Two Foraged Dishes

Gotta love the blogosphere!

Not great lighting, but it is 10 pm....

I found this recipe for wild onion kimchi on one of the blogs I follow and I thought, I have plenty of field garlic, I like kimchi, why don't I try this?  Well, for one thing, 1.5 pounds of wild onions or wild leeks is attainable.  1.5 pounds of tiny little field garlic bulbs is, in my opinion, not.  Certainly not if you want to do other things in your day!

After about a half an hour I did get 1.5 ounces.  I thought maybe I just needed to scale down the recipe.  Turns out that the volume of the field garlic was larger than I thought so I only cut the recipe amounts in half and that was just right.  I still ended up with just a pint of fermenting stuff but, really, how much do I need?  Not much.  Should be ready in a few days. 

Today was also my first nettle picking day.  Last week they looked like they were starting to grow and I figured that this week they'd be just right.  I brought home a bag full and blanched them.  I used them to make a mushroom and nettle risotto that came out really tasty.  I used a small container of baby bellas and chopped them into 1/2 inch pieces, which I sautéed with garlic before adding the rice, turkey and vegetable stocks (1 pint each), nettles (also chopped, with stems removed) and romano cheese.  We had the risotto with steaks (served with homemade horseradish, a gift from my boss who makes it yearly for Passover, it's terrific) and some really good strawberries.