Welcome to Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, the internet's largest source of recipes and know-how for wild foods. They also contain antioxidants. Once home, I introduced these cones for brunch on freshly made waffles, along with blueberries and maple syrup. Make sure you are 100% positive that you are not foraging from a yew thinking it is a spruce.. Sprinkle the spruce tip salt on root vegetables before roasting, and use the spruce tip sugar in spruce tip shortbread cookies. That meant there must be a hidden seam there, like on a walnut. I always toast them. But the immature male and female flowers (cones) were out in full force. Get a large pot of water boiling and salt it well. Ive come here for inspiration for years, especially while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. They grow in whirls circling the trunk, and the tree puts out a new ring of branches each year (handy for approximating the age of a pine tree). I pinched off several dozen young tips and brought home a small bag-full from which we made a tea by simply adding boiled water to the spruce tips and letting them steep for fifteen minutes, covered. A big one will still fit in the palm of your hand. The process of ripening takes about three years, after which the female cone opens and releases its seeds. Aloha! Single-leaf nuts are pretty mild, and theyre softer than most other pine nuts, almost gummy when raw. And it aint the bark, either, although some people have eaten the inner cambium bark of some conifers and declared it tasty. Your email address will not be published. Theyre messy eaters, so many good nuts drop to the ground right under the trees. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Are there allergy issues with pine pollen? Once in a while you can find one planted elsewhere. It does! When the tips are soaked in water or other liquids, the resinous flavour steps back and more of the citrus flavour comes forward. I hope hed be proud. He showed me how to harvest raw dzih antat, the hardened amber resin that forms from the pitch oozing out of a scar on a black spruce. Thanks so much- now Im off to carve a gnocchi board! If you are truly allergic to pine pollen, then I have no idea what eating it would do. But the needle arrangement suggests spruce or fir. These are some of the features of the yew plant that can distinguish it from spruce: Needles are flat and bendable with a dark top and a lighter colored bottom side, no cones present (yews produce red fruit with a single seed), needles grow primarily laterally from the stem (concentrated on the sides of the stem, not top or bottom), mature height of a yew is around 20 but usually they are less than 10, overall shape of tree/shrub may or may not be conical naturally and is sometimes pruned into a conical shape. Some foragers harvest the male cones at this stage for their pollen, which they use for various things in meals. Im surprised that how this could be possible? Follow me on Instagram and on Facebook. Im curious if you have ever harvested cedar pollen? I decided it would make a great pasta additive. Harvesting the tips removes the current years growth, so walk around the tree, taking just a few tips from each section of the spruce. about a dozen, chopped and separated into green and white parts. All spruce trees produce edible tips as long as they havent been sprayed with something humans shouldnt eat, such as insecticide. Still, if you are diligent you can get some in September. Its those nuts that are in the dish you see at the top of this post. Its is very yummy and nice scent on the food. Armed with all three gifts of the pine, a few weeks ago I decided to make a dish celebrating them. Arent they beautiful? Are all Spruce needles safe / non-toxic? So delicious!!! Im just scared because I heard there are some Pine varieties that are poisonous? These spruce tips can be harvested from the time they first emerge until they begin to stiffen and turn dark green. Gently remove one of the sheaths to find small, young needles, just beginning to expand. To make spruce sugar or spruce salt, add equal parts sugar or salt and spruce tips to the bowl of a food processor, and pulse until the mix is finely chopped and thoroughly combined. Even closer to home or at least my home is the bull or gray (or digger) pine, P. sabiniana. Not all spruce tips taste the same. Add the pine oil to the water and pour it into the flour. Ive got some needles from a conifer I cant identify, I think it must be foreign. I returned to my Norway Spruce grove a week later and found young spruce shoots emerging out of their small protective caps. Bright, almost fluorescent lime green, the young needles were soft and pliable. P. monophylla, the single-leaf pion, isthe dominant pine on the East side of the Sierra Nevada, and they like to live with sagebrush in open scrub. In early spring, spruce trees produce new growth covered in brown, papery sheaths. When they do, drop the heat to medium-high and stir them around a bit. Anent pollen and allergies, many many years ago when I was at a boys camp in the extreme northern Sierra, the ponderosa pines would cut loose a cloud of yellow pollen late June/early July, and some of both kids and adults would come down with distressing cases of the whistling drizzlers aka diarrhea. Looking forward to your post on gathering pine nuts. There is no need to pull off the needles from the branch. Hope you enjoy the site! She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. I added a big handful of toasted pine nuts, a few wild onions from the edge of the forest, and garnished the whole dish with the fir tips. In the Sangre de Cristos, look for the light green, soft, flexible tips to emerge in June. guide to identifying different conifer species here, Fiddlehead Salad with Spruce Tips, Peppermint and Pecorino. Spruce are large trees, generally pyramidal in shape, with attractive green/blue or gray/blue foliage. I am a chef, author, and yes, hunter, angler, gardener, forager and cook. The unfertilized female cones of the Norway Spruce are larger than the males, elongated and a deep magenta colour, and found on the tips of the branches. It doesnt seem like a hard dish to make if one lives near pine trees. Hey there. I made oblette with this Youll get more to work with if you wait until the tips expand, but the flavor is more intense when the tips are compact. None are poisonous except yew, but thats not really a fir or spruce. This is one: P. edulis, the two-leaf pion, is centered around Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, although it can be found in scattered places elsewhere. Aromas like spruce are very water soluble. Add it to the saute pan, along with some black pepper and the fir tips. Hopefully, all Spruce are safe! Use them as a stuffing for chicken or fish, finely chop the spruce tips to use them in sauce or soup, or macerate them in water or alcohol to create a base for frozen desserts and beverages. Thanks for the reminder that there are many food delights around us just waiting to be harvested. coarsely chopped young fir or spruce tips. Whisk together the pine pollen and the semolina. I cant wait to get some pollen and figure out what nuts I can crack! These grow all over the Southwest and Great Basin, into California and Idaho and New Mexico. I loved the dish. Ive been harvesting ghost pine cones for years but they are a bitch to crank. Pick around the edges, a few tips here, a few there. 2022 Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, All Rights Reserved. Here is a thorough 60 second way to identify pines written by a PhD: https://www.icogitate.com/~tree/pine.name.ac25.htm. Like the memory of the trees intention., Forager Chef describes this easy and wonderful way to use spruce tips: This is a cousin of Italian mugolio (pine cone syrup) and it is one of the easiest, most delicious ways to capture the flavor of your favorite tree. Home refrigerators dry foods out faster than commercial refrigeration units, so you want to be extra careful to keep them in a damp environment. He adds, I like to store them in a plastic bag with a couple holes punched in it for them to breathe, along with a damp paper towel or two to help hold in moisture. Tend to have short and stiff needles, that feel a lot sharper than the other conifers. It brought together every element of the pines, and created an overall plate full of flavors even I hadnt tasted together before. We have two spruce species native to northern New Mexico. Steph: In my research, I found that pine allergies are actually very, very rare. LOVE THIS. Youre looking at anywhere from April to July, depending on your climate. I chose this particular shape because it kinda reminds me of little pine cones. Close inspection of their needles reveals a series of white dots on the spruce needle and two white lines on the underside of the flatter fir needle. These are the trees new growths and it needs them to survive. But there was still the problem of opening the little bastards. Sugar pines, P. lambertiana, have gigantic cones loaded with good nuts, but good luck getting to them before squirrels do. The spruce tree is a needled evergreen conifer tree that ranges in mature height from only a few feet to over a hundred. Not a drop of lemon, but you would swear there was an entire one in it. Sorry folks, but there are no pines east of the Great Plains that have nuts large enough to bother with, unless you have a Western transplant or an Italian stone pine nearby. Love the vice grips tip!! WOW! Through multifaceted and compelling storytelling, our bi-monthly publication, events, and digital platforms connect readers with those who feed themgrowers, producers, chefs, beverage and food artisans, and other food professionals. Use a gnocchi board to roll off each cavatello, using enough pressure with your first finger (or two fingers if the pasta bit is wide) to make the center part of the cavatello thin. Once you have them, they will keep a week or so in the fridge, but I like to vacuum seal the tips and freeze them. Johnny was always chewing it; it took me a while to develop a liking for the sprucy bitter paste.. I want to brew it into a tea hopefully I dont keel over. But not impossible. And its AWESOME! Edible celebrates New Mexico's food culture, season by season. ), by several features. Or, if you have a vacuum sealer, seal the dough. I prefer to make fir or spruce tip syrup, which I then use as a glaze on poultry (especially grouse), and as a soda base or in gin martinis. Yummy. Thanks for the tip! Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team. Hes right, of course, and Id like to walk you through just which parts hes talking about. This year all of them are loaded with red cones. Intending to forage the new spring tips of the local spruce here in Ontario, I visited a grove of Norway Spruce (Picea abies) in a nearby park in early May. It all looks wonderful! How to Make Hot or Cold Spruce Tea Using New Shoot Needles or Older Needles. If you nibble on one, high in Vitamin C, it will taste a little like pine with a citrus finish, making it a great mouthwash. I quickly gathered a pound one day just by looking on the ground. The trick to harvesting these pine nuts is to get on it early, like in August or early September. Most people associate an allergy to pine pollen because there are other, unseen pollens in the air at the same time. Needles grow individually from the branch (unlike pine) but theyre attached with what looks like a tiny suction cup (rather than a woody projection like spruce). Hi, Picked fresh and cooled immediately, they can last for multiple months in the cooler under refrigeration at a restaurant. I was told to only use pinenedles with 5 needles growing out of the one spur. But we get so few morels that when I get my hands on some Im minded to make something really special with them. The second cup, after ten more minutes of steeping, released more complex and stronger aromas and notes of wood, along with some acidity. I cant wait to make it! Spruce needles are four-sided and end in a sharp point. Even if its not a magic tonic, pine pollen is certainly nutritious, and while the pollen in other pines, notably the Jeffrey pine (P. jeffreyi), can be bitter, that of the gray pine is pretty neutral. Change). It was so delicate and smooth, with subtle notes of citrus and something elusive, like a forgotten memory from a spring day. Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "afff5f8503339d7f06a85d1cbabc20dd" );document.getElementById("b2251290aa").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Hi, my name is Hank Shaw. Chefs, maybe. (Its more important to note what the spruce tree says than what the calendar says.) Just requires a little planning ahead Okay, I might just be kind of crazy. We believe that knowing where our food comes from is a powerful thing. Your email address will not be published. It does. When I got to my grove of spruce trees, I realized that I was too early for the spring shoots. Visitwww.ninamunteanu.cafor the latest on her books. We believe understanding where our food comes from empowers all of us to make informed decisions about what we eat, what we stand for, and how to better support our communities. Dont collect too many tips or cones from any branch or single tree. Shaped like a tiny American football and delicately scalloped, these cones eventually swell with pollen and the gentlest breezeor a probing finger releases a cloud of yellow into the air. The pollen was always considered the culprit since as soon as it disappeared so did the ailment. Gray pine nuts taste fantastic very strong but they have a really hard shell. Edulis nuts are virtually identical to the Chinese ones, although I prefer their flavor, which is stronger than the imported nuts. All parts of the tree are non-toxic. The true gifts of the pine and for the sake of this article by pine I mean all conifers are their nuts, pollen and needles. Fir needles are quite flat and do not end in a sharp point. Yew are poisonous but native species are ok. Balsam fir are best. Alan Bergo, the Forager Chef offers good advice on this: Haphazard Homestead offers additional advice. How to open that seam? Spruce tips can also be frozen, and used for my ice cream and syrup recipe.. Keep all the pieces you are not working with covered in plastic wrap. U were very helpful! Cracked out two cups today!! a white-ish color on the undersides of the needles. Your email address will not be published. Ninas bilingual La natura dellacqua / The Way of Water was published byMincione Edizioniin Rome. Turn the heat to high and wait for them to sizzle. Add the pine nuts, champagne and glace de viande and boil furiously until the liquid has almost boiled away. I think the one I gathered are from a White Spruce tree, but I cant be 100% as I am no expert. Every tree will taste a little different, so taste in the field to make sure you dont get one too nasty. Brown sugar contains more moisture than white, and more moisture, means a more aromatic syrup. Edible New Mexico celebrates our states vibrant food culture, season by season. Im giving you the recipe below, even though I am not sure who will actually make this dish. She advises a focus on the lower branches and interior of the tree where the new growth that will be shaded and die back anyway. They will release their water. Just made the fir-tip syrup. All of a sudden, the nuts of the gray pine are valuable to me again. Both trees can livefor more than a century. Haphazard Homestead warns that if you arent a fan of strong coffee, dark chocolate or highly hot beer, the flavours may be too strong. The tea carries less of the resinous astringent taste and more of a citrus bouquet. The demi-glace, which is a thickened, reduced stock, you can either buy or. Have fun with them. Last fall I found an amazing 5 lb Grifola Frondosa! Because the new growth is soft, youll be able to pinch it off with your fingers, no tools required. https://www.ediblenm.com/author/ediblenm/, Best Food Artisan: Heidis Raspberry Farm. The female cones contain ovules, which develop into egg cells when fertilized by the male gametophyes (pollen) brought to them by the breezeor a probing finger! Spruce needles also attach all around the branch, whereas the fir is often attached in a flat arrangement. Her non-fiction book Water Is byPixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in theNew York TimesYear in Reading and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read byWater Canada. Hot Tea with Spruce Tips or Mature Needles. Its a refreshing and unusual way to end a meal: a dessert that embodies the flavor of northern New Mexico. The spruce needle has no fascicles, but attaches to the branch through a tiny leaf stalk; this is unlike the fir, whose needle is directly attached to the branch. Mahalo nui loa for sharing ur knowledge & experience. That may be the most famous quote fromthe father of modern foraging, the late, great Euell Gibbons, who spoke those words in a Grape Nuts commercial back in the 1970s. Alas, I think the areas where pine trees thrive near me are still closed from the fires (Im in north LA), and I doubt we got enough rain for morels anyway. Single-leaf pine nuts are the largest pine nuts I know of, sometimes longer than an inch. An embryo is produced in the female cone, protected by a seed coating. It does store for quite some time, however, so you can keep it in a glass jar in the cupboard for when you need it. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. In my upcoming eco-novel, Thalweg, one of my characters is a young Gwichin scientist who returns to the Arctic in search of her destiny with water. Beautiful post! Forager Chef insists on brown sugar: The secret is all about harnessing aromas [and] giving aromas a place to go. Once that spruce flavour sits for a couple of hoursits like drinking the forest, says Haphazard Homesteader. When most of the water has boiled away, add the butter and toss to combine. I soon found I could gather more nuts on the ground than I could by prying them out of their evil, hooked cones. I gave them up a few years ago. Will let you know! Pines have fascicles that bunch up collections of two or five usually fairly long and slim needles. The mountains of northern New Mexico are chock full of stately evergreens. Yes, you can eat pine needles, and they do make a pretty good tea, but Ive found that the needles of pines cousins, the firs and spruces, taste less like turpentine and more like citrus. If you think about it, pine pollen would be a helluva pollen to be allergic to: Its HUGE, compared to other pollens. The tea poured clear and friend Merridys first impression on tasting the tea was: tastes like a spring day. Then she had another sip and amended thoughtfully, like the first floral essence of spring.. and the pine (Pinus spp. I cannot find information on their edibility, but I am assuming they fall into the edible pine category. Brown or organic sugar are what you want here for two reasons: 1, the color of the finished syrup is more attractive. Toss to combine and serve at once. This is a stiff dough, but it will incorporate eventually. Growing Cacti and Succulents Outdoors and in the Greenhouse. Ive had very little luck with them. Then it hit me: Vise grips. I happened to have had a good day with them at the time, so in they went, too. Lots of them live in Nevada, too. Sear until the morels start to brown. And the real point is to bring together all the gifts of the pine in one dish. Never knew there were so many things you could do with needles! Its bursting out of the cones right now since its fall, and Im curious if its as delicious as its brothers pollen. Most of us have eaten pine nuts. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress. Depending on your altitude, you may harvest spruce tips anytime from April to August. But it did not affect everyone. The yew is a common landscape shrub, so ask around and see if you can find one then learn its features. As long as the dividing line between old and new growth is clear, both by sight and by texture, youre OK to harvest. Thicker than pion shells. Roll the piece of dough you are working with out into a snake the thickness of your little finger. Few of us have eaten North American pine nuts. Morels, too, although this dish is better with fresh ones than dried. If you happen to find an especially citrusy tree, mark it down. Boil the pasta, removing it about 30 seconds after it floats to the surface. That leaves the needles. Sealed, the tips will last a year. Turn off the heat and add the green parts of the wild onions and toss to combine. Did you make it or what brand is it? The magic happens when the natural moisture from the spruce tips seeps into the sugar, making a watery slurry which can absorb aromas better than a thick mat of sugar. The longer you steep, the stronger the flavour and more of the useful compounds from the needles will infuse the tea. Jen: The amount of turpentine flavor (vs. the citrusy flavor you want) varies not only from species but also individual tree. As you may or may not know, I make a lot of pasta, so a pine pollen pasta was a must. When I made my cold spruce tip tea (by simply steeping them in cold water overnight), I found the subtle floral flavour delightfully surprising. Each needle comes out of a single small woody projection (instead of in groups like pine needles) and if you pull out a needle the woody projection remains (unlike needles on fir trees which come off clean). The magenta-pink immature male cones dangled on the draping spruce branches like strings of grapes on a vine. The needles are edible and most commonly used to make a hot tea, which is steeped (not boiled) to retain its nutritional quality. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Edible Spruce: Cones and Spring TipsForaging, Spruce vs Fir vs Pine: Conifer Identification 101, pick from elder, mature trees; young trees need time to grow, never pick more than 20% of the tips from a single tree, never pick tips from the apical meristem, or top of a young tree, which would stunt its growth (I defer to point #1 on this), 1-2 tbsp spruce needles, on or off the branch, rinsed. I agreed. Spruce trees also provide foraging opportunity all year round. 2. I make no apologies for this recipe. Watch for the yellow ash falling everywhere, and when you see it, get on it the pollen wont fall for long. Join our mailing list to receive the latest news, recipes, and events that celebrate local food. You want it to taste like the sea. Great article! When you're ready, shape the dough so you can cut it into 4 to 6 equal pieces. Really delightful and uplifting.. I want to know about Your pasta too! Now that theyre running $60 a pound, this information comes in mighty handy! It seems like cheating to use a commercially sourced oil. If youre hiking above six thousand feet (the preferred altitude of the Engelmann spruce in New Mexico), its unlikely anyone has been out there spraying. It was slightly citrus with a hint of floral perfume. Required fields are marked *. Farm to Table? Wanting to simply make some tea from them. Filed Under: Featured, Foraging, Italian, Mushrooms, Pasta, Risotto, Gnocchi, Recipe. Nina. If one falls on you, chances are youll get knocked out, or worse. With our high-quality, aesthetically pleasing and informative publication, we inspire readers to support and celebrate the growers, producers, chefs, beverage and food artisans, and other food professionals in our community. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Forager Chef recommends White Spruce, Blue Spruce, and Norway Spruce. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Id known pine pollen was edible, and indeed many people say its a wonder food. Dont overharvest any one tree. I love all your goodies thanks so much! The addition of the pollen and a tiny amount of pion pine essential oil (which gave them a heavenly aroma) added to the effect. Her novel A Diary in the Age of Waterwas released byInanna Publications(Toronto)in June 2020. p.s. The cones added a wonderful texture and nutty-citrus flavour to the sweet dish. Its good added to anything youd make with flour. Young spruce tips have a citrus-like flavor that complements both sweet and savory dishes. That will keep the tree from growing in lopsided. Needles are square in cross-section, and they can be rolled between the fingertips. As it happens, the cones of the gray pine open in spring, and the squirrels and birds go to town on them. I add a little honey, but if you prefer a clean fresh taste of spruce, add nothing else. We have few spruce trees in our yard. I write cookbooks as well as this website, have a website dedicated to the intersection of food and nature, and do a podcast, too. Haphazard Homestead shares that the taste of spruce tea is distinct over each season. Jun 20, 2018 | Early Summer 2018, Foodshed. I picked a small bags worth of the immature male cones from several lower branches of several trees. The spring shoots of spruce trees are lime green, soft and flexible. Their needles grow individually from the branch (similar to rosemary), rather than in bundles like pines. Mix well and knead for a solid 5 to 8 minutes. Medicinal and nutritional qualities of the spruce include help with the respiratory system; active vitamin C, which fights against colds and infections; Spruce needles contain large amounts of shikimic acid, which is a flu-fighting compound and helps fight respiratory ailments. Somehow- I missed the whole pasta process in the instructions before I asked you about it! The gray pine also gave me another gift this spring: pollen. Spread it out on a cookie sheet and allow it to dry at room temperature, then store your mixture in a jar. Are there species that are poisonous? Sugar pines are our tallest pine and the cones are often 100 feet in the air when they ripen. The Norway Spruce, along with the native White Spruce (Picea glauca) are the most common spruce trees in the southern Kawarthas of Ontario; both are great for wild food. The internet seems to have different opinions on the matter. It was a common drink around here back in fur trade days, as spruce, like hops, adds both flavour and preservative qualities. This reminded me that my son makes craft beer and he sometimes uses spruce needles to add a wonderful citrus note to his Saison artisanal beer. Even young needles are tough to chew, but there are plenty of ways to extract their unique flavor. A winter spruce tea made from mature needles has a strong flavour; tea made with spring spruce tips is lighter and milder. Edulis pine nuts are much smaller, about the size of a store-bought nut; their cones are also teeny, much smaller than youd think. Until I saw a bunch on the ground last month. Facebook friend Jennifer Kennedy noted that We have made spruce beer a few times. Spruce tips have a fantastic shelf life. Alan Bergo of the Forager Chef tells us. By Hank Shaw on June 6, 2014, Updated December 23, 2020 - 22 Comments, Ever eat a pine tree? The cones are awfully adorable and I cannot help but find myself gravitating towards them. I always have a jar of needle tea in the refrigerator. It takes like resinous, tannic wood to me. Id noticed that most of the opened nuts had been opened on their narrow axis; the nuts are lens-shaped in cross section. Meh. Pine needle. Thank you for sharing all your creativity! The young shoots, which stand out from the darker mature needles from last year break off easily from the branch for effortless harvest. https://www.icogitate.com/~tree/pine.name.ac25.htm, Fried Flounder with Homemade Tartar Sauce. Avoid over-harvesting. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and leave it out on the counter for an hour or three. I am a James Beard Award-winning author and chef and I focus my energies on wild foods: Foraging, fishing, hunting.