On April Fool’s Day–no foolin’—Jenny Hahn’s new wild food book made its’ splash landing! You can find “PACIFIC HARVEST: A NORTHWEST COASTAL FORAGING GUIDE” in the Seattle Mountaineers Books Spring Catalog.
My foraging-buddy and husband, Chris, teared up when he paged through the review copy. “Pacific Harvest is your love story about wild plants, animals and places,” he said with a choke in his throat. He knew how much work it took, and how a village of friends and students made it a reality. It’s a storyteller’s journey informed by Western science, traditional ecological knowledge, and 45 years of coastal foraging.
I really wanted to include Indigenous voices in the mix. So much of our wisdom about native plants and animals stands on the shoulders of First Nation wisdom 1000s of years in the making.
The book is a guide to 78 wild food species and features 60 recipes by many hands including Sea Wolf Chefs! I hope it inspires people to invite and celebrate more wild morsels into their kitchen. The Port of Seattle even championed the book to build tourism for gosh sake! Even more, I hope it helps people nourish connection and a caretaking approach to wild places like the Sea Wolf explores.
Earlier I wrote a book called PACIFIC FEAST: A Cook’s Guide to West Coast Foraging and Cuisine (2010, Seattle, Mountaineers Books). In the last 15 years, a lot has changed in the wild world. Increasing droughts, more severe fires, marine heat waves, and invasive species change the land and seascapes of the wild foods we love. It’s not all a pretty story. But awareness is crucial for guiding what, where, why, and how we forage.
For instance, purple sea urchins, which divers call zombies of the kelp forests, are proliferating. Purple sea urchin predators, such as the giant sunflower seastar have been decimated by “seastar wasting disease.” Divers are collecting zombie urchins and fattening them in onshore tanks until they can be marketed to high-end restaurants. When in California, eat purple urchins!
Photo: Purple urchin waving it’s suction-cup-tipped “tube feet” searching for tasty kelp.
One of my favorite parts of the new book answers a question I’ve often wondered. “Who else eats these wild greens, shellfish, mushrooms, tree tips, berries and seaweed I harvest? Every wild food is munched by other mammals, insects and more. Did you know voles (imagine a mouse shaped like a linebacker) harvest mushrooms, then tote the fruits high into trees? They spear them on branches to dry! These “sporinators” (I like to call them) help disperse spores far and wide on the breeze. Voila! –more forest mushrooms for everyone! Did you know that Yellowstone Park grizzly bears, especially females, love to nosh on morel mushrooms? Bears spread spores with their paws, muzzles and tongues.
Photo: Many forest mushrooms–chanterelles, hedgehogs, and porcini—have beneficial partnerships with trees. The tree gifts carbs to the mushroom. Mushroom mycelium expands the trees network for drawing in water and gift chemicals that fight tree diseases.
While the first half of this 360-page, full-color book is a field guide to 75 wild foods, the second half is recipes for your “wild morsels.” Our fabulous Sea Wolf chef of many delicious years, Sven Hoosen, contributed a recipe for Salmon Ceviche with Kelp. Kimber Owen, Sea Wolf owner, chef and naturalist, provided her easy and mouth-watering “Spot Prawns and Nori” recipe. Tom Debari, seasoned Sea Wolf chef and founder of Milano’s Italian Restaurant offered a family recipe inspired by his father-in-law, Serifino Cerasa, a native of northern Italy: Smoked Porcini Risotto with Porcini Steaks.
Land-locked gustatory eaters don’t fret about not having fresh seaweed in the Great Lakes or Colorado! Dried seaweed offers a tasty umami-rich alternative! Dried blades rehydrates into fresh, silky leaves! There’s a Resource Section in the appendix listing where to buy wild foods on-line. It includes wild porcini and morel mushrooms.
We’ll share a couple recipes in the next blog. Stay tuned! In the meanwhile, check out pacificfeast.net for Jenny’s Book Tour schedule. And go wildly and caringly onward!
Photo: Our Sea Wolf Trip Species List!
