Kurt Michael Friese

When I was growing up in central Ohio, school began right after Labor Day.  This was advantageous compared to today’s August starts not just because of the longer summer break, but because we would have scads of black walnuts to hurl at each other as we walked to school that first morning.

They littered the ground all along Stanwood, Denver, and Remington streets on my route to Maryland Elementary School.  It was customary to announce your approach behind fellow students by pelting them with the large green orbs.  The nuts seemed to have been created especially to be launched by nine-year-old boys.  Two inches across, perfectly round, and with a slightly rough texture that we imagined made it possible to throw curveballs with them.  The ripest ones were best because if they could be made to explode on impact they left an indelible stain and a smell that followed the target around school all day. I have been both victim and perpetrator numerous times.

Today I use the sweetmeats for far more peaceful purposes such as cakes, breads and salads, though when no one is looking I occasionally test my aim out on the flood plain behind my house.  Still haven’t mastered that curveball. [Read more →]

Tags: A Cook's Journey, Book, cooking, food, foraging, recipe, wild food by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
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We shake our heads in astonishment at the level of the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. We want to help, but don’t know how. Seems no one has the answers, least of all BP, who continues to whitewash the beaches in advance of the arrival of Anderson Cooper or President Obama.

Ironically the New Orleans Oyster Festival, postponed from its original 2006 premier by Katrina and Rita, had its inaugural – and likely final – run last week. No one has anything optimistic to tell us about the future of the Louisiana oyster beds. More bad news comes when you talk to shrimpers, longline fishers, trawlers, and on and on.

Soon-to-be-outgoing BP CEO Tony Hayward is saying that it will “pay all legitimate claims” made by the people whose lives their carelessness ruined, but looking at the Exxon Valdez spill for precedent, Exxon tied them up in court for 2 decades and eventually paid a mere 10% of the total claims. So no, I don’t think anyone believes Mr. Hayward.

And so it comes down, as it always does, to the strength, goodwill and generosity of the American people to try and help the victims of still more corporate carelessness.

The first of what I am sure will be many opportunities arrives this week. Jimmy Galle, owner of bay Area seafood supplier Gulfish, has organized Dineout for the Gulf Coast, a 3-day benefit at many of the best restaurants around the country. The short-term goal of The Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund, administered by the Greater New Orleans Foundation, is to make emergency grants to nonprofit organizations helping the victims of the oil spill. The long-term goal of the fund is to address the long-term economic, environmental, cultural effects of the disaster, and strengthen coastal communities against future environmental catastrophes by investing in solutions.

Maybe you can’t afford to send thousands of dollars. Maybe you can’t afford the time it would take to go down there and lend a hand. Most of us want to help in those ways, and most of us simply cannot. This is a small way you can help – go to dinner, eat some good food for a good cause.

Let the profiteers and politicians haggle over the blame game. We’ll keep taking small steps toward recovery. Only a fool fights in a burning house – it’s time to help the people.

via Kurt Friese: Dine Out for the Gulf Coast.

Tags: Animal Cruelty, Gulf Coast, Huffington Post, Oil Spill, Slow Food, capitalism, food, food cost, food history, food politics, food security, wild food by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
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Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. ~Cicero

Celebrations of the harvest have existed for as long as civilization, for indeed it was agriculture that necessitated both. But Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday; a celebration of the bounty shared by the native inhabitants of this land with foreign pilgrims. While Judeo-Christian prayers before a meal give thanks to God and Native Americans thank the very animal on which they feast, each are also a recognition of our own place in the world.

Giving gratitude for the bounty we enjoy demonstrates respect not only for nature and God, but for ourselves as well. And so, while gratitude should be acknowledged, felt, and practiced every day, we set aside one particular day each fall to celebrate the harvest and pay special attention to that which makes it possible for us to do everything else we do in this life. To recognize that food transforms us even as it is transformed into us.

via Gratitude | Nourish Network.

Tags: Articles, Nourish Network, Slow Food, conviviality, food, recipe, wild food by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
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Around this time of year, all the foodies in my neck of the woods are, well, in the woods. Spring and fall are the best wild food foraging times around here, and as if ol’ Mother Nature knew our food prices were going through the roof and transportation costs skyrocketing, she’s brought us a cornucopia of wild edibles out there, free for the taking.

Besides the morels I spoke of recently (did I mention my son found some 10 feet from our back door?), we find oyster and velvet foot and puffball mushrooms around here, and soon the goat’s beard and hen o’ the woods will be popping out. There are ramps and fiddleheads to be had in the forest as well, but the two wild foods of the week are a weed and an invader — stinging nettles and garlic mustard.

Now anyone who’s done any camping has probably developed a special kind of hatred for nettles, a plant with a natural defense so nasty that many
folks recoil from eating them. When they come into contact — even slightly — with the skin, these otherwise pretty little plants release the tips of their tiny
spines, and with them a wicked cocktail of acetylcholine, histamine, formic acid, and 5-hydroxytryptamine (which, curiously, is serotonin). The result is a crazy burning itch that lasts about 10 minutes. Surprisingly, though, they are quite edible — and delicious, as long as you know how to handle them. (Short version: Use gloves or tongs.) Harvested and cooked correctly, nettles deliver a burst of nutrition and flavor, and can be substituted for cooked spinach. The real sting comes when you run out.

In my backyard right now, a pernicious invader called Alliaria petiolata — more commonly called garlic mustard — thrives. It came to the New World from Europe in the 1800s as a culinary and medicinal herb. With no natural predators here, it soon grew out of control. Extremely prolific, a single garlic mustard plant can spread into a patch of 20 to 120 feet in just a year. Garlic mustard will shade or crowd out native species of flowers and mushrooms and cause massive disruption in a habitat if left unchecked.

In Hickory Hill Park near where I live in Iowa, garlic mustard’s invasion has reached such heights of success that local volunteers pull out nearly a ton of the stuff every year! As I recently preached on Gristmill, though, one way to turn an enemy into a friend is to dine with him — or in this case, on him. As mentioned, garlic mustard is a European culinary herb, and has a pleasant, bitter, somewhat spicy character. This week I’ve eaten it in salad, on a burger (good local grass-fed beef, of course), in soup, and as one of a mélange of braising greens.

An easy way to enjoy it is in a pesto. And you can make a lot because it freezes well. Here’s a variation on the classic Italian basil pesto recipe; tinker with it to suit your fancy.

Garlic Mustard Pesto

I recommend two high-end Italian cheeses here, but you could easily substitute the domestic varieties. Don’t use the powdery stuff in the green cylinder, though. It’s full of so much cellulose you’d be better off shredding the cardboard it comes in.

2 cloves of garlic
4 cups (packed) fresh garlic mustard leaves, washed
1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt
2 tablespoons of oven-toasted pine nuts (some contest this inclusion, but I like them)
3 tablespoons of grated Pecorino cheese
3 tablespoons of grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
1 cup of olive oil
Put the garlic, the washed garlic mustard leaves, the salt (which helps to preserve the green of the leaves), and the pine nuts into the mortar.

Slowly mix with the pestle and add the mixed cheeses a little at a time.

When the mixture is smooth and creamy, add olive oil to taste (to the texture you prefer) and stir to incorporate.

To dress your pasta with the pesto, always dilute the pesto with a little of the cooking water from the pasta.

Tags: food, foraging, wild food by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
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