So much bounty from nature and my homestead! Come into my post to see what I've grown or foraged for this last Steemit Iron Chef contest of the 2017 series.

With this plate, I wanted to highlight past ingredients that I've used in the Steemit Iron Chef contest - and that I still have available here on my homestead, from my land, my larder, or by foraging.

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A Fond Farewell to the First Steemit Iron Chef Series

Thanks, @progressivechef for coming up with the Steemit Iron Chef contest. I'm not very consistent on Steemit, but I'm so happy that I did not miss a single one of the 17 episodes in your contest. Your enthusiasm for this style of cooking was contagious. And your encouraging support of everyone made the challenge less daunting - even to an old homestead-style cook like me, used to simple cooking and not at all practiced in fancy presentations! Thanks to all the Steemit Iron Chef cooks, too. I've seen such artistic style and super cooking! I've been inspired by your work. And want to eat it all! Finally, thanks to the supporters and sponsors of the Steemit Iron Chef contest. Without your upvotes, special coins, or SBD backing, this contest would not have been such a success.

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Part 1 - Salad

For this part of my meal, I'm using Tomatoes, Mushrooms, and Onions as the ingredients from past rounds of the SIC. I grew the little cherry tomatoes in my garden. I pulled all the plants in late October and saved the mature but green tomatoes to ripen in a cool place over the next few months.

The mushrooms are the same Cats Tongues (Pseudohydnum gelatinosum) that I used in Week 14 to make my Wild Mushrooms All The Way entry, but prepared in a very different way. I preserved the little Cats Tongues by putting them in the same pickling juice I use to make Pickled Hop Shoots. Even though I eat all the hop shoots during the summer, I keep the juice so I can easily add other things for a quick refrigerator pickle with great flavor.

I'll write a post sometime about how to pickle hop shoots, but the basic ingredients are: garlic, peppercorns, vinegar, and beer. You can see how I do it in this YouTube video: How to Pickle Hop Shoots.

My representative of the Onion family is often called Wild Chives. But they are really Wild Garlic (Allium vinale), growing in a form that happens when the plants get mowed or grazed regularly. They grow in thick clumps of thin, hollow tube-like leaves - just like chives. They have a mild onion flavor, like chives. I foraged the immature underground bulbs for my week 15 SIC entry, Creamed Wild Winter Garlic Bulbs with Yellowfoot Mushrooms.

Top: Cherry tomatoes, pickled Cats Tongue mushrooms, wild chives, chickweed. Bottom left: Cherry tomatoes picked in October and ripe at the end of December. Bottom right: It looks like a chemistry experiment, I know. But it's good food - pickled Cats Tongue mushrooms and pickled Yucca Flower cores.

To make the salad, I thinly sliced the cherry tomatoes and finely chopped the wild chives. I plated all the ingredients, but topped each cherry tomato with the liquid used to pickle the Cats Tongue mushrooms. It's simple, but so tasty!

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Part 2 - Main Course

For this part of my meal, I'm using Carrots, Potatoes, Mushrooms, and Onions from past SIC themes. The potatoes are Red Pontiacs, great for mashed potatoes. I used them in my entry of Saffron Fingerlings and Wild Garlic Potato Puree with Chanterelle Mushrooms.

Like my earlier entry for week 2 of SIC, A Wild and Free Melange a Trois with Queen Anne's Lace, I'm also using Wild Carrots, Daucus carota, also known as Queen Anne's Lace. Foraging wild carrots takes good identification skills to avoid harvesting the deadly Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum)! But I wish everyone could know how great wild carrots are, especially anytime the ground is unfrozen in the winter.

I'm also using the mature underground bulbs of Wild Garlic that I harvested this summer. I used the top-set bulblets of these plants for my potatoes in Saffron Fingerlings and Wild Garlic Potato Puree with Chanterelle Mushrooms. These bulbs are a different part of the same species that makes the Wild Chives I used in my salad. But when the plant can grow undisturbed, without being cut back, it makes bulbs underground, like standard garlic but smaller. The dry, mature, summer-harvested bulbs are larger than the fresh immature bulbs I used in my Creamed Wild Winter Garlic Bulbs entry. At the end of the summer, these bulbs can have a hot, burning flavor. But by this time in the winter, they mellow out a lot.

Top: Red Pontiac potato, wild carrots, mature wild garlic bulbs. Middle left: chopped ingredients, plus dehydrated Shaggy Parasol mushroom strips. Middle right: Cooked wild carrots, soft and delicious! It's amazing how some are so yellow! Bottom left: Drying Shaggy Parasol mushrooms. Bottom right: Jar of dried Shaggy Parasol mushrooms.

The mushrooms I'm using are dried Shaggy Parasols (Chlorophyllum brunneum). This is the first time I've used them for the SIC. I harvested a lot of them in the autumn of 2016 and dried some of their caps. I used the fresh ones to make a Wild Homestead Extravaganze Salad with 25 Wild Plants, Shaggy Parasol Stroganoff, and Cream of Shaggy Parasol Soup. I dried some last fall, because I harvested so many.

To make the main course, I rehydrated the Shaggy Parasol mushrooms in hot water. Then I slowly braised them in olive oil and butter until they were nearly crisp. I boiled the potatoes, wild carrots, and wild garlic until tender. Then I whipped them with a little added butter.

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Part 3 - Dessert

For my meal's dessert, I'm using Apples and Pears as my past SIC themes. I foraged the apples from a park in a nearby tiny town, where nobody was picking any of the apples. It's the same place I picked the Late Fall Waxy Cap mushrooms (Hygrophorus hypothejus) for my SIC entry Grandma's Cauliflower with Wild Waxy Cap Mushrooms. The pear is a small Large Korean Pear from my yard. I used one in my Homestead Pear Sampler months ago, but they keep well for months in a cool spot, getting sweeter and sweeter.

I'm also using rosehips from my White Dawn Rose. Their rosehips are bigger, with more meat on them, than the little rosehips I used to make Silver Dollar Banana Pancakes with Wild Rosehip-Pennyroyal Syrup. I'm also using freshly foraged leaves from wild fennel and spearmint. I used them before to make my Homestead Pear Sampler. This time of year, the plants are pretty bedraggled, but I can find good quality leaves in protected nooks.

Top: Rosehips, fennel leaves, spearmint leaves, Large Korean pear, foraged yellow and red apples. Bottom left and right: Apples foraged from a nearby park. These apples are still good, nearly 2 months after picking them!

To make my dessert, I finely chopped the peeled apples and pear. Then I covered them in Amaretto liqueur. I cleaned out the seeds and interior hairs from the rosehips, boiled them until soft, chopped them, and added them to the minced apples and pear. I finely minced the fennel and spearmint leaves, and used them to top the fruit mix on my plate. So simple, but so totally, incredibly delicious!

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Part 4 - Time to Eat!

After cooking the three parts of my meal, I'm ready to eat!

My drink is for @galberto, a fellow forager who appreciates a good cup of coffee!

See the teeth on the Cats Tongue mushrooms? They really look like the tongue of a cat. They are soft like jelly or molecular gastronomy - and tasty!

Those Shaggy Parasol bits are have a rich, beefy, mushroom flavor. I like how the yellowish wild carrots stand out in the potato/carrot puree. The wild carrot flavor shines through, while the wild garlic flavor is mild - not over-powering at all.

What a nice, light dessert! The crisp apples and pear taste sweet, the rosehips are tart, and the fennel and spearmint so bright. The almond-flavored Amaretto ties it all together. Yummm!

This is my last Steemit Culinary Challenge entry for the 2017 contest series. It's been challenging, fun, a lot of work, and a lot of good eating! I hope you have enjoyed my food and seeing nature's bounty from my homestead yard and gardens, and from the wild.

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Public Service Announcement

This is a blatant pitch to check out my BLACKLUX Holiday Fund-raising Party posts that are coming out every day from now through New Year's Day. All the SBD from those posts is going to help @blacklux recover from Hurricanes Irma and Maria that devastated Puerto Rico. And I'm matching SBD donations 1-for-1 up to 50 SBD. The holiday season is a time of gratitude and giving -- and it's amazing that Steemit and the Steem blockchain make it so easy for us to help our distant friends when they can use a hand. The party has music, food, games, prizes, and more -- so I hope to see you there!

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What Do You Think?

• Have you ever eaten any wild plants or mushrooms?
• Which is your favorite dish on my plate?
• Would you eat what I've made for this week's Steemit Iron Chef contest?
• Will you come to my BLACKLUX Holiday Fund-raising Party? I hope to see you there!

I eat a lot of wild plants and show you how, because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wild places.

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Plant List

• Chickweed - Stellaria media - from fall through spring
• Wild Carrot or Queen Anne's Lace - Daucus carota
• Wild garlic - Allium vineale - tender leaves, underground bulbs mature in late summer
• Large Korean Pear - Pyrus pyrifolia - ripe in mid-fall and keep for months in refrigeration
• Apple – Malus domestica - fruit
• Roses - White Dawn – Rosa spp. - fruit
• Spearmint - Mentha spicata - leaves
• Tomato - Solanum lycopersicum - fruit harvested green, ripened indoors
• Potatoes - Solanum tuberosum - tubers stored
• Fennel - Foeniculum vulgare - tender leaves
• Shaggy Parasol mushrooms - Chlorophyllum brunneum
• Cats Tongue mushrooms - Pseudohydnum gelatinosum

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Haphazard Homestead

foraging, gardening, nature, simple living close to the land
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