Spruce Pine tips and recipes ｜ 嫩松葉食譜

Around early May until mid June, the young shoots of the pine and spruce start to come out from their brownish papery shields.  These bright green young shoots are edible, tender, lemony-pine like, and rich in Vitamin C.   

My family and I were walking in the woods, looking for some other edible plants when we spotted a huge spruce tree that filled with these yummy tips.  Many tips had just emerged, while many others were still waiting for their time.

Young spruce tips are always best collected when they just come out from their papery casings.  After the tips become bigger and the colour turns deeper green, they lose the delicate citrus flavour and I will not collect them anymore.  After a few taste-tests to make sure we found a good tree, we started to collect the tips.

These tips are actually the young shoots of the tree and they will turn into branches and needles once mature.  So we paid careful attention not to accidentally over harvest the tips from the same branch or from the same area.

My son said he had to give each spruce tip a "taste test".


My son wasn't in the mood to stop and watch his mommy pick the spruce tips, which seemed to take forever.  He wanted to keep walking.  He stared at me while I chewed my second spruce tip.

"Do you want to try some? It's delicious." I handed him a tip.  He shook his head.  Frankly speaking, my son often hesitates to try wild edible plants although we forage all the time.  Perhaps many wild plants are rather pungent or bitter for his taste.  My husband and I just have to try different ways to teach him to enjoy the gift from the wild.

"Are you sure? It taste like spring." I nibbled again on the tip and handed it to my son.  "What does spring taste like?" He said curiously.  "Kind of like lemon or some type of citrus, but with the taste of pine," I answered.

He picked a green tip from the tree and took a teeny-tiny bite.  "Mmm, it's so yummy!" He smiled and slowly savoured the rest of the tip.  "Can I have another one?" he asked.  Since I wasn't sure how many pine tips a kid should have per day, I told him he could only have one or two.  Later, I saw him sneaking a few more into his mouth on the other side of the tree.  Well, it's really hard to stop him when there were thousands of tips dangling on the branches in front him.  So, we moved on.






Last week when we visited my in-laws, we found their spruce tree was also filled with the young tips.  My son immediately picked one and introduced it to his grandma and grandpa.

"It's packed with Vitamin C.  You will just need to eat two pine tips to fill your need every day!" my son said, announcing his new find.  Although my in-laws are not wild-edible enthusiasts, they nibbled a little.  "Oh yeah, it does taste a little like citrus, " Grandpa said.

"Just eat two, okay?" my boy said, with a very proud smile on his face.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you will enjoy these recipes.





Spruce Tip Sea Salt



INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup Spruce Tips
1.5 cups Sea Salt


DIRECTION:
1. Rinse the spruce tips with cold water; pat dry.

2. Finely chop the pine tips with a knife.

3. Mix the sea salt with the pine tips and stir until combined.  Loosely cover it with plastic wrap and allow it to completely air-dry; stirring it once every day to even out the drying.  Store it in an air-tight container and it can be kept up to three months.

Pine salt is good to be used on white fish, frittata, or roasted root vegetables.




Spruce Tip Mayonnaise 



INGREDIENTS:
1 cup Japanese Mayonnaise
10 Pine Tips
2 tablespoons Lemon Juice
1 tablespoon Honey



DIRECTION:

1. Rinse the pine tips in cold water; pat dry.

2. Finely chop the pine tips.  Mix it with the rest of the ingredients.  Chill it before using it.  Can be stored in refrigerator for two days.

Spruce tip mayonnaise is delicious as vegetable dip, or served with white fish.

Spruce Tip Sugar

INGREDIENTS:

1/3 cup Spruce Tips

1.5 cup Sugar

DIRECTION:

1. Rinse the spruce tips with cold water; pat dry,

2. Finely chop the spruce tips.  Mix it with the sugar.  Cover the mixture loosely with plastic wrap.  Allow it to completely air-dry; stirring it once everyday.  Store it in an air-tight container and it can be kept up for three months.

Spruce tip sugar is perfect as an additional flavour for cookies and drinks.

Mugwort Agar Agar - wild edible recipe ｜ 艾草大菜糕

Mugwort is one of my favourite wild edible greens.  It has a unique herby flavour that goes really well with dairy, and it's rich in Vitamin K.

During May to early June, mugwort grows abundantly along road sides or in parks.  I've been foraging this beautiful herb and drying them to use in later months.

Dried mugwort

To dry mugwort is simple.  All you need to do is give it a very good soak and rinse, and then spread them loosely on a baking tray or any flat surface to be air dried.  Avoid overlapping the mugwort, which is key because it will result in a moldy smell that certainly reflects in the food.

When the mugwort is completely dried, crumble it up by hand and remove as many hard stems or pieces as you can.  The finished product should be soft and fibrous.  Keep it in an air-tight jar at room temperature.

I heard some people use a dehydrator to dry mugwort, but I haven't tried it.  So I am not sure if both method are equivalent or if one is better than the other.  However, dried mugwort has a more intense flavour than the fresh one.

I used dried mugwort in the recipe below, but you're always welcome to use fresh mugwort instead.  They all are delicious.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you will enjoy this recipe.

Mugwort Agar Agar

艾草大菜糕

Ingredients:

5 gram Dired Mugwort

2 cups Water

8 gram Agar Agar Block

5 tablespoons Sugar

Milk (to serve)

Grapes (for decoration)

How to make:

1. Combine the mugwort and water in a small pot.  Bring it to a boil, and then reduce the heat to medium-low.  Let it boil for 10 minutes and remove it from the heat.

From clockwise.

2. When the mixture cools slightly.  Blend it in a food processor until the mugwort is finely chopped.  Drain the juice through a tea strainer and discard the mugwort.

3. Pour the juice back to the pot.  Cut the agar agar into small pieces and add them to the pot, followed by sugar.  Bring the liquid to a boil and then simmer it on low heat until the agar agar is totally dissolved; stirring constantly.

4. Pour the mixture in a mould and allow it to cool slightly before transferring it to the fridge.  Chill the agar agar until it is set; about 15-20 minutes.  Serve with cream or milk, along with any fruits that are desired.

Elm Samara - wild edible in the city

                  Foraging sometimes doesn't need to be far.  

Slippery Elm is a type of ornamental tree that is commonly planted along road sides or in parks in the cities.  Starting from mid spring, elm trees will be loaded with clusters of samaras, the papery green fruits.

To harvest the samaras, you just need to gently hold down the branches and slide the fruits towards the end of the branch.  The papery fruits usually have a brown tip at the end.  If you bother to remove them for a better texture, just like I do, please go ahead.  Otherwise, they taste the same with or without the brown tips.

The papery looking skin has a texture similar to white potato skin.

Elm samaras can be eaten raw, and they taste like raw sweet peas.  I use them for salad a lot, since I can get them just outside my building.  On the way home from work, I usually get a handful of them to sprinkle on my creamy corn salad, that I name "April elm salad"

April Elm Salad

(Ingredients):

1 handful of Elm Samaras

1 cup Fresh Sweet Corn kernels

2 Crab Sticks

2 tablespoons Japanese Mayo

Salt to taste

How to make:

1. Rinse the elm samaras; remove the brown tips if you want.

2. Blanch crab sticks in boiling water for two minutes; drain.  Cut it into bite size.  Set aside.

3. Add the corn kernels in the boiling water and boil them until cooked; it's about 4-5 minutes.  Drain the corn well.

4. In a mixing bowl, mix together all ingredients including the elm samaras.  Season with salt.  Serve.

The young elm leaves are also edible raw and are delicious to add into sushi with other vegetables.

Elm Vegetarian Sushi

 

Ingredients:

1 pc Nori Sheet

1 bowl Cooked Rice, warm

A hand of elm samara and young leaves

Carrot, cut in long sticks

Japanese Mayonnaise

How to make:

1. On one end of the nori, add a half portion of rice.  Place carrot, elm, and mayonnaise on top of the rice.  Roll up the nori, then firmly squeeze to shape into a solid round roll.  Cut it into equal size pieces and serve.

Garlic Mustard - the four season wild edible green and recipes

Garlic mustard is well known for being one of the most invasive and destructive species in Ontario.  Meanwhile, it is also one of the pungent herbs earns many foragers' hearts.

Garlic mustard is a non-native plant that originates from Europe and was introduced to the United States more than a century ago for its edible and medicinal qualities.  However, this species has spread aggressively with its incredible cold tolerance ability and large production of seeds.  Its high population has been affecting the balance of the local species and now it is one of the top ten unwanted species in Canada.

Garlic mustard may sound a little obnoxious; though this herb provides a high amount of Vitamin A and C, and it's always abundant and available all year around.

Endless sea of garlic mustard on the side of a trail.  I always say the amount of the garlic mustard growing in Canada is actually enough to feed the whole population in Canada.

I remember the first wild edible I tried was garlic mustard and I didn't like it.  It was very spicy and bitter.  It was not like the good bitterness in rapini, arugula, or bitter melon, but rather tasted like some horrible herbal medicine concentration.  Anyways, I pretended it was tasty to my husband and spit it right out when he wasn't looking.  My husband also tried a small leaf.  He carefully chewed it and said, "Oh yeah, it does taste like garlic."  But then he spit it out.  "What's wrong?" I asked him, knowing the reason well.  I was hoping he would tell me his garlic mustard was tastier than mine.  I wanted to gather our first wild foraging plants so badly, but I need a good reason, right?

"It was garlicky, but it is too bitter to swallow." he said, while spitting a few more times.

"Are you sure you are finding the right plant?" he looked at me.

"Yes, but I don't know why it is so bitter." I said.

After, I tried garlic mustard a few more times and each time just leaded to more disappointment.  They were far too bitter for anything.  Eventually, I gave this plant up... until this spring.  This time, I did a lot of reading and observation.  Finally, I got a clue to look for some "good bitter garlic mustard".

I learnt that although garlic mustard can be eaten all year round in its two year growing cycle, you have to harvest only certain parts in different seasons and stages of the plant if you want the less bitter garlic mustard.

  

The first year garlic mustard found in January (on the left); The second year garlic found in March (on the right).

  Garlic mustard is a biennial plant, with means it needs two years to be fully mature.  Around February or March, the first year plants start to grow and form into a rosette, with dark green leaves that look like scallop-edged heart shapes.  These plants will continuously photosynthesize through the snow and ice in winter and wait for the next spring to arrive.  First year growth tends to be more bitter due to the higher concentration of a compound that the plants needs for defence.  I am not a fan of bitterness, so I usually pass on this stage of garlic mustard.

The bitterness in garlic mustard comes from the cyanide compound that can be toxic in high doses, but this compound is also naturally found in spinach, rapini, soy, and apricot seeds.  Our body can handle a small amount of cyanide.  So, by soaking the vegetables prior to cooking, cooking them thoroughly, and eating the food containing cyanide in reasonable amounts, it lowers the the toxicity to a safe level.

Flower buds of the second year plant.

The plants that survive the winter will continuously grow up to 2 meters in height.  They will produce lighter and rounder green leaves, white flowers and seeds through out the whole second year of their life-cycle.

The flower buds start in early May, and the buds are best collected before they flower.  This year I missed the opportunity to collect enough garlic mustard buds for anything, so I will have to try this next year.

Using a snap test to find the young plants.

In mid to late May, the plants will produce white flowers with four petals.  The flowers and the tip of the plants have a mild garlic flavour with a little bitter taste; they are my favourite parts of the whole garlic mustard plant.

In order to find the tender stems, you can do a little "bend test" near the top of each plant just like you would do for snap peas.  The tender part should snap right off.

The garlic mustard almost as tall as my five-year old boy.

In late May, the narrow seed pods will start to grow on the top of each plant and they will start to seed in early summer.   Each plant can produce 2 dozen seed pods and 600 seeds on average.  And the seeds can stay underground for 30 years and germinate again.  Garlic mustard is a vigorous plant.  If you want to eat this invasive species, eat their seed pods.

Seed pods can be stir fried with shallot, and the seeds can also be used in any recipes that will call for poppy seeds.

Below are some recipes I tried with my family and we all approved and recommend.

Garlic Mustard and Almond Pesto Pasta

Ingredients:

1 cup Garlic Mustard, flowers and young stems only

1/3 cup Almond, toasted

3 cloves Garlic

3 tablespoons Lemon Juice

1/2 cup Olive Oil

Sea Salt to taste

Black Pepper to taste, freshly ground

1.5 handful of Pasta

How to make:

1. Soak the garlic mustard in water for 15 minutes; rinse and dry.

2. In a food processor, combine all the ingredients.  Blend it until the mixture is smooth.  Set it aside.

3. Cook the pasta as usual.  When the pasta is cooked, drain the water.  Pour the pesto sauce over the cooked pasta.  Turn on the heat to medium, stir and warm up the pasta for 5 minutes before serving.

I enjoy this pasta so much.  It is yummy, and it also brings a signature dish that recipe spring and nature (especially on the busy days I need to trap myself indoor). 

Feta and Garlic Mustard Pizza

Ingredients:

(Pizza dough):

2.5 cups All Purpose Flour

1 cup Warm Water

1 package Instant Yeast

2 tablespoons Oil

(Pesto spread):

1/2 cup Garlic Mustard, flowers and young stems only

3 cloves Garlic Mustard

1/3 cup Almond, toasted

1/2 cup Feta Cheese

1/3 cup Olive Oil

Black Pepper to taste, freshly ground

(Topping):

1 Tomato, sliced

1/3 cup Feta cheese, cubed

How to make:

Photos from clockwise

1. Mix the yeast and warm water together; let it sit for 5 minutes.

2. Then in a large bowl, combine the rest of the dough ingredients and the yeast water.  Mix it together and form it in a dough with your hands.  Knead the dough for another 5 minutes to create more gluten.  The dough should be smooth and not sticky.  Adjust the flour and water if it's needed.

3. Cover the dough with a damp towel.  Place the bowl in a warm place and let it rest for about 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, you can roll out the dough and use it right away.  Or, you can wrap it with parchment paper and keep it in the fridge, like mine, for later use.  (I went out to forage garlic mustard).

4. Place the dough between two pieces of parchment paper.  Roll out the dough 1.5 cm thick.  Set it aside.

My son was enjoying his privilege of using the blender.

5. To make the pesto spread, combine all the pesto spread ingredients in a food processor.  Blend it until the mixture is smooth.

6. Place the pizza dough on a oiled baking tray.  Then, spread the pesto evenly on the dough.  Add tomato, feta, or any toppings you find you enjoy.

7. Bake it in the pre-heated oven at 400 F for 20 minutes, or until the crust is crispy.

Mugwort - the wild edible and recipes ｜艾草食譜

Mugwort is an aromatic plant that grows widely across both cities and countryside.  If you learn to recognize them, you will be surprised how many of them actually are available around you.

I love the subtle sage-like flavour of mugwort.  Before I learnt foraging, I used to buy packs of dried mugwort leaves to make mochi (a type of Japanese glutenous sweet).  I thought mugwort was some plant that you need to get deep in the wood and normal people would not have the novelty to forage it.  So, after I learnt to recognize mugwort and started to spot them everywhere, I laughed at how silly I was spending money at the shop to buy mugwort.

Mugwort can grow more than six feet tall, and it has either pinkish flowers or light yellow flowers.  However, young mugwort is easy to overlook among other green plants.

Top on the left and underside on the right.

Mugwort’s leaves are greyish-green on the surface, and have sliver wooly hairs on the underside.  Also, some parts of the stem is purple in colour (I didn’t capture that in my photo).  When you rub it very close to the nose, you can smell a light sage-like scent.

Mugwort has an effect on stimulating blood flow around the uterus, and stimulate or ease menstruation.

SO PREGNANT WOMEN MUST NOT HAVE IT!

Many people said that mugwort can enhance vivid dreams.  I’m not sure about that because I always remember my dreams in the morning.  But putting a bunch of dried fragrant mugwort in the bedroom would be a nice idea.

For me, mugwort is a flavoring in dishes.  I use it in soup, dessert, or tea.

Mugwort Salmon Soup

Ingredients:

1 pc Salmon, cut in bite size

1 handful Fresh Mugwort, leaf part only

4 cups Water

1/2 cup Milk

Salt to taste

How to make:

1. In a pot, combine the water and milk.  Bring it to a boil.

2. Add salmon and mugwort.  Continuously boil until the liquid comes back to a rolling boil again. Reduce the heat to medium.

3. Skim off the foam.  Allow it to cook for another 5 minutes. Season it with salt.

Mugwort Panna Cotta

Ingredients:

1 cup Fresh Mugwort, leaf part only

3 cups Whole Milk

1/3 cup Sugar

8 gram Agar Agar

a small pinch of salt

How to make:

1. Combine all the ingredients in a pot.  Bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and let it simmer until the agar agar is totally dissolved; about 20 minutes.

2. Drain and discard the mugwort.  Divide the liquid evenly into the serving containers.  Chill until it is set.

Mugwort Evening Tea

Ingredients:

A small handful of Fresh Mugwort Leaves

Hot Water

How to make:

1. Bring a cup of water to a rolling boil.

2. In a cup, add the washed mugwort.  Pour in the hot water.  Let it steep for about 8 minutes.

Mugwort Mochi (Glutinous Rice Ball

Ingredients: for 4 mochi 

1 big handful of Fresh Mugwort, leaf part only

100 gram Glutinous Flour

150 ml Water

Corn Starch for coating

Red Bean Filling or any type of sweet filling

How to make:

1. To make the mugwort juice, combine the mugwort and water in a pot and bring it to a boil.  Then, reduce the heat to medium-low and boil it for another 5 minutes.  Turn off the heat and let it cool.

2. When the liquid is completely cool, blend it in a food processor. 

Drain and discard the mugwort leaves.  Measure the liquid; you will need about 150 ml for this recipe.  Adjust the liquid with water if it’s needed.

From left to right.

3. Add the glutinous flour into the liquid gradually and mix it with a spoon.  Make sure the mixture has no lump.

4. Cover the bowl with a lid.  Heat up the mixture in the microwave for 45 seconds.  Take it out.  Stir it vigorously with a spoon until it is sticky.  (It should be done in 10 seconds).  Cover the bowl again. Heat up the sticky mixture for another 40 seconds.  Take it out and stir it again.

From clockwise.

5. On a large plate, sprinkle a generous amount of corn starch.  Pour the sticky dough on it.  Coat both sides of the dough with cornstarch to prevent stickiness.  Stretch the dough flat and divide it into 4 equal portions.

6. Press down a piece of dough, and then put a spoonful of filling in the middle.  Wrap up four corners and place the mochi up-side-down.