Wild Bites #66: a 6-minute read that makes you smarter about wild food and tells you what's to come on the website,
YouTube, or To The Bone. ~ Hank Love me some Swedish meatballs! Here's what's trending on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook: - Fiddlehead ferns are popping up all over the East and Midwest. If you want to save them for the rest of the year, try my pickled fiddleheads recipe.
- I love red
pozole, the hearty Mexican stew with hominy, and pork or chicken. I love this with a whole pig's head, but you need not get that sporty.
- Remember it's not a Wild Bites without meatballs! This week I'm featuring my Swedish meatballs recipe, which has been in my family for a century; my mom's adopted mother was a Swede. Betting you'll like it.
- If you like your fish crispy, and who doesn't, try my Vietnamese crispy fish with cilantro recipe. You can use any firm fish here; I like catfish, grouper, snapper or striped bass. Great with shrimp, too.
- Smoked pork chops? Yes, please. Here's how to make them.
- This is the time to eat lots of cardoons, that weird, gray-green stalk you see in the market. An artichoke relative, they're fantastic before the
weather warms.
- Finally, if you have started finding morels, you'll want to try my recipe for creamy mushrooms on toast. It's a classic French appetizer, and works with most kinds of mushrooms. Morels are
the best, though.
Moving up the list: Not sure why, but my recipe for a meatless, tomato-fennel pasta sauce is trending! I love this sauce, especially when served with
seafood or fish. Great with white meat poultry, too. Love these or any of my recipes? Please rate them while you're there so people searching for recipes know they're worth clicking on! Wild turkey schnitzel with Southern tomato gravy. You want this. Turkey season is here, and I love cooking them so much I'm going to do two posts about their recipes here on Wild Bites. This week let's stick to turkey breasts. Next time we'll do recipes for the rest of the bird. If you can't wait, all my turkey recipes are here. - Let's start with turkey cutlets or schnitzel. I have several recipes for this style of cutlet, but this one features Southern tomato gravy, which if you haven't tried, you need to.
- While not a traditional Mexican taco, these turkey breast tacos are really, really good. It's the tequila-lime marinade and the roasted green chile that takes it over the top.
- This is a traditional Mexican dish: Mole sauce with turkey. This is my rendition of the classic mole poblano most of us have tried. Poaching the turkey in the sauce is key.
- Hard to go wrong with a smoked wild
turkey breast. Best sandwich meat you'll ever put on a club or with Swiss.
- I'm a sucker for some old school turkey marsala. This was a dish I ate, usually with veal, back when I was a kid. Super good with wild turkey breast, too.
Here we go, ramp season is upon us! Ramps and other wild onions are some of the first joys of spring, full of vitamins and flavor to wake us all up after a winter of heavy foods. Keep in mind that while ramps are great, they're not the only wild onion out there. Here's a primer on how to responsibly harvest wild onions of all types. Once you have some, I compiled a list of my 13 favorite ramp recipes, which of course work with all wild onions, scallions or chives. Below are a few of my faves: - Ramp pesto is a great way to start using wild onions. It's an intense paste that can serve as a sauce with a touch more olive oil, good on lots of things beyond
pasta.
- Making a light, bright ramp risotto is a gorgeous way to enjoy them. The recipe is vegetarian, but you could add some crispy bacon or cured ham in there...
- It's
a little early for ramp bulbs, but in a few weeks, they'll be large enough to harvest. When you do, pickled ramps is my favorite way to enjoy them all summer.
- Another way to preserve ramps or other wild onions
is to make Korean kimchi with them. It works great and adds zip to whatever you eat them with. Try it on a hot dog.
- This is one of my all-time favorite things to do with any wild onion, or garden chives:
Chinese-style scallion pancakes. Think savory flatbread more than pancake, these are so, so, soooo good.
Gulf shrimp are worth the extra few dollars... The administration's decision to levy tariffs all over the world will have huge consequences for our food system here in
the United States -- and not all of those consequences will be bad. While it's tough to say definitively what the final effects will be because the rules have been changing almost daily, here is a look at the good, the bad, the ugly and the silly
of the new tariff regime as is pertains to food. I wrote about this over at To the Bone, which is where I have shifted much of my energies lately. Why? For
now, it's pure. The algorithms on Facebook, Pinterest, Google and even Instagram have all throttled the reach of independent creators like me. Substack works differently. You subscribe -- free, or, if you can support my work, paid -- and so everyone who sees my stuff there actually wants to. It feels like 2008 all over again, and that's been refreshing. If even half you who
read Wild Bites went over to Substack to subscribe, To the Bone would become one of the biggest Substacks out there. There are lots of benefits special to paid subscribers, and I am planning more as time goes on. But even if you're just thinking about subscribing, free or paid, pop over there and take a look. Then message me with what you'd like to see more of in dterms of types of posts: recipes, essays, travel stories, how-tos, etc. Thanks in advance! 5. Pig Hunt, More Hunts, and Book TourServing up discada right from the cookbook! Well, that was fun! My first collaboration with the guys at Harvesting Nature, a culinary pig hunt in Texas, was a great success -- although I would have loved it if there were a few more pigs around. But hey, that's hunting. Was great working with the Two Adams, Leland and Justin, all experts in their own way, which took some of the pressure off yours truly. I will definitely be doing more of these, if they'll have me back. I do still have a few open spots for my own culinary hunts with Coastal Wings Outfitters in Oklahoma. We have three hunts, one for
doves and teal, and two for deer. Here's the breakdown: - TWO spots open for doves and teal, which is September 14-17.
- ONE spot left for our doe hunt, November 29 to December 2.
- FOUR spots left for our buck hunt (there are big bucks where we hunt!), Dec. 3 to 5.
We are expecting the book to start shipping in the first week of June, which is earlier than I'd thought, so yay! I'm struggling with the book tour -- logistics and trying to cover the whole country in a way that my carbon footprint is at least a little smaller than Taylor Swift's would be nice -- but it'll come together. Right now the Northeast Corridor from Philly to Boston has me
stumped. Most of the people I know and have done events with are out of the business now. But I'll get something out there eventually. Happy to say that foraging has finally begun here in Minnesota. Nettles are here, and ramps are starting, as are fiddleheads. Morels are still a couple weeks away, but it's only a matter of time. And in my garden, I am stoked that my rhubarb is flourishing! I love eating rhubarb, so soon, soon!
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