Man vs. Wild: Get Back to Nature with Wild Veggies

I watch a lot of food television. It’s been called a weakness of my generation, but I like to think of it as professional research. Some shows I watch for inspiration, letting famous chefs from around the world show me new techniques and exposing me to new cuisines. Other shows I watch for entertainment and excitement.

But my very favorite of the food shows are the ones where the host goes to some bit of beautiful wilderness and spends the daylight hours scouring the forests and the riverbanks. Some leaves here, some seaweed there, perhaps a wild mushroom or two, and the show concludes with a simple but delicious dish that is truly representative of the local cuisine and the forgotten art of foraging.

Wild foods are quite literally the foodstuffs of our ancestors. Remember reading about hunters and gatherers in your history books? This is what they did. They knew what to avoid, what to eat, and what needed to be peeled or cooked first. Most of our lives don’t allow for hours of mushroom hunting, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still taste the mushrooms and their wild peers and appreciate them for what they represent. Restaurants across the world are now incorporating indigenous, grown-in-the-wild vegetables on their menu, and China is no different.

But where the US has fiddlehead ferns, in China we have jue cai (蕨菜), or bracken ferns. In Shanghai, they’re often found pickled or salted for preservation, though further down south, you can find examples of this chewy yet crunchy, grassy yet cabbage-y curled fern in sautéed dishes or blanched and mixed with vinegar and spices. I’m currently using it under my braised short rib accompanied by youmai cai (油麦菜). Jue cai also makes an interesting appearance in ...

tori-soba

ramen with chicken soup
topping: steamed chiken breast, shiraga-negi (white part of green onions), mizuna