Texas Spring on a Plate: Hericium 'Crab' Cakes with Sautéed Dock and Heartleaf Nettle Sauce

There have been so many fresh wild things to choose from right now and for some of us, a lot of time to gather and prepare them. With all the rain in North Texas lately I'm still getting plenty of Hericium so I decided to pull out one of my favorite recipes and put a spring spin on it. The above photo shows Hericium 'crab' cakes (made with sumac and wild onions too) sitting on a bed of sautéed dock, nettle sauce and cashew cream garnished with chickweed, radish, redbud flowers, and drummond's onion flowers. 

Above is Hericium corraloides which I find quit a bit of but any Hericium or tender Pleurotus species would work just fine.  Note the short spines and elaborate branching that distinguish H. corraloides from other Hericium species.

Athough the Hericium is the star of the show, ideas for this dish started when I decided to do something with heartleaf nettle besides soup. Nettle soup is great, I just wanted something different.
Above is a picture of heartleaf nettle (Urtica chamaedryoides). Unlike the common stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) heartleaf nettle stings really pack a punch and persist for hours, or in my experience, overnight! Fortunately, these leaves are edible when carefully collected and then boiled.

close up of leaves and stem of Urtica chamaedryoides showing the part that causes the pain

Cucumber Violet Soup with Sumac

I know, I know. Violets can be slimy. Use it to your advantage and make this light but unctuous chilled soup! Skip the roux, violets will thicken this soup while enhancing the green color of the cucumber. Here's the recipe:


Cucumber Violet Soup with Sumac

2 Cucumbers, peeled and seeded (use these part for something else)
2 cups plain unsweetened yogurt (I used Forager Cashewgurt to keep it vegan)
1/2 cup violet leaves, tightly packed (or about 1/2 ounce)
Wild onions, cleaned and roughly chopped plus more for garnish
1/2 Teaspoon white sugar or other sweetener of choice
Salt to taste
1 Teaspoon sumac
1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Using a high speed blender process the cucumber, yogurt, violets, onions, sugar, and salt. Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary. Chill for a few hours to let the flavors marry. When ready to serve, combine the sumac with the oil and drizzle on top. Garnish with any of the following: violet leaves or flowers, onion flowers, henbit, chickweed, radish or sunflower sprouts. Makes 3-4 servings.

Notes:
If sumac is unavailable fresh lemon or lime juice can be substituted.
I use a variety of wild alliums (whatever I have on hand) but a large garlic clove can be substituted it wild onions/garlic are unavailable.

Violet leaves and sumac (collected last fall)

One of many wild alliums, the hollow stems of Onion Grass can be snipped just like chives

Close up of Drummond's Onion (Allium drummondii). These beautiful pink flowers are mild and make the perfect garnish.

Roasted Osage Orange Seeds, A Tedious Endeavor

 Osage orange, bois d'arc, hedgeapple, monkey brains...this fruit and tree have so many different names. Most of us have seen these large green balls sitting in the grass in the fall.

Hedgeapples or Osage Oranges

 These trees really stand out because the wood has an orange hue to it.

Bois D'arc or Osage Orange Tree

 I grew up calling the fruit "horse apples" and while I always had a good time kicking and throwing them around I never gave them much thought.

A long time ago I saw a post on Eat The Weeds about this fruit where I learned it was edible, at least part of it.

http://www.eattheweeds.com/maclura-pomifera-the-edible-inedible-2/

Later, I watched an episode of Weird Fruit Explorer where Jared painstakingly extracts and cooks the seeds of an Osage Orange.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40U8F8ZD9f0&vl=en

I thought it was interesting but I wasn't too tempted to give it a go myself until I saw yet another mention of the fruit on Foraging Texas.

https://www.foragingtexas.com/ (I can't retrieve the specific entry on Osage Orange so you will have to dig for it)

After finding three separate mentions of this fruit and I knew I had to try it. Last year I gathered some and tried to process them. It didn't go well. To deal with the sticky latex inside the fruit I had read that a couple rounds of freezing and thawing would help tame it and make the seeds more accessible. Unfortunately I was a bit too aggressive in my freeze/thaw cycles and ended up with a stinky pile of goo. This year I decided to try it again and the results were much better. I froze the fruit, thawed it, froze it again, and then let it thaw. This time the fruit was soft but intact and I was able to separate all of the seeds fruit the flesh with oiled hands. After collection, the seeds soaked in several change of until I thought all the latex was gone.  I air dried the seeds on a paper towel and then I roasted them with oil and salt until they started to pop. The seeds on the LEFT are from this first experiment.

Two batches of roasted seeds

Because of my successful first batch, I tried it again with another Osage Orange from a completely different location. This one was a larger and older/riper than the first. I processed it exactly the same way except I dried them in a dehydrator before I roasted them with oil and salt. I don't know if it is because of my method, trees in different locations, or the age of the fruit but I think the second batch on the RIGHT came out much better. Also, this batch had fewer "hairs" than the last. I found two more Osage Oranges in a third location and when I have time I will be processing the seeds one more time just to see if method, location, or age really have anything to do with the final product.

Roasted seeds in a jar for storage

So...how do they taste? Good. Not great, but definitely good. Others have compared them to popcorn and pine nuts and I can definitely see that but to me they taste almost exactly like roasted acorn squash seeds- nutty with a hint of bitterness. They would be nice mixed with a blend of other seeds as a salad topping or an embellishment for trail mix. Is it worth it? I don't know. I enjoyed learning how to process the seeds and while the final product was edible and arguably tasty, the yield was very low and the amount of time and work required to get these little morsels was ridiculous.

Sumac, Sumac-ade and Other Fresh Things Right Now

Sumac-ade: a very tart lightly sweetened drink made from steeped sumac berries

I gathered a bunch of the berry clusters from the very tops of the abundant Sumac plants growing in north Texas right now. It's a little early in the season and these berries will certainly become fuller and more loaded with the dusty, sticky red powder that coats each berry but we've all been hoping for a big rain so I didn't want to risk the next harvest opportunity. Despite yielding a paler drink these berries were plenty tart.

One of the sumac berry clusters. I also tucked a few clusters in a paper bag to dry for later.

The berries are stripped from their branches (and looked over for rogue insects or webs) and covered with water. I give them a vigorous stir to loosen their powdery coating and let the whole container sit in the fridge overnight. I use a fine mesh strainer to separate the berries from their liquid and a second pass through a cloth to catch the smallest particles. The liquid is poured into a bottle along with simple syrup to taste and allowed to chill in the refrigerator.

 I was gifted a bag of ripe figs and have been enjoying them several ways. First is as a salad with blue cheese/walnuts/hemp seeds/pepitas and an orange/pomegranate molasses dressing. Second is figs on waffles with gooseberry jam and over-beaten whipped cream (whipped by hand to avoid this...doh!) Of course, they are pretty delicious straight from the bag too.

A little bit further north in Oklahoma where there has been more rain and cooler temperatures I found a small treat of perfect oyster mushrooms while picking up trash along a heavily trafficked trail. Oysters are a common find but these were particularly exciting because it has been a while since I've seen any. I noticed plenty of plums and some other fruits just not quite ready to be picked.

While it looks like these are growing straight out the ground they are growing on a buried root coming off a nearby stump. Oyster mushroom are easy to use, these were sautéed and tossed into breakfast tacos with other veggies.

Vegan Wild Mushroom and Kale Lasagna

A rolled vegan lasagna with layers of kale, mushrooms, ricotta, and marinara.

 A log with many pounds of oyster mushrooms

I picked a few pounds of the smallest mushrooms on the log.

The mushrooms were trimmed, cleaned, chopped, and cooked in a skillet with a small amount of oil and salt. Later, I put the cooked mushrooms in a food processor to make nice layers on top of the pasta.

The ricotta is a creamy mix of almond meal, tofu, almond milk, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, lemon, miso, parsley, oregano, basil, and red pepper flakes.

Mexican Chocolate Buckwheat Porridge

Mexican chocolate buckwheat porridge from Full of Plants topped with toasted Texas pecans, almonds, activated pepitas, and extra cinnamon of course. Find the original recipe here: https://fullofplants.com/mexican-chocolate-buckwheat-porridge/

Immune Boosting Hibiscus, Rose Hip, Ginger and Honey Infusion

The flu and other icky things have been running rampant in my area so I brewed up a tea to help:

Ginger, about one inch, sliced and roughed up with the spine of a good knife (no need to peel)
3 cups of water
1 T dried Hibiscus
1 T dried Rose Hips
Honey, good quality and raw, to taste

A pot to boil water
A small strainer or similar (cheesecloth, coffee filter, or just a patient pour from the top)

Add the ginger to a pot of water (about 3 cups) and boil for a few minutes. Take the pot off the heat and add a teaspoon each of dried hibiscus and rose hips. Let infuse in the water for a few minutes. Stir in a spoonful of good raw honey and strain into cups.