, milk, cream, salt, pepper and watercress to pot.  Bring to boil and reduce to simmer for 10 minutes.

Add nutmeg.  Using an immersion blender blend until desired smoothness.

Ladle into individual bowls and top with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of parsley flakes.


Roasted Duck with Crab Apple Onion Sage Glaze

My mother is Danish and she has told me stories about eating duck stuffed with prunes at her grandparents' table in Denmark as a child.  Apparently it has been a tradition in our family for a very long time!



Ingredients:

1 whole duckling
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 apples, cored and chopped
12 pitted prunes, cut in half
1 half pint of Crab Apple Onion Sage Jelly

Directions:

Heat oven to 325 degrees.  Rinse duck and pat dry with paper towel.

Cut apples and prunes and mix together.  Stuff into cavity.  Optionally, seal with a skewer.  Place duck into roasting pan.  Rub skin with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Cover with roasting top or aluminum foil.

After one hour of roasting, place jelly in a bowl and warm in the microwave for thirty seconds. Remove top and baste duck with jelly.  Return the top on the pan.  Bake for one more hour and repeat basting but do not return top to pan.  Bake for another half an hour and baste.  Set timer for another thirty minutes for completion.  Total cooking time is three hours.

Serves 4 to 6.


Prune and Juniper Dressing

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons fresh juniper berries, crushed 

zest from one orange
3 apples, peeled, cored & chopped
20 prunes, chopped (less than half a normal bag)
3 tablespoons parsley, chopped
1 loaf of bread, cubed (crust is optional)
2 eggs
1 tablespoon milk

Directions:

Prepare vegetables and fruit.  Cube bread.  To crush junipers, place in plastic bag and use a rolling pin.

Add butter, celery, onions and garlic to frying pan and and fry until soft and beginning to brown.  Add junipers, stir and remove from heat. 

Mix in orange zest, apples, prunes, parsley and bread cubes.  In a separate bowl, beat eggs with milk.  Pour equally over dressing and mix with a spoon.  Spoon loosely into 9 X 13 pan. 

Bake at 325 for 30 minutes.


Mustard Greens with Onion and Bacon

This is one of my husband's favorite dishes of the day!  But who doesn't love bacon?!


Ingredients:

3 gallon size bags of mustard greens, washed and chopped
2 onions, chopped

1/2 to 1 package bacon or hog jowl bacon (depending on how much you like bacon!)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Set a large pot of salted water to boil.  Wash and chop mustard greens and chop onions. 

Cut bacon into smaller pieces and add to cast iron skillet on medium high heat.

Meanwhile, add mustard greens to boiling water (in two parts) and boil for 5 minutes.  Strain and press out liquid.  Set aside.

When bacon is beginning to brown, add onions.  Continue to cook until bacon is brown and onions are soft.

Add mustard to bacon mixture and continue to cook for 5 minutes more.  Add soy sauce and salt and pepper to taste.  Serve hot.


Blackberry Crab Apple Sauce

This tastes just like it did on the hot summer day I canned it! It is one of my favorites.  I can't tell you how nice it is to just open a jar of home cooked food and serve.

Go HERE to see the recipe.


Apple Cobbler with Acorn Crust

Next year I am picking up every acorn that I can find!  This is fantastic.  The nutty flavor really comes out.

Ingredients:

2 pints apples in cinnamon sauce or apple pie filling
1 1/2 sticks of salted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups of sugar
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup of ground acorn flour
3/4 cup of old fashioned oats
sugar for sprinkling on topping

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a 13X9 inch baking pan. Pour apples into pan.  In a separate bowl, combine butter, flour, acorn flour and oats.  Mix until well moistened.

Using your hands, flatten out small pats of the dough and place overlapping on the apples. Sprinkle lightly with sugar.

Bake 35 minutes.  Topping will become crunchy as it cools.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.


Black Locust Blossom Wine

The blossom of the Black Locust is one of my favorite edibles.  The scent of the flower will make you stop in your tracks.  They make the best fritters I have ever had.  This year I turned them into wine and was not disappointed!  It tastes floral like the scent, sweet and very strong.  Check out this post about Black Locust Blossom Wine for the recipe!

Mint, Motherwort & Mulberry Leaf Tea

I love this tea pot.  It holds two large or three small cups of tea.  The nice thing about it is that the filter holding your tea leaves is in the center and pulls out easily.

Mint is good for digestion, Motherwort is good for staying calm during the busy holiday, especially if your mother-in-law is coming, and Mulberry is particularly good for blood sugar which is something you will need when your holiday focuses on food!

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon dried mint
1 tablespoon dried Motherwort leaf
1 tablespoon dried Mulberry leaf

Directions:

Add ingredients to your tea pot and bring to a boil.  Turn off burner and let sit for ten minutes.  Serve with honey to taste.

November Foraging in the Mid-South!

While the north is buried under six feet of snow, we are fortunately still growing some wild edibles!  I must admit, it makes me very happy to live in an area that has exactly four equal seasons.  By the time you get sick of one, the next one is beginning!  This also gives us a wide variety of available plants at different times of the year.  The fall season is still in full bloom even after a few frosts.  January and February is generally the barren season of the year.  By the end of February, you might see a few onions.  However, there is much to see today!

Watercress which grows in a spring.  Because the water temperature is never extreme, it grows all year.

Make sure you invest in a pair of these if you are going into the spring!

Field Pennycress, great in salads and has a mild peppery taste.

Thistle, if you cut the stickers off you can eat the center.  Tasty but a real pain.

Juniper berries, great seasoning for wild meat and pork. It's what gin is made of.

Rose hips, can be used to make tea or jelly.  It has more vitamin C than oranges.

English Plantain, edible as a green and makes a wonderful salve.

Curly Dock, edible as a green, in the buckwheat family

Chickweed, it loves the cool weather.  It is one of my favorites and makes a great pesto.

Carolina Geranium, has medicinal uses.

Motherwort, makes a great soothing tea.  It never dies out here.  It is an amazing plant.

Wild mustard, can be eaten as a green.  It currently is mild tasting but will become more harsh as it ages.  It grows well in the early spring and loves cool weather.

Blackberry leaves are still green and can be picked and dried for teas.

Clover leaves, edible green.

Young Cleavers, edible and medicinal

Burdock leaves, the roots make a great wild edible!

Happy hunting and be sure you know 100% of what you are eating!  Please research using multiple sources.

Cranberry and Juniper Glazed Pork Roast!

 

Juniper berries were the second wild edible I learned to forage.  They are a great addition to your kitchen seasonings.  They grow wild at our local Winstead Hill Park in Franklin, TN.  It is a rocky hill that over looks the area where the Battle of Franklin took place during the civil war.  There are numerous monuments to fallen Confederate generals.  The berry tasted slightly sweet with a distinct Gin flavor and a slight crunch. I gather them when I visit and keep a small bag of them in my freezer for recipes.

As you may know, Junipers are what gives the popular alcoholic beverage Gin it's flavor.  There are over 50 varieties of Juniper.  It is most often found as a shrub but can be a tree as in this case.  Junipers can have either pointy sharp branches or braided-like scale branches.  The berries are actually cones of the female tree and can come in different colors but most often blue.  I will call them berries for simplicity's sake.  My find was over 20 feet tall with braided-like scale branches and small blue dusty berries.  The white dust on the berries is actually yeast and can be used to make a yeast starter for bread.

Junipers in December.

The type of Juniper most often used to flavor Gin is the Juniperus communis or the Common Juniper.  It is usually found as a low spreading shrub and has needle-like leaves.  This was definitely not the trees I found.  So I was looking for a Juniper tree that grew naturally (not an unusual variety intentionally transplanted).  It also had to thrive on rocky hills.  I narrowed down the possibilities to Juniperus scopulorum (aka Rocky Mountain Cedar) or Juniperus virginiana (aka Eastern Red Cedar), two common Junipers found in the southeast United States.  Both are edible, but after closely studying the photos of the two, I believe the trees I found are Juniperus virginiana.  Go HERE for more descriptions of types of both of these trees.

There is one variety of Juniper that I found mentioned which is toxic.  It is the Juniper sabina.  It is an imported low-growing shrub and also known as a stink bush as it emits a rank odor when leaves are crushed.  It can be most commonly found in Europe and Asia.  The trees I found are not of this variety, but you should certainly confirm any that you find are not as well.

Juniper berries are considered a seasoning and a little goes a long way. It has a sharp clean flavor and goes well with meat, particularly wild game. It is also often found in many European dishes and was once used to flavor their beer. Cabbage and potatoes are also frequently seasoned with Juniper. It was used by ancient Egyptians, Greeks and native Americans for it's medicinal qualities. It has been known to treat numerous diseases such as indigestion, gout, urinary tract and bladder infections and inflammations, sore throat, and colds. It has diuretic and antiseptic qualities. It contains high natural insulin and is used as a topical medicine for skin problems such as acne and warts. It has also historically been used in traditional herbal medicine to stimulate menstruation and childbirth. Pregnant women should avoid it.

You can freeze them or dry them but the berries lose flavor the longer they are from harvest. Here is the recipe that I used which turned out great:

Cranberry and Juniper Glazed Pork Roast 

Ingredients:

1 pork loin
1 half pint or 6 tbsp cranberry sauce
1 tbsp juniper berries, crushed
1 tbsp port
salt and freshly ground black pepper
sprigs of fresh parsley and sage to garnish (optional)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375° F.

2. Roast the pork following the instructions on the pack (depends on the weight). I roast my pork in an Emeril cast iron smoker which imparts a fantastic flavor and makes the house smell great, however you can just bake in the oven if you prefer.  For my roast to be completely cooked, I roasted it for 1 1/2 to 2 hours covered.

Pork Roast in Cast Iron Smoker.

Heating the cast iron smoker on the stove to ignite the wood chips placed beneath the inner pan. 

Once smoke begins on the stove, place smoker in the oven and roast.

3. Meanwhile, mix together the cranberry sauce, crushed juniper berries, port and seasoning, to taste.

Junipers

Crushed junipers with spoon and half pint of cranberry sauce previously canned.

Cranberry juniper sauce.

4. Around 20 minutes before the end of the cooking time, spoon half the glaze over the pork joint, return the meat to the oven and continue to roast for the remainder of the cooking time.

Pork roast before glaze. Marks are from the cast iron lid.

Roast with glaze.

5. Transfer the pork to a warmed serving plate. Stir any meat juices into the remaining glaze, heat through and pour over the pork just before serving.

6. Garnish with sprigs of parsley and sage (optional).

Fall Foraging in Franklin!

These wild edibles were found in Williamson County, TN local parks at the end of October and beginning of November:

Harlinsdale Park:

I have been to this park many times but on this trip, the Curly Dock and English Plantain looked the healthiest that I have ever seen. 

Curly Dock

English Plantain

Perilla aka Shiso Skeletons.  Find these and you will find the plant next year.

These are Tartarian Honeysuckle berries.  They are everywhere and tempting to a new forager.  Do NOT eat them.  They are poisonous to humans! If you squeeze one, you will see that they are actually quite nasty.

Winstead Park:
 

Black Walnuts

Black Walnuts everywhere!

One of two bags of Black Walnuts collected.  I love the smell of these.

Cleaning Black Walnuts is a job.  I wore two pairs of gloves together and still managed to stain my hands.

Honey Locust Tree with pods and seeds.  Young green pods and seeds can be eaten raw or cooked.  They taste like raw peas. The young pods can also be dried and ground and used as a flour.  The beans in these pods above can be roasted and ground and used as coffee.  That would taste like bitter chocolate. They can also be soaked (several days as they are hard) and boiled and used like beans.

Juniper Berries are what is used to make gin.  They are also a popular flavoring for meat and many German dishes.

Wild Bradford Pear Fruit.  Yes, they are edible!