Smithsonian.com

Morel mushrooms and fiddleheads, courtesy of Flickr user libraryman

I’ve always loved spring, even when I lived in the mild climate of California, because that’s when wild flowers dusted color over the usually brown hillsides. Now that I live where the winters are harsh, my appreciation for spring verges on rapture.

One of the reasons, as always, is food-related: although the full range of local produce is eons away for those of us in growing zones six and under on the USDA’s hardiness scale (southern Florida is a 10), nature throws us a bone by sending up a few wild delicacies in the early spring. The most prized of these are ramps, fiddleheads and morels.

They can be either expensive or free, depending on whether you buy them in a market or restaurant, or have access to land where they grow and know where to look. I’m no trend forecaster, but if the economy keeps heading south, I predict foraging will be hot this year.

One summer I had the pleasure of eating a meal prepared almost exclusively from wild ingredients, including stuffed wild grape leaves and pasta salad with pesto made from garlic mustard, the stuff most people consider a pesky weed. It was delicious. But I’m getting ahead of myself; we’re talking about spring.

Ramps, also called wild leeks, grow in the Northeast, as far south as the Appalachian mountain region and as far west as Missouri and Minnesota. They can be found in cool, damp areas of deciduous forests, emerging before the tree canopy develops. In those few weeks before they flower, ramps can be harvested for their green tops and bulbs.

Wild leeks have a pungent onion/garlic flavor and odor (in fact, make sure they have that distinctive smell, because lily of the valley, which has similar leaves but is odorless, is poisonous). The only way I’ve tried ramps is pickled, but they are a versatile ingredient. This simple spaghetti-with-ramps recipe from Gourmet magazine sounds particularly good.

Fiddleheads are the coiled fronds of young ferns, which resemble the scroll on the end of a violin. Like ramps, they grow in cool woodland areas and should be harvested soon after they emerge. New Englanders are particularly fond of their fronds, which can be steamed, boiled or sautéed; their flavor is similar to asparagus. After a rash of food-borne illnesses related to raw or undercooked fiddleheads investigated by the Centers for Disease Control in the 1990s, it’s now advised that they be cooked thoroughly.

Emeril Lagasse, better known for New Orleans cooking, actually hails from New England. This recipe from his show combines fiddleheads with another spring treat, morels.

Morels, of course, are the crazy looking mushrooms with the tall caps that resemble either a Conehead brain or a bunch of coral. Morel hunting, like all mushroom foraging, is not for the inexperienced or ill informed—you need to know how to distinguish between edible species and similar-looking fungi that can cause abdominal distress or worse if eaten.

If you’d like to learn more about foraging these and other wild foods, both the Forager Press and “Wildman” Steve Brill have informative Web sites with tips and recipes. Happy springtime!

At a market in Cochabamba, Bolivia, chilies have been on sale for centuries

As someone who considers hot sauce a kitchen staple, I’ve been especially looking forward to the April issue of Smithsonian magazine—it includes this feature by Brendan Borrell about an American ecologist who studies chilies in Bolivia to deduce nature’s method behind the spicy madness. It’s a lively read that you’ll enjoy whether you like it hot or not. (And no, I’m not just saying that because I work at the magazine.) Take a look! And if it makes you hungry, check out these recipes from Sarah of Surprising Science, as well as my co-blogger Lisa’s post about whether beans and chilies belong together

For a demonstration of someone reacting to the kick of very hot hot sauce, here’s a few pictures from my days as a features reporter at a small paper (which sometimes meant illustrating my own stories—this one went with a piece about a local hot sauce store). Embarrassing for me; hopefully amusing for you!

I got my first taste of geoduck recently when I headed over to Chinatown on lunch break with a few intrepid coworkers. (Science blogger Sarah and science editor Laura were especially eager to try some after working on the mag’s recent feature about the massive mollusks.)

Before heading out, I’d watched our video of Hung from Top Chef cooking geoduck, and scoffed at his limited descriptive powers. He kept just saying it tasted “oceany.”

At the restaurant, a little Chinese place called Eat First, geoduck was listed as a special served with “corals and yellow leaks.” (Talk about an unappetizing typo!) We pointed to the sign and soon got served this platter of glistening leeks topped with some white and orange bits. I’m assuming the white stuff was the geoduck, but I’m a little confused by the corals—do they mean coral as in a reef? That’s not edible as far as I know. Or was it another case of bad translation? Maybe you can help: Take a look at the curly orange pieces in this photo and let me know if you have any insights.

Our geoduck dish, but what are the curly orange pieces?

The verdict? Geoduck is good, with a texture that seems to combine clam and chicken, and a taste that’s…um…well…oceany.

An old Guinness poster, courtesy of Flickr user Joan_Thewlis

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, the one day of the year when eating your greens can mean cupcakes, beer, even bacon.

It’s oddly appropriate that we celebrate our country’s Irish heritage by binging on fatty food and drink; after all, Ireland is the home of the fry-up, a typical breakfast consisting of fried eggs, bacon (rashers), sausages and black pudding (made from pig’s blood), with a few other fried things thrown in for good measure. Not surprisingly, Ireland’s also near the top of the list of countries with the highest heart disease death rates.

But there is some good health-related news on the Irish front: You know those charming old Guinness beer ads that proclaim it to be good for you? Turns out, they might be right—though not for the reasons originally thought.

Back in the 1920s, when the “Guinness is Good for You” slogan was introduced, the claim was based on market research that found that people felt good after they drank a pint of the dark and foamy stout. Um, duh.

This flimsy claim was eventually bolstered by the fact that Guinness contains iron. Pregnant women were even advised to have an occasional pint. Of course, it would take something like a dozen pints a day for a woman to get her recommended daily allowance of iron, in which case the alcohol and calories would cause more harm than good.

But another health benefit was discovered in 2003: stout beer like Guinness (as opposed to lager and other light beer) is high in the antioxidant compounds called flavonoids—similar to those found in red wine, tea and chocolate—that can reduce the risk of heart attack from blood clotting. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin carried out laboratory tests on dogs (Irish setters, I wonder?) with clogged arteries, comparing the effects of Guinness and Heineken. Only those dogs fed Guinness had reduced clotting.

In the interest of having a heart-healthy St. Pat’s Day, I decided to double my antioxidant dose by baking a Chocolate Guinness Cake. A little tip from this novice baker: measure the amount of Guinness carefully. I lost track of how much I put in, and ended up with a cake batter volcano in my oven. Luckily, I was able to scoop out about a 1/3 of the batter and bake the remainder. I doubt it came out the way it was supposed to, but it was still pretty delicious—moist and flavorful.

And one last interesting fact I learned about Guinness—it isn’t vegan; it (and some other beers) contains isinglass, a fish product used in the clarifying process to get rid of excess yeast. Be sure to share that little nugget of wisdom at the pub tonight.

Now, get out there and celebrate.

Country-Western Mr. Potato Head, courtesy Flickr user Patrick Q

You know how sometimes, strangers on the plane or train will seek matter for chatter by peeking at what you’re reading? It usually works. But I’ve discovered the perfect conversational stumper: “Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent,” a new hardcover by Yale University Press.

As they stare at the book jacket, which features a photo of a large, lone potato looming over the oddly academic title, I can guess what they’re thinking: “What kind of person wants to read an entire book about a potato ?” For that matter, who writes one? (A man named John Reader, which means I’m writing about reading a Reader’s writing. Who’s on first?) But I say to my bemused fellow passengers, and to you, that it’s a surprisingly fascinating subject.

I set out to blog about this book because of St Patrick’s Day and the potato’s reputation as the quintessential Irish food. But while the potato was indeed hugely important to Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries, that’s not where the plant’s history is rooted, as Reader reveals in the first few pages:

“Far from being an unassuming item of food that Europeans had been eating since time immemorial (as I, like many, had once supposed), the potato is a native of South America, where it had been domesticated by the pre-Inca people of the Andes about 8,000 years ago.”

So perhaps Cinco de Mayo would have been a more apt holiday connection. Too late, I’m hooked on potato history, and you’ll have to put up with it! (And if you delve into Reader’s book, you’ll have to put up with a bit of corn as well, i.e.: “Take a close look at a potato; look deep into its eyes.”)

Nutritionally, potatoes are pretty much the complete package. They are low in fat, full of complex carbohydrates, essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals, and also contain a surprising amount of protein—on par with soybeans when ranked in terms of biological value. Studies have shown that people can live healthily for months an all-potato diet (supplemented by a little margarine or milk), although this requires eating as many as 7 pounds of potatoes a day and surely drives the palate mad with monotony.

It’s often hard to define a plant’s origin, and cultivated potatoes are “an especially difficult case” because they have so many wild relatives (at least 169) over a very wide geographic range, Reader tells us. The potato showed up in Europe during the 16th century, but the question of who brought it there remains unresolved. Some say it was Sir Francis Drake, some say Sir Walter Raleigh, but Reader doubts both versions. He suggests that Spanish conquistadors brought potato cultivars back from the Americas as early as 1562 (first to the Canary Islands, then the mainland), but may have kept the discovery of this novel food source secret from their European neighbors for a while. Reader warns us to “be wary of conspiracy theories” but thinks the evidence points to something “distinctly odd.”

Spanish conspiracy or not, potatoes were common enough in England by the turn of the 17th century to merit mention from Shakespeare, and by the late 1700s the Prussian ruler Frederick the Great had become so convinced of the potato’s merit that he ordered his subjects to grow them.

(More…)