A. Scattergood

Rye toast with pickled root veg and vinegar dust

If you haven't been checking your Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram account, etc., lately, you may be sadly unaware of the latest temporary food-as-art installation, the Amalur Project, which last night debuted at Echo Park's Cortez. I'm sorry. But the happy news is that, as is often the case, there's always dinner tonight.

The Amalur Project is brought to you by Spanish-born chef Sergio Perera, who has, according to the website, cooked in such notable kitchens as Arzak, Jean-Georges, Mugaritz -- and, perhaps most importantly, his grandfather's kitchen. Joining Perera in the project is Burbank-born, Japan-raised Jacob Takehiro Kear, who cooked at Lukshon in Culver City and Tapas Molecular Bar in Tokyo and most recently was chef de cuisine at Eva. Also in the (tiny) kitchen is Steve Monnier, born and trained in France, and who has cooked at many laudable restaurants there and here, including L'Orangerie (which may trump everybody else's fancy credits, if you're an L.A. Francophile foodist).

Yes, the chefs have pilgrimaged to Noma. Yes, they forage. Not only do they trudge out into the surrounding local hills and dales and beautiful forests but they employ professional foragers to do so for them, namely Pascal Baudar and Mia Wasilevich, who have a ton of insanely laudable credits, too.

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Guiliano Della Casa

A Feast of Weeds

Forage much? Chefs do it, Pascal Baudar does it (feel free to join him). Even UCLA professor of Italian and culinary history Luigi Ballerini does it, judging by his latest book, A Feast of Weeds: A Literary Guide to Foraging and Cooking Wild Plants, with recipes by Ada De Santis (translated by Gianpiero W. Doebler). Though the book focuses on Italian wild edibles, most can be found in California as well (purslane, stinging nettles, wild asparagus).

Several foraging books have been making the rounds of late, among them Tama Matsuoka Wong and Eddy Leroux's excellent field guide and cookbook, Foraged Flavor. The tone of A Feast of Weeds is noticeably more academic, with its textbooklike format (from bay leaves to wild strawberries) and plenty of "however" pauses and Henry David Thoreau storylines among the recipes for spaghetti with crested warty cabbage (similar to wild radish).

Those wandering academic introductory narratives reveal some of the most interesting cross-cultural wild blueberry stories. (Surprise! Some Italians think American blueberries are fat.)

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Felicia Friesema

Stinging nettles from Flora Bella Farm at the Hollywood market

Let's forgive the Stinging Nettle -- an herbaceous weed currently popping up all over Southern California following our December rains -- for evolving those highly annoying tiny little hypodermic needles that give it its name. The poor plant has been unceremoniously ripped out of the ground for thousands of years to treat everything from madness to arthritis to asthma to "the female affliction." The stem fibers make both rope and fine, linen-like cloth. And it's also the base for vegetarian rennet in cheese making.

Second maybe only to hemp, the stinging nettle is one of the most useful -- and freely available -- invasive weeds in the state, though its recent renaissance is based on its versatility as a freely foraged food.

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JGarbee

DIY: Homemade apartment-window liqueur

Holiday traffic, bars reeking of stale beer, hoards of people intent on their last beach fling. Ah, Labor Day weekend fun. Actually, it's the perfect excuse to stay home and channel your inner Euell Gibbons and forage for backyard cattails.

Or, if you're not swamp-adjacent, build a mini-winery in your hall closet. Plant that trellised vegetable garden on your apartment patio, the one you've been saying all summer you're going to finish. Distill something or, if you prefer to keep things legal, make homemade liqueur with summer fruit (photo above). All good, old-fashioned hard work, but not in that paint-the-kitchen literal "laboring" sense. It's Labor Day weekend, but also the end of summer, so we might as well have some fun.

Get the resources you need to make that home winery (!), trellised garden and other projects after the jump.

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A. Scattergood

nasturtiums in the pass at Eva

If you're the sort of person who likes to eat what's outside of your raised garden beds as much as what's in them, or if you've found yourself staring at the urban forest of nasturtiums lately taking over the embankments of Laurel Canyon as it nears Mulholland Drive, then maybe you should read today's feature food story. Because the chefs at Eva Restaurant on Beverly have similar problems. They also have become expert at translating that sudden impulse to weed into some seriously lovely cooking. In which Eva chef-owner Mark Gold and his new chef de cuisine Jacob Kear go foraging:

Because weeds are cool. They're the chef's answer to found art: free, gorgeous and tasty if you pick the right ones, and about as local as you can get. Fiat recession chic.

Read the story.

jgarbee

The Botanist With Her (Irish) Whisky Colleagues

The Botanist has all the buzzwords of box office gin success. In addition to the typical gin aromatics (juniper berries, cassia bark, orange peel and such), it is distilled with "22 wild native Islay botanicals" (white clover, bog myrtle leaves, creeping thistle). They've been hand-picked by an "expert foraging team" from ocean-front shores, peat bogs and, we are told, even a few "windswept hills" for that full cinematic cocktail effect.

To thicken the plot, there's controversy. The gin is made by Bruichladdich, the 130-year-old distillery known for its bold, heavily peated, single-malt Scotch whisky. The distillery has never released a gin, or any spirit on such a delicate end of the flavor spectrum, for that matter. There's even a reference to Ugly Betty, although here, not the television show but the nickname of the Lomond pot-still used to slowly simmer -- for 17 hours, three times the average gin -- the 46% ABV potion. There's so much hype, we fully expected herbal overkill, a flavor flop.

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Felicia Friesema

Cantharellus californicus from Tutti Frutti Farms

Our early season rainstorms have yielded two predictable outcomes: angsty tweets from farmers market vendors trying desperately to keep self, customers and produce dry, and a splendid sprouting of mud puppies, a.k.a. California chanterelles, at local farms.

California is the one state currently blessed with its own species name for chanterelles (Cantharellus californicus) and with good reason. Where the more commonly known Cantharellus cibarius is delicate, spindly and more uniform in shape and size, the Californicus chanterelles are big, meaty, fleshy, and will sometimes expand to the width of a hand. Shaq's hand. They range from the Bay area to down here in L.A., but don't really start popping up until the ground gets a good douse in fall and winter. This weekend's water could mean a nice-sized chanterelle crop is in store, just in time for Thanksgiving, prompting a few menu revisions at home.

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amazon

These days we all probably know a forager and even a kitchen drawer mushroom cultivator or two -- somewhat challenging friendships when it comes to gift-giving. (Edible backyard weeds, leftover coffee grounds for growing mushrooms?)

And so, in honor of our friends who have a somewhat "unique" cookbook and bedside reading needs, we suggest Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms.

If fungi aren't enough, Wild Flavors: One Chef's Transformative Year Cooking From Eva's Farm. And yes, Hank Shaw's Hunt, Gather, Cook, out earlier this year, would also be an excellent choice.

Consider the "forager's pasta" recipe that follows an early holiday bonus. Then again, we're not exactly your average holiday wish-list sorts, either.

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backwardsbeekeepers.com

The Yellow Carpet

Nothing against birds, but bats and bees -- key cogs in our food pollination wheel, among other things -- have had it rough the past few years with white nose syndrome and Colony Collapse Disorder. On the positive side, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced last week that the cause of white nose syndrome in the U.S. has finally been pinpointed (a key step in preventative research) and Colony Collapse Disorder awareness continues to grow through groups like L.A.'s Backwards Beekeepers.

Here are a few of our favorite tasty ways to support the bats and bees, starting with a really good cup of coffee.

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Photo by Shauna Miller

In Part 1 of our interview with chef Sean Ehland, we learned his thoughts on the ever-present culinary school debate, as well as how he pestered his way into a stage at Noma via the restaurant's reservations email. In Part 2, we learn what working in such a sophisticated kitchen is like, as well as how he feels when he takes a meal quite literally from the farm to the table, all on his own. We also discuss just how much he'd love to get into the Wolvesden.

When we left off, Ehland was telling us he spent three months emailing Noma, hoping for a chance to work there.

SI: How many emails did you send to them?

SE: I don't know exactly. Definitely over 10 within three months I think.

SI: When you finally got there, what was your experience like? What did you do in that kitchen?

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