November is for persimmons

More about growing and preserving persimmons in my story for Gardenista.

The scrambled season

I am a fool for tulips in late fall. I know it contradicts my seasonally appropriate life, but I never claimed to be a fundamentalist. They reappear now, in the cool weather, in bunches outside bodegas and delis. The ones here were a birthday gift from the Frenchman. As was the shiny new espresso pot on the right of the stove. You can never have too many espresso pots. We both fell in love with this Alessi model when we spent a September weekend upstate with friends.

I am still drying persimmons, hoshigaki style. 

These are the American persimmons I foraged recently, just peeled, and hanging in our sunny southern windows, with the Thai limes. They are small and dry fast, and I have the rounded 'Fuyus' and 'Hashiyas' (pointy bottoms) for comparison, in the other window. They take much longer.

Otherwise, there are mushrooms to clean and process and cook and test in recipes, a fresh haul of acorns, another batch of persimmons, gardens to design, stories to write, a house to clean and a garden to put to bed.

I think I just panicked.

Brooklyn Sunday

Beautiful and warm weather arrived a few hours before a storm.

I was leading a small private walk in Prospect Park (a birthday gift from a London sister to her Brooklyn sister, who brought a couple of friends). We met at Grand Army Plaza and walked south.

Leaves are falling, but there is still a lot of green in our urban woods.

I was hoping for mushrooms, of course; with little rain it has been a lean October, but we had a good soaking a few days ago.

And then a telltale sign of good things to come. Honey mushrooms (Armillaria spp), well beyond their prime on a dead tree (they killed it, it's what they do).

Look beyond the tree's stump and you may find a newer, firmer, fresher generation, matching the leaf litter perfectly.

Honey mushrooms have white a spore print. And that does not imply that any mushroom with a white spore print is good to eat. No. But in the case of a possible "honey" ID you want a white spore print; one of its potential lookalikes - which is toxic - has a brown spore print. Please join a local mycological society if you would like to learn more about mushrooms, and especially about eating them.

And then on, happily, to larger things: giant puffballs - Calvatia gigantea. Like huge softballs on the dead leaves, they were a little nibbled, but in prime condition. Our party of four split the largest and firmest very happily, and we left the others (on the walk home I noticed a couple pouncing on one of the ones we'd left behind).

There is little need to be greedy with puffballs - one big 'un can feed you for days. The texture inside is like tofu, or melted haloumi cheese, or roasted bone marrow, but mostly like puffball. They grill beautifully.

We stopped for a picnic of pink quail eggs and mugwort dipping salt and a dessert of spicebush-poached pears. Hot hen of the woods soup, inbetween. Some people had dessert first. Which is what being an adult is all about.

And then it was home, again, through the trees.

It was summer-warm. Everyone was in the park.

I collected my bike at Grand Army Plaza and rode home, downhill almost all the way, the wind in my hair.

I stopped for a minute on one of the bridges over the Gowanus Canal. I think the Superfund cleanup may have begun. There are yellow floating devices along its length that seem to be measuring something (maybe they just melt when it's all too much?) and I saw people in head-to-bootie hazmat suits on a barge, recently. They looked tired. At the far end beyond the second bridge, white foamy gunge continued to gush into the waterway.

Ah, New York.

Puffballs and picnics and autumn and toxic waste, all in one day.

Monday Update: And, TICKS. I was bitten by a damn deer tick. In Brooklyn. Hopefully there will be no more to report. Yes, I am fully informed.

The New Wildcrafted Cuisine

I have written a review of Pascal Baudar's The New Wildcrafted Cuisine for Gardenista. Please head over there to see and read more (and to enter your name for a giveaway of the book). I have known Pascal online for years, as we hang out in the same digital foraging places. Attending one of his wild foods classes in the wilds of LA is high on my wishlist.

Wild kimchi is one of dozens of interesting recipes included in his beautiful book. 

Sourdough baked with wild elderberry starter, fermented green elderberries, white fir soda, his concept of Drink the Forest (now appropriated by every forager out there, I think), how to make wild mustard and vinegar, cooking with cattails, pickling mushrooms, baking trout in clay and shrimp in tree bark, creating wild spice blends, food preservation techniques... It's a thrilling book.

The garden of greens

I Heart Grow Journey. Made from 'Prize Choy' bok choy leaves, planted a few weeks ago.

I know my bok choy will not make big boks, because they are now very shady. But I like the little boks. I mix them into salads or add them at the last minute to Asian curries for a swirl of dark, anti-oxidant green.

Nasturtium (top left), teeny kale, minutina, sheep sorrel
Tatsoi, rapini (middle) baby arugula
Fava bean leaves, bok choy, mature arugula

My fall greens are giving us daily salads and side dishes.

Interestingly, one crop that has not done well is the red chard. It is in a super-shady section of  the vegetable plot and I think I just pushed it over the edge, or simply planted it too late. Or maybe the seedlings don't like being stamped by little possum feet.

The arugula right beside it is just fine.

As I wrote in my piece about edible shade gardening for Gardenista recently, arugula is the Obama of the shade garden. It germinates quickly and reliably and grows from spring through summer and well into the cold nights. Its leaves are always in great shape. You can count on the arugula not to disappoint. Also, it looks good.

In my most recent seeds of the month package I received a wild arugula cultivar, 'Grazia.' I am very curious to see whether it will germinate better than another wild arugula cultivar I tried from Botanical Interests earlier in the year. That one had an abysmal germination rate, in each of three sowings. Like, 5% (I'm not knocking Botanical Interests - I seed from them every year).

Regular arugula is actually a different plant - Eruca sativa. Wild arugula is Diplotaxis tenuifolia.

Plant now? Our first frost date technical falls this week. I think I will, as wild arugula tolerates colder soils. The peas and chicory I am going to hoard for early next spring.

Street leaves

Hopefully the yellow leaves on the black locust will be allowed to lie a while. 

Persimmons, and the case of the disappearing acorns

A bountiful October collection of persimmons (Diospyros virginiana), acorns, puffball (Calvatia cyathiformis), field mushroom (Agaricus campestris), and young maitake (Grifola frondosa).

The mushrooms became soup, for a forage walk.

I am in the process of stringing up the harder persimmons to make hoshigaki, air-dried persimmons, a Japanese delicacy. This involves peeling them, quite a fiddly commitment with these small indigenous fruit, and hanging each one up to dry for several weeks. After they start drying they are massaged daily to distribute the sugars more evenly.

Aside: I'd love to travel the Japanese countryside, eating, foraging.

The acorns. Yup. I collected a test amount, nice and dry and no insect holes, to try my patience even more: to candy them, chestnut-style. Suggested to me by Renee Baumann, a chef who came on my last forage walk.

I left my forage collection on the outdoor table overnight, in the cool temperatures.

The next day...What was I thinking?

Missing: Every. Single. Acorn. The squirrel/s had eaten and buried every last one. Acornfest. The vegetable plot was extra-riddled with holes. They liked the persimmons, too.

Sigh. So I must go back for some more.

Scheduled forage and plant walks have come to an end but I will lead private walks as long as people want to go on them. Get in touch to book via the Find/Follow tab.