cheese

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Double Mushroom and Cheese Strata
Breads & Baked Goods Cheese Eggs Any Style Mushrooms Wild Foods

Twice-the-Flavor Savory Double Mushroom and Cheese Strata

What’s a “strata?” Think savory bread pudding, only better. It’s an easy make-ahead meal that can be prepared the night before and baked just before you’re ready to serve it. While Double Mushroom & Cheese Strata is the perfect centerpiece for a lazy weekend brunch, it’s substantial and satisfying enough for a weeknight dinner too. Featuring savory cheeses, eggs and both fresh and dried mushrooms, this is rib-sticking comfort food at its finest – and a guaranteed hit with the …

Spaghetti with Ramp Butter and Morel Mushrooms
Mushrooms Pasta Wild Foods

Spaghetti with Ramp Butter and Morel Mushrooms

Many of our favorite wild foods seem to appear all at once in the early spring, which can make it hard to appreciate each one adequately. A practical way to enjoy the season’s abundance is to combine several of them together into a single dish. Another is to preserve the fresh flavors of the spring wild harvest so they can be enjoyed all year round. This dish does both. The flavor and texture of the morel is well known, and these unique, …

Truffled Brie with fresh summer truffles
Appetizers Cheese Wild Foods

Truffled Brie

There is nothing more elegant than a snowy-white wedge of creamy, savory Brie, the famed soft cheese named for the French region where it originated – unless it’s brie layered with paper-thin shavings of fresh truffles. Brie’s remarkable journey from milk to plate begins with a unique process, including an inoculation with a special cheese mold, a critical step in producing brie’s distinctive flavor and signature white “bloomy” rind. The rind (yes, it IS meant to be eaten) has a mild, faintly mushroom-like …

Appetizers Salads Vegetables Wild Foods

Warm Fiddlehead Salad with Pistachios and Parmesan

While almost everyone has heard of “fiddlehead ferns,” most people think only of the Eastern fiddlehead, the ostrich fern (Matteucia struthiopteris), as edible. But there is another widely consumed wild fern, the lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina), which grows along the west coast of North America from California to Alaska. Often simply called “Western fiddleheads,” lady fern fiddleheads differ only slightly from ostrich fern fiddleheads in appearance and flavor. Both fiddleheads have a distinctly “wild” green flavor that is often compared …

Ramp Risotto with Blue Cheese II
Appetizers Cheese Rice Dishes Wild Foods

Ramp Risotto with Blue Cheese

Making risotto is a contemplative process. It’s not difficult; it just takes a certain amount of planning and time. Assemble your ingredients, heat the stock – then just stand at the stove and stir. The basic ingredients for risotto are simple. Rice and hot stock are essential; wine, butter and cheese are usually included too.  Other ingredients – seafood, vegetables, spices and so on – will vary according to the recipe. Of all these, the most critically important element is the rice. The …

Porcini-Onion Soup with Jarlsberg Croutons
Cheese Mushrooms Soups & Stews Wild Foods

Porcini-Onion Soup with Jarlsberg Croutons

One look will tell you that this soup is first cousin to the world famous classic, French onion soup. But look more closely (and take a whiff of the heady aroma), and some differences quickly become apparent. Most noticeable is the addition of dried porcini mushrooms, which contribute a profound depth of rich flavor to this soup. Fresh porcini mushrooms (Boletus edulis) have a wonderful savory flavor that becomes even more intense when dried. Little wonder that dried porcini are …

Cheese Mushrooms Pasta Sauces & Condiments Wild Foods

Malfatti with Wild Mushroom & Truffle Sauce

What’s in a name? In this case, an interesting (and amusing) story lies behind the name of this close cousin to the more familiar gnocchi.  The Italian word malfatti literally means “badly made.” Whimsical names abound in Italian cookery, especially when it comes to pasta.  For example, strozzapreti means “priest choker,” fazzoletti means “little handkerchiefs,” orechiette means “little ears,” and last but not least, farfalle meaning “butterflies.” In this country, malfatti have come to refer to something akin to a …

Appetizers Cheese Mushrooms

Wild Mushroom Nachos

Is there any party food more perfect than nachos? First, nachos are meant to be shared with others.  Second, their spicy heat demands a cool, fire-quenching beverage – preferably beer! There are no hard & fast rules regarding ingredients when making nachos.  The only constants are tortilla chips, salsa and cheese – the rest is up to you. In the spirit of fun & experimentation, we used one of our favorite ingredients in all the world, dried morel mushrooms (but …

Appetizers Cheese Mushrooms Wild Foods

Morel Poppers

Practically everyone has heard of ‘poppers’, the tasty little cheese-filled peppers that can pack a wallop of heat. It’s a fact – they make great party food or appetizers and are as addictive as potato chips. Since fresh morel mushrooms are in season, we thought, “Why not try a little variation on on the “popper” theme using morels?” After all, they’re about the same size and shape as chile peppers – and they taste great when fried. Well, to make …