The Earthy Delights Recipe Blog
Celebrating wild harvested, traditional & artisanal foods
These grilled lamb rib chops are perfect for a quick, yet elegant meal. Prep them first thing in the morning (or even the night before), and you’ll have dinner on the table in 15 minutes or less. Lamb, considered a traditional spring dish, is generally harvested at 3 – 5 months of age, so that “spring” lamb was actually probably born in the fall. Americans tend to prefer milder-flavored meats, so it’s no surprise that lamb is much more popular than mutton, …
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 …
The flavors of spring are delicate. The first tender emerging shoots and mushrooms usually don’t have the robust flavors of summer’s produce and need careful handling to bring out their best qualities. There are exceptions, of course. The first ramps of the year are thought by many to be the most potent and pungent of the season. But many other wild spring foods – morel mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns, wild asparagus and the like – are best appreciated when lightly cooked …
Let’s just say straight off that this is not the classic version of Vichysoisse, the chilled potato-leek soup with its origins in the French cooking tradition. Instead, our version is a bit more of a backwoods country cousin, with its roots firmly planted in American soil. The origin of the soup known as Vichysoisse has been frequently debated. As the accepted story goes, it was created by French chef Louis Diat, at the Ritz-Carlton in New York in the summer …