I drove over to a friends house, and pulled into his driveway… before I could get out, he jams this sandwich in the window and said “here, try this and tell me what it is.” Being the foodie I am, I happily obliged.

A nice bun, onions, pickles and something that appeared fried. Taking a bite, it was firm and steamy. Delicious. With the pickles and onions, I said “a mild white fish.” Wow, I couldn’t have been further off. The sandwich was from a reputable local establishment. They had their process. Cauliflower. Steamed just enough, pulsed in the food processor to leave some chunk… and mixed with a delicious spice profile.

I had to try and recreate it. So first, like always… Google. There is no shortage of cauliflower recipes out there, each with their own take. I selected the one that sounded like it could render the result I was looking for. It turned out pretty good, but it was far off. The texture was much finer than the chunkier, white fish-like interior of my first. It also lacked the caramelized crust that I actually thought was breading.

So for the next attempt, I spent more time thinking about the process. I cut the florets off a head of cauliflower and washed fewer bigger pieces.

Then, laid them out on parchment paper in a sheet pan. I keep olive oil in a sprayer for times like these. Spray the florets (or drizzle) liberally with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt, pepper and cumin.

Bake for 30 minutes. While it’s baking, rinse 1 cup of quinoa, drain and add 2 cups of water and bring to a boil on the stove. Once boiling, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Don’t ovecook this. After 30 mins, take the lid off and fluff, and leave aside to cool.

When the cauliflower comes out of the oven, you want it soft enough to bite, but still firm. You don’t want it anywhere near mushy as they still have to hold up in the food processor and the mixing.

Transfer these big, seasoned chunks into the food processor in shifts, not all at once. No stacking.

Pulse a few times and dice it to your desired consistency. I like it chunky, but there is a point where too large of chunks will not let it hold together and they will break apart during cooking. Let’s say no smaller than rice, and no larger than peanuts. Well, for me, maybe a bit larger. Finish pulsing the rest of your cauliflower.

Next, make up your spice mix. The options are unlimited here, but here’s what I did.

To a mixing bowl, add 1 cup of fine breadcrumbs and the quinoa. To that, add 3 eggs and 3/4 cup of grated asiago, parmesan or your favorite hard cheese, 1 Tbs of olive oil, 3-4 cloves of crushed garlic and 1 tsp of cumin. I also added a Tbs of my homemade Worcestershire sauce. If you want it spicy, add cayenne pepper flakes. I had to hold them this time because this was the family dinner tonight.

To this bowl of goodness, add your grated/pulsed cauliflower and mix well. During this mixing, you may break up some of the larger pieces as well. Again, too large of pieces won’t let the binder hold it together (which is mainly the eggs and gluten from the breadcrumbs).

Form the patties and heat an iron skillet with some olive oil up to high heat. Add the just-made patties, listen for the sizzle, then turn the heat down to medium. They fry up nice in the iron skillet right away.

I make a double batch, form them into patties and par-freeze before vac sealing. They make a quick meal later. I have also laid the frozen patties on the grill and slow grilled, flipping only once.

With about 6-7 minutes on each side over medium heat, they caramelized up nicely, and had the crispyness of something battered and fried.

From here, choose your bun. I’ve tried a basic potato bun that was fantastic, and this go-round, I used some sourdough I made earlier in the day. Add your favorite condiments. Pickles and onions are essential for me, and on my next ones, I’ll add pickled onions. Some cilantro doesn’t sound half-bad… and if you really want to be bad, add a dollop of chipotle mayonaise. Tarter sauce if you are heading toward a fish-like sandwich.

You can see how easy it is to change these up to your tastes. You can even manage to make it vegan or vegetarian. Hold the eggs and cheese, and cook the quinoa longer. The gluten from the bread crumbs also helps bind. You can drop the breadcrumbs and find a more preferred binder to add in to help hold it together when cooking. Have fun.

I started with “green” walnuts that had to be smacked off the tree prematurely. My friend Jim had a great tree, but it was big… and that meant a ladder, and a long pole to smack them off. I got a 5g bucket full… which turns out, goes a long way. I ended up making a double batch of nocino and a double batch of preserved walnuts and still threw out almost half a bucket full. For the preserved walnuts, we have to peel the skins. I started with a potato peeler and it worked pretty well… then after understanding you have to poke some holes in them, I took the corer off my apple peeler, stuck them on and turned them through. It too worked OK, but if the nuts were odd-shaped, you had to come back and fine tune it with the peeler. I made it through, and of course, yes… you should wear gloves. When young, the juice is clear as you are peeling… but then it darkens and will stain your hands… and the table. My wife loves the new dark spots on the table from the splashes off the cutting board.

So, we have them peeled and poked. Now, we soak them in clean water… and we dump and change the water 1-2 times a day for at least 10 days. I was pretty diligent about this and in fact, I’m on day 16 today because it has taken me a while to get back to this. During the soaking is where most of the bitterness is removed. The water turns foamy and dark… then you dump and change it out every day. On day 10, you can add in some pickling lime to the water for 24 hours if you want to keep a more firm preserve, just do one final clean soak with no lime before moving to the next step.

Today, I boiled a big pot of water then dumped the walnuts into it and let them boil for 20 minutes. Here, the water turns almost black and so do the nuts… (pics below). They are really soft now. I have them laid out on a towel to dry for a couple hours. For 130 walnuts, I’ll use about:

10-12 cups of water
4 lbs of honey (I’m thinking a maple syrup version next)
The goal with the above is to have a close ratio to nut and liquid. In the end, all of this syrup will be poured into the jars with the preserves. I’m shooting for a thicker syrup and may add more honey in the end (if needed) to achieve that.

This is where I am right now in the process. I will boil just the honey and water, then dump in the walnuts and cook them for 30 minutes. Since I can’t finish them tonight (they will be canned) I’ll cover and leave them to cool overnight to finish tomorrow.

Tomorrow, the plan is to reheat the nuts and syrup, adding in;

1 T citric acid (or 3 T of lemon juice)
2 t cardamom (or 4-5 crushed pods)
2 t cinnamon
1 split vanilla bean

I had considered some star anise, but saved that for the nocino. I can think of several other possibilities but will leave them for the next time.

Cook for another 20-25 minutes or until they have the desired firmness. The entire mixture, nuts, and syrup will be dumped into clean hot jars, and then canned in a water-bath.

I’d say they can be eaten immediately as they are already soft enough, but like anything, I suspect they’ll develop some character over time and I plan to keep some up on the shelf as long as possible. I’ll post the remaining pics soon but see my commentary on each pic for more detail.

Tim instructs us on the 24th of June, collect 24 walnuts. Well, it was a little earlier than that for me this year, and I’m usually collecting many more so that I can also make the walnut preserves that I also like to make. I’ve found the preserves want the walnuts even younger. In both cases, it entails collecting young, green walnuts that have to be knocked off the tree. The idea is to collect them well before the shell begins to harden or nut begins to form. In my case, I’m collecting black walnuts here in SE Indiana.

Nocino is a thicker, dark brown liqueur originating in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. We try to collect the walnuts avoiding oxidation by not scaring them or leaving them to sit too long before placed in an alcoholic base. In this case, we use Everclear and steep the quartered walnuts for about 40 days along with other spices and flavorings.

Once steeping is done, it’s mixed with a simple syrup to sweeten. Nocino has an aromatic and bittersweet, flavor. Individual Italian families often have their own recipes that include variations like the addition of cinnamon, juniper berries, lemon or orange zest, vanilla pods, coffee beans, and clove. I can always dig into anything that encourages the imagination to run wild. So in my latest batch, here’s what I did.

Collect, clean and quarter the walnuts. I have recently read that boiling the walnuts ahead of time helps with the steeping stage. I plan to try this sometime. If there is one thing I’d like to have more control over, it’s the bitterness in Nocino. Last year, I ran it through a fine wine filter to get out the fine tannic-heavy particles that seem to settle on the bottom to see if it helps.

Load the ingredients into a jar and top up with 100% Everclear for the steeping stage. Keep track of how many liters of alcohol is used as this will be needed to calculate the sweetening stage later.

Once done steeping, about 40 days… strain out everything leaving just the liqueur and filter through whatever you have… I’ve tried coffee filters, layers of cheesecloth, and again, even a dedicated wine filter. The idea is to get out the black sediment that you will see that contributes to the bitterness. It does stop up the filters and takes a while for it to get through.

Measure your liquid volume and you will be cutting this to the proof you desire. Remember, this is still as hot as Everclear. Tim suggested 80 proof. I’m between there and 70 proof.  For each liter of alcohol you used, add 800 grams of sugar.  I used honey last year and did like it but I admit, I went by taste… since I had already cut the alcohol to a palatable proof. Heat just until your sweetener is dissolved. It takes no heat at all with honey since it’s water-soluble.

From here, I did add mine back to the bulk glass vessel and let it settle out for several more months racking it off the bitter sediment that settled to the bottom from time to time. I’m just now getting to bottle last years Nocino. I do believe a bit of bottle age is important just like in wine… so, we’ll give it another month or so before trying it out. After all, I have this years batch to keep me busy for a while.

I’d love to hear tips or ideas from others who make Nocino!

I don’t just re-queen automatically… but I do select the colonies that are not performing the way I want them to. I’ll let these hives be queenless for at least 24-hours to help them more readily accept the new queen cells. Another thing I do not mention in the video is to make sure you search for any queen cells left in the hive as well. A couple of hives already had supersedure cells in them (meaning the bees had already planned to replace their queen) and we don’t want these queens emerging and destroying the new queen cells we’re putting in the hives.

Do you ever replace queens in your colonies? If you do, I’d love to know why in the comments below.

It made sense to take it a notch further. What about jerky? If I’m marinating it before searing, what about marinating it before drying? So, I mixed up a jerky marinade and tried drying them out. It was a raging success and it’s something I can’t wait to do again. To be clear, I didn’t invent it, but I remember seeing someone do it with saddles in the past and it’s been on the list to do ever since.

The base of my marinade is comprised on whatever Mexican chili peppers I have on hand. This time, it was a pasilla, two guajillos an ancho and a chipotle. Now, I was calling it vegan… but I cheated (I’m not vegan after all). I put Worcestershire sauce in it (it’s fermented with anchovies)… but vegans can just hold that if they like. Soy sauce, or a nutritional yeast can give it a umami profile.

It was about a total of 1 pound of saddles + lions manes, the peppers, and to the marinade, I added eye-balled amounts of salt, pepper, soy, worchestershire, lemon juice and curry powder. Obviously, you can get creative and even use an entirely different recipe. Use your favorite jerky marinade. I just knew I wanted something thick so that it stuck to the shrooms even after it was dry. The chili’s turned to a paste that was even a little sticky once it was dry. It really could pass for a meat jerky.

See the captions on the photos for detailed info, and if you try it, post below and let me now how it turned out!

Ramp chip dip isn’t an invention of mine. In fact, I found the idea as I was surfing the net looking for things to make. The ramp harvest where I am is very generous each year and I’d like to think it’s because we pay close attention to sustainably harvesting them.

So when there are ramps, we dehydrate them, make dinner sides, make a sort of kraut with it, and for the next performance, create a chip dip. Let’s call it our version of a green onion chip dip. I found a number of approaches on the internet, but this one is fine-tuned to my style.

I took about 8-10 oz of green ramp leaves (both the tricoccum and the burdickii varieties) and chopped them up into 1/8″ pieces. Slop 2 tablespoons of real butter in an iron skillet. Once melted add in a clove or two of minced garlic and just when it starts to brown, add the chopped ramp greens and stems. Prepare the following:

• 2 tbs. of maple sugar (or a sweetener you like)
• 4 ozs or cream cheese (half a pack)
• 8 ozs of sour cream

The above amounts are not strict, cut down on the sweetener, or omit it altogether. I produce my own maple syrup and sugar and so I use that. Mix the above together and get it well-integrated in prep to dump the ramp greens in at the last step.

When the ramp greens are wilted and starting to brown, add 3-4 tbs. of your favorite vinegar to deglaze the skillet. Of course, I use Mad House Vinegar every time I can. Once done, add the greens to the cream cheese mixture and stir well. Salt and pepper to taste… but I ended up using my smoked ramp salt that has both powdered ramp greens, and garlic in it too. Grab your chips and dig in, but I’m making sure to save some for using on top of my next baked potato.

I was in this colony about three times prior to the deadout. I put a little piece of pollen patty in on a previous visit (I start with a little and see if they take it) and there were a LOT of bees up in the candy board. I came back about a week later and they were all dead. They were loaded in the candy board, on each deep level and even a carpet of bees on the bottom board. It looked like they had been poisoned. Yet, the 4 other hives next to it were fine.

I did my mite wash and it was fine. No mites in the wash! There was plenty to eat in the candy board. So, I sent off a bee sample to the Beltsville lab for good measure. See the report below. It’s exactly what I expected. Very low mites and no nosema. So yeah, a nice clean hive otherwise!

This is the one and only candy board that I used 1/4″ hardware cloth on. I have used this same board for 3 past winters with no issue. However, this particular colony was very strong. It had a ton of bees that ate a softball sized hole up through the center of the candy. The bees flowed up and over the top of the rest of the candy totally covering the sugar. It appeared to be a carpet of dead bees when I pulled off the lid. I couldn’t see any sugar… just a tray of dead bees.

I believe that the majority of the bees were up there and on the next cold night, they couldn’t get back down through the hardware cloth fast enough… essentially keeping them from clustering and staying warm. That night, there were bees stuck up top, and not enough bees back down around the brood. Look at the captions on the following pictures as I try to indicate the play by play.

So, as you can see, this was beekeeper error. What’s even sadder is that I added this candy board to the colony about 1-2 weeks before it caused their death. I didn’t notice this until I got the board home and emptied off the bees to see the sugar remaining. I thought they had completely consumed the sugar in the board and it was just all bees. In reality, the small hole through the center of the sugar (along with the 1/4″ hardware cloth) acted as a choke they couldn’t pass through fast enough in time to cluster.

Lesson learned. I’ll be replacing this with the 1/2″ and I hope this helps anyone else who may be using something similar.

I grabbed a head of cabbage and shredded just as I would when I make sour kraut. Then, I chopped all the ramp greens into 1-2″ pieces and mixed well. I specifically wanted to have more ramp greens than cabbage. The cabbage was just there to add structure and crunch. I had a total weight of 2843g of ramp greens and cabbage, and to that, I settled on 3% salt.

I put everything into a 5g clean bucket to pound it down. The idea here is to bruise everything up and get it to create its own brine. There should be no need to add any water. I made two variations. The first was cabbage, ramps and caraway seed. The other was the same, plus some shredded carrots and dill.

Give everything a mix and make sure the salt is evenly distributed. The brine will release pretty quickly, so it also helps to get things integrated. Finally, pack everything tightly into jars. I save a few whole cabbage leaves to use on the top, just under my weight. The idea is to keep everything under the surface of the brine. This prevents mold from growing. If you do this right, it’s one of those things you’ll be able to set and forget until it’s done. I do use the special lids that have an air vent in the top for wide mouth mason jars. This particular set comes with 4 lids, 4 glass weights and a tamper to pack the kraut down in the jars. Crocks are great, but for smaller test batches of stuff, using wide mouth jars is less maintenance. I always have a jar of kraut ready to open. Having it in multiple jars keeps the smell and bugs down… and I NEVER have any problems with mold starting. Here’s the same set without the tamper and slightly cheaper.

Clean your leaves and lay them out to dry. I put my leaves in a dehydrator… and they readily dehydrate. It only took a couple of hours with a little heat added. You can also cold-smoke the leaves initially if you want to add a bit of natural smoke but you’ll see how I faked it with the smoked salt in a moment. You’ll eventually add some kind of salt, and I’d suggest either a kosher or sea salt… basically, something with a course grind.

I have a stash of applewood smoked sea salt that I used to blend in. This particular salt is almost overly smoky so I thought skipping the cold-smoking was prudent this time around. I took the dehydrated leaves, crunched them up and stuff them in my spice grinder along with a certain amount of salt. I like to grind the salt with the dehydrated leaves to help integration, and by the time it’s done, you really can’t see the salt. It leaves a nice, earthy, salt blend, ready to sprinkle right on food… use as a rub, or used in the other curing applications. Later on, I did manage to add in some of my homemade garlic powder. I can’t wait to get this into some charcuterie.

If you have any other clever ideas on making salts and rubs, I’d love to hear them. In the meantime, here’s a few pics of the process.