All of the people who work in the kitchen with me go out into the forests and on to the beach. It's a part of their job. If you work with me you will often be starting your day in the forest or on the shore because I believe foraging will shape you as a chef.
The main reserve of the Haisla Nation hugs the northwest coast of British Columbia, about 500 miles north of Vancouver. The government docks sprawl on the south end of the reserve, nestled in a bay. As children, we swam at the docks and ran to the nearby point to pick blueberries and huckleberries when we were hungry so we wouldn't have to go home.
The buffalo didn't belong to anybody. If you could kill them, what they brought was yours. They were walking gold pieces.
Good food for free has been the holy grail of foragers since our ancestors first climbed down from the trees.
Think of all the mesquite in Texas, the pinyon pines, the acorns in Appalachia, every place has the possibility of mass production. It's an infrastructural system so nestled in ecology, it's a more beautiful ecology.
Known colloquially as 'winter,' 'golden needle,' and 'velvet foot' mushrooms, enoki mushrooms grow across much of the world, inhabiting dead conifer trees and stumps, and generally appearing throughout the late fall and winter months.
Nature is a dream state at this point, that we almost don't have a real relationship to it unless it's people living off the land and killing our own food and going for it.
For many years, I have sought and studied Agarikon, an unusual mushroom native to the old growth conifer forests of North America and Europe.
