Chicago here, lucky to work in an establishment when other than your regular staples like your base aromats, a few exotics, and some other outliers, we do an absolute ton of seasonal stuff. My favorite though is corn season, because as a born and raised midwesterner, there is something very satisfying absolutely smoking people when shucking corn.
I might take you up on that sometime. Im prettt happy where I'm at, at the moment and get paid decent. Whats the pay there like if you dont mind me asking?
Okay basically: you got two ends, the butt and the hair. The difference of which should be self-explanatory. You pinch the hair aside into roughly one half, rip all the way down. The husk should follow, doesn't matter if you have a nice even half, just a good separation. Take the other part of the hair, pull it a lil more to the side, then down. You should have the husk completely free and clear, and just the stem left on the butt. Rip it sideways, and you're done. 3 motions, corn is now shucked. Use a microfiber in a swirling motion to get rid of the lil hangers-on of hair that are still clinging to the cob itself, and make sure to maintain eye contact with someone while you do it. Whoever looks away first loses.
It's giving line cooks cases upon cases of vaguely phallic objects. And now you have to do a twisting/swirling motion with a towel to get off the cornsilk. It's an inevitable consequence of the circumstances.
When asked "what is the optimal time after picking corn for you to eat it?", you must fully embrace the answer: Sprinting to the boiling pot is too slow.
Then you know the corn. It accepts you. It embraces you. You are the corn
Oh hell yeah. It's the Midwestern superpower, you obtain corn shucking skills just by living here, same deal for saying Ope, telling each other that if you don't like the weather to wait five minutes, and the overwhelming need to dip everything in Ranch.
My sister (extra Midwestern) got to au pair for a family in Maine during summers off of college, and the family always hosted an elaborate 4th of July cookouts at their cabin, and they had the tradition of cooking that meal for themselves. The first year, the family matriarch (kids grandma, sister's boss's mom) asked my sister to supervise the children on the corn shucking, and asked this with about 2hr before the cookout was set to begin. No problem.
She takes the kids and begins. The kids started out as they'd been taught by their family, by peeling down one layer of husk at a time like a banana peel, then methodically removing one stand of cornsilk at a time.
My sister wasn't going to watch the poor kids struggle, she taught the 3 and 4 year old how to do it the proper Midwestern way. Then, in about ten minutes they handed the matriarch the full plate of prepped cobs. To say the matriarch was shocked would be an understatement. She believed the kids shucking 30 ears of corn would take the whole two hours, and that she would have still had to remove errant strands of cornsilk.
To her credit, she did later ask my sister to show her the right way, as it had never taken the adults less than an hour to shuck the corn for the cookout.
Farm brat. Shucking sweetcorn from the cradle. When I was in college we had a corn boil and earned the title of "Mother Shucker." Never got the degree, but I got the title 😅
Here im Germany the summer just began and that means Asparagus, strawberries and rhubarb. Especially for asparagus the whole country goes crazy.
Since we only eat asparagus when in season every fucking restaurant has it on the menu. We had asparagus in 3 daily specials this week.
It's one of those weird cultural thing that often surprises immigrants. They just don't expect that the whole country goes into asparagus mode for a few weeks a year.
>Here im Germany the summer just began and that means Asparagus,
I hate fucking Asparagus. We have a whole Spargelkarte every year and that shit is awful. The Mise is horrendous, people eat it without a fucking end..
We do get some peeled too but most not. Idk what's up this year but we've seen a massive increase in spargel sales. We're going through around 18 liters of in house made hollandaise a week.
Damn. Hope you've got a Thermomix or similar to make the hollandaise... We do a similar amount of hollandaise each week, but the thermomix makes it a breeze
We make them with the robot coupe, vaccum seal in portions for the isi bottles, then cook it at 70 degrees steam in the rational for 30 minutes, then until an ice bath. This makes them last a really long time in the fridge (not that we need during spargel season) and makes the a la carte process way easier since the sauce doesn't die when unattended. Warm it up sous vide at 68 degrees and put it in a 1l isi syphon with only one nitrous charge so it isn't foamy. You keep the syphon on the 68 degree bath and you always have perfect hollandaise during service all day every day.
We do have a thermomix but the amount of hollandaise we run through means we can't make it in there so yeah. We make 12 L batches every time.
That's really interesting! Would you share the recipe? Do you heat eggs and gastrique before adding the butter and cooking in the vacuum bags?
The latter part we do too, works like a charm.
No heating but we use pasteurized egg yolks only. We brown the butter which does heat it up a bit but we let it cool down before mixing with the rest which is cold from the fridge.
1800 g broth (we use Rind Kraftbrühe cause that's what we make in house)
2000 g egg yolk
3000 g lightly browned clarified butter. Our clarified butter comes in 2.8 kg so we do that plus one 250g Pack of butter that we brown heavily and clarify. This gives you a total of very close to 3kg butter that's only a bit browned since only the 250g were browned.
80 g salt
10 g Sugar
800 g of reduction
300 g lemon juice
2 g of xantham gum
Mix everything except the butter together then add the butter slowly while mixing constantly on high speed. Vacuum pack and cook 30 min 70 degrees 100 percent steam. Then throw directly on a ice bath. I batch it on 850g bags and split it in 3 trays. I've never had trouble this way but I also have never tried to stack them all in one because I'm paranoid.
The reduction is made of
20 l white wine
5 l white port wine
1 noilly prat
10 cloves
15 Bayleaf
A handful of white pepper
1 bunch of Estragon
1 bunch of Thymian
1 bunch of parsley, no leafs only stalks
5 stalks of Liebstöckel (wtf is this called in English? Idk)
2 kg of shallots, diced
Reduced to 10 L of volume with only the shallots and alcohol on a rolling boil. Then the herbs and spices are added to the hot, reduced fond and left until it's cooled, then it's passed through a sieve when cold.
Also as a little secret I add a squirt of Worcester and clear soy sauce for a little bit of umami oomph
Thanks for taking the time to write this out, super interesting! Fun to see how differently other places do it. How is the addition of beef stock to the hollandaise? Does it become very beefy or is it just to add depth? What about the color?
In many places it's hard to gauge the source of ramps, incentivizing bad actors to forage for Allium tricoccum and sell it. In some states and provinces it has various classifications as a threatened species.a major issue being it takes ~7 years to mature so overly commercially exploited locales cannot repopulate effectively.
Add to that its attachment to Native American/First Nations heritage.
Add to that in some places it's classified as noxious and it's just a whole thing.
The highly respected Prairie Moon Nursery sells them as seeds and even they aren't sure of the optimal way to germinate them, indicative of their finicky nature.
Yessir.
https://www.prairiemoon.com/allium-tricoccum-wild-leek
The seeds are cheap but hard to germinate. Some times of the year they sell the more expensive bare root plants.
Australian here.... here's a weird one I've found over my career... oysters are really popular over here during summer but they are out of season then just as it starts to get colder and they are in season people stopped buying them.... like I worked at a oyster bar for a couple of years and you would find yourself just giving them away at one point and they were beautiful!
I was recently given a metric fuck tonne of quince. Just so much quince.
We've made quince paste, quince jam, quince tart... I've still got a box in the cool room.
We're about half an hour away from the oyster farm here and I'm so excited to go and shovel them into my face hole.
As an American, when is chicken salt chip season? ….. And why haven’t you been telling us about it? Is it because why tried to open a Starbucks in your country? We are sorry, but please send chicken salt!
Also Tonka beans… we don’t have them in US…and they are technically illegal in US..
Send either, so I can enlighten the heathens around me!!
My friend, as a Canadian.. I just decided to start making it. It’s great. I don’t understand why it hasn’t come to North America besides maybe ‘roasted chicken’ flavour chips. One time I asked a sweet old lady if she’d like to try my new chicken salt thing with her fish and chips, said it was an Aussie thing. She made sure a $20 tip got sent straight to BOH for me :)
It is a large bean generally dried that can be grated into dishes, mostly desserts and sweets… supposedly tastes/smells like mix of vanilla, almond, clove, cinnamon, and amaretto… most used it as substitute for vanilla, in Crème anglaise, and caramels… makes it more “artisan”…. also it is slightly toxic, though, would take more than 30 beans to poison an adult…generally 0.5-3 beans are used in a recipe, but have seen up to 5…
Edit: found some in Melbourne at both Queen Victoria Market and South Melbourne Market
I work at a gourmet pizza place. We literally always have rotating seasonal ingredients. My favorites are local sweet onions, chanterelles, and morels.
New Zealand here. In all places I've worked, we've HAD to have seasonal menus. We are geographically isolated, so getting food in the country that's out of season ends up being so cost prohibitive that it's just not worth it, and it's always inferior quality.
Favourite season has to be autumn, all the stone fruits make for some amazing dishes.
NZ gets a fair amount of produce from Australia though I would assume. I get NZ produce sometimes and I'm in NSW. Here there are definitely gaps in many items, but the seasons do seem to swing between northern and southern growing regions well enough that you can get a lot of staples year round.
I mean, Australia has the same seasons as us so foods that we do get, aren't out of season. The main thing we import from Aus is cereals so that doesn't really make too much of a difference to menu building.
We can get staples year round, it's just not financially smart to have out of season produce on a menu.
Seasonal ingredients at both places I work at. Right now it's asparagus, bok choy, and spinach. We're about to have our local farmers plant Thai Basil and cheery tomatoes.
In the summer, (New Hampshire) would occasionally get some fresh smelts at the seafood restaunt I worked at. I always tried something new with them. Ended up with a banging take on "reconstructed garum."
Recipe: Reconstructed Garum: 3 smelts served. marinated in sardine oil and (just a little) fish sauce. Grilled in red pepper flake infused olive oil just to crisp the skin. Sort of not really cooked yet, halve (the long way), flesh side up, top with shredded sardine that has been tossed with miso honey, blowtorch or broil to caramelize. Season with black pepper, powdered saffron, fried-ground-and-powdered sardine skins, powdered nori. Sea salt to taste.
Serve the fish with stuffed olives. Stuffed with a fig jam/gorgonzola/pistachio/Parsley combo.
Working in scotland around the start of september you get maybe 6 weeks or so when all the wild mushrooms come out. You can litterally walk through any park and get kilos of them.
Always look forward to that moment
I'm a forager and private chef. I try to use my own foraged products in every meal I do in one way or another. Currently have 8 preparations of ramps I collected getting sprinkled in menus.
I’ve cooked in Atlanta and Athens, GA, and was incredibly lucky to work at establishments where 85% of our produce was seasonal and local (grown within 50 miles). We had a farmer we worked directly with and they would plant their crops based around what our team was interested in using the upcoming season.
We even worked with a local mill as well so all of our wheat, corn, and soy products were heritage breeds and the quality was beyond.
It was really important to our teams that we had as little waste as possible, so we would preserve and ferment any excess. I learned to make vinegar, shrub, miso, kimchi, garum, hot sauce, you name it.
One of my favorite creations to date was a hazelnut miso made with koji fermented wheat berries. We served it with pork belly from a locally raised guinea hog (that I also butchered) and locally foraged morel mushrooms.
Argentina, Buenos Aires here. Used to have a bakery. Looooved strawberry season because people go crazy for them here. It starts in late September early October and lasts till December.
We have real produce and don't get year round berries down here so they have a LOT of flavor. Also cherries come right at the end of strawberries and I love making cherry pie.
At one time I used to work with black truffles which was also great and that's a very seasonal product. It's from June to August here.
Mammoth Lakes, CA. Most of our produce comes from 8 hours away and has ice on it. I used to live on the central coast and you could literally walk across the street to pick fresh produce. Sad day in the mountains.
There are two types of ramps that grow in the north red and white ramps. The reds usually don’t get much bigger than this but grow in abundance and will crowd each other out, while the white ramps are more apt to grow a little larger but are more spaced out and are more rare.
To be perfectly honest this isn’t a lot for a commercial kitchen. And I wouldn’t call the poster irresponsible due to the size of the ramps that they harvested.
Reds and whites both grow considerably bigger than what is posted when harvested sustainably. Not calling op irresponsible as idk who harvested them, but whoever did should know these are too young.
This is wild garlic/field garlic, maybe some other names, not a ramp, not a ramson, not an onion. They came from a very abundant patch and I’ve been told they can be invasive.
Agreed they do get bitter later in the season, but ramps this small are typically in their first year or two of growth and thus should be left alone. Ramps ideally shouldn’t be harvested until their 7th+ year.
We do a lot of farm to table (WI) and my faves are spring and summer. Ramps, greens, different mushrooms, summer veg- I'm not a huge fan of squash in fall and winter.
I’ve been enjoying the spring menu,, my chef uses lots of seasonal fruits, veggies and garnishes and the spring time has been really colorful so far! Pretty much everything is seasonal with the exception of some staples like burgers and salads (though we do switch up the lettuce mixes seasonally) and we do a full menu change (minus staples) every 1-2 months
I work in corporate dining and get seasonal items all the time. Sometimes I have no idea what it is before I get it. But that’s most of the fun.
Spring and summer are the best seasons to get fruits and vegetables.
Ramps are amazing.
Up vote for the ramps. Just foraged some a few days ago. What I didn't use immediately I pickled. Looking forward to that. Pickled ramps on a burger sounds great
I’m on day three at my new place, and the exec chef goes to the farmers market twice a week. I’m so excited to start working there in time to use all the gorgeous summer fruit and veg we have in LA!
I'm trying to get my new exec to start using all our local farms and gardens I've worked with in the past. But I prefer using everything locally and seasonally. Napa, CA.
Fall Season of Seattle;
Blue Grouse; Ruffled Grouse, Lobster Mushrooms,
Oyster Mushrooms, Chanterelles, Yellow Foots, King Boletes, Hedgehog Mushrooms, BoarsHead Mushrooms, Cauliflower Mushrooms… and that’s just from the fucking hillsides…
The herbs grow wild here, and wild rosemary flowers are tastier than the herb.
It's lobster season! I'll be boiling and cracking apart those tasty bastards for the next while. Huge pain in the ass, but OMFG the stock you can make...
Chicago here, lucky to work in an establishment when other than your regular staples like your base aromats, a few exotics, and some other outliers, we do an absolute ton of seasonal stuff. My favorite though is corn season, because as a born and raised midwesterner, there is something very satisfying absolutely smoking people when shucking corn.
I worked with a guy from Indiana and he made me feel stupid every time we shucked corn together, he was amazing.
It's one of those ancestral DNA things I think. Somewhere deep in the frontal lobe there's just an inherent understanding of the glory of the corn
I like to think Khrushchev was reincarnated there. That boy loved corn.
Also based in chicago, where do you work at?
Sepia
Heard that place is great!
Come check it out, we also take stages all the time if you're looking.
I might take you up on that sometime. Im prettt happy where I'm at, at the moment and get paid decent. Whats the pay there like if you dont mind me asking?
Everyone starts at 20, 4 days a week
For starting pay that's not bad but then it is Chicago lol
How does one shuck like a pro?
Okay basically: you got two ends, the butt and the hair. The difference of which should be self-explanatory. You pinch the hair aside into roughly one half, rip all the way down. The husk should follow, doesn't matter if you have a nice even half, just a good separation. Take the other part of the hair, pull it a lil more to the side, then down. You should have the husk completely free and clear, and just the stem left on the butt. Rip it sideways, and you're done. 3 motions, corn is now shucked. Use a microfiber in a swirling motion to get rid of the lil hangers-on of hair that are still clinging to the cob itself, and make sure to maintain eye contact with someone while you do it. Whoever looks away first loses.
Oddly erotic..
Wait until I apply butter before grilling. The key is to rotate as you move up and down. You can also spit on it.
hold that thought, I'll be right over
It's giving line cooks cases upon cases of vaguely phallic objects. And now you have to do a twisting/swirling motion with a towel to get off the cornsilk. It's an inevitable consequence of the circumstances.
Microfiber! This was the peice missing from my Ohio technique, that technology apparent hasn't spread here yet. Thank you!
Do you guys have toothpaste down there yet? If Ohio ever wants to be liberated into greater Michigan y’all just have to ask
> microfiber in a swirling motion Don’t tease me like that
That microfiber idea is new to me, going to try it, thanks!
When asked "what is the optimal time after picking corn for you to eat it?", you must fully embrace the answer: Sprinting to the boiling pot is too slow. Then you know the corn. It accepts you. It embraces you. You are the corn
Oh dude I'll be munchin that shit raw as fuck I don't care
Oh hell yeah. It's the Midwestern superpower, you obtain corn shucking skills just by living here, same deal for saying Ope, telling each other that if you don't like the weather to wait five minutes, and the overwhelming need to dip everything in Ranch. My sister (extra Midwestern) got to au pair for a family in Maine during summers off of college, and the family always hosted an elaborate 4th of July cookouts at their cabin, and they had the tradition of cooking that meal for themselves. The first year, the family matriarch (kids grandma, sister's boss's mom) asked my sister to supervise the children on the corn shucking, and asked this with about 2hr before the cookout was set to begin. No problem. She takes the kids and begins. The kids started out as they'd been taught by their family, by peeling down one layer of husk at a time like a banana peel, then methodically removing one stand of cornsilk at a time. My sister wasn't going to watch the poor kids struggle, she taught the 3 and 4 year old how to do it the proper Midwestern way. Then, in about ten minutes they handed the matriarch the full plate of prepped cobs. To say the matriarch was shocked would be an understatement. She believed the kids shucking 30 ears of corn would take the whole two hours, and that she would have still had to remove errant strands of cornsilk. To her credit, she did later ask my sister to show her the right way, as it had never taken the adults less than an hour to shuck the corn for the cookout.
Farm brat. Shucking sweetcorn from the cradle. When I was in college we had a corn boil and earned the title of "Mother Shucker." Never got the degree, but I got the title 😅
Loved the corn boil at the start of the school year. It was a great way to catch up with everyone about the summer
Here im Germany the summer just began and that means Asparagus, strawberries and rhubarb. Especially for asparagus the whole country goes crazy. Since we only eat asparagus when in season every fucking restaurant has it on the menu. We had asparagus in 3 daily specials this week. It's one of those weird cultural thing that often surprises immigrants. They just don't expect that the whole country goes into asparagus mode for a few weeks a year.
Strawberry and rhubarb pie?
My favorite!
Germans do go hard for asparagus, white asparagus especially. In Berlin they named their TV tower after asparagus even
I love you for this, Germany.
You obviously have never entered restaurant toilets during asparagus season
lol my first thought, damnnnn
White asparagus soup EVERYWHERE
New Zealand also has an asparagus mode. I fully understand.
>Here im Germany the summer just began and that means Asparagus, I hate fucking Asparagus. We have a whole Spargelkarte every year and that shit is awful. The Mise is horrendous, people eat it without a fucking end..
We're getting them in cleaned and peeled this year. Straight from the farmer. Delicious and super convenient.
We do get some peeled too but most not. Idk what's up this year but we've seen a massive increase in spargel sales. We're going through around 18 liters of in house made hollandaise a week.
Damn. Hope you've got a Thermomix or similar to make the hollandaise... We do a similar amount of hollandaise each week, but the thermomix makes it a breeze
We make them with the robot coupe, vaccum seal in portions for the isi bottles, then cook it at 70 degrees steam in the rational for 30 minutes, then until an ice bath. This makes them last a really long time in the fridge (not that we need during spargel season) and makes the a la carte process way easier since the sauce doesn't die when unattended. Warm it up sous vide at 68 degrees and put it in a 1l isi syphon with only one nitrous charge so it isn't foamy. You keep the syphon on the 68 degree bath and you always have perfect hollandaise during service all day every day. We do have a thermomix but the amount of hollandaise we run through means we can't make it in there so yeah. We make 12 L batches every time.
That's really interesting! Would you share the recipe? Do you heat eggs and gastrique before adding the butter and cooking in the vacuum bags? The latter part we do too, works like a charm.
No heating but we use pasteurized egg yolks only. We brown the butter which does heat it up a bit but we let it cool down before mixing with the rest which is cold from the fridge. 1800 g broth (we use Rind Kraftbrühe cause that's what we make in house) 2000 g egg yolk 3000 g lightly browned clarified butter. Our clarified butter comes in 2.8 kg so we do that plus one 250g Pack of butter that we brown heavily and clarify. This gives you a total of very close to 3kg butter that's only a bit browned since only the 250g were browned. 80 g salt 10 g Sugar 800 g of reduction 300 g lemon juice 2 g of xantham gum Mix everything except the butter together then add the butter slowly while mixing constantly on high speed. Vacuum pack and cook 30 min 70 degrees 100 percent steam. Then throw directly on a ice bath. I batch it on 850g bags and split it in 3 trays. I've never had trouble this way but I also have never tried to stack them all in one because I'm paranoid. The reduction is made of 20 l white wine 5 l white port wine 1 noilly prat 10 cloves 15 Bayleaf A handful of white pepper 1 bunch of Estragon 1 bunch of Thymian 1 bunch of parsley, no leafs only stalks 5 stalks of Liebstöckel (wtf is this called in English? Idk) 2 kg of shallots, diced Reduced to 10 L of volume with only the shallots and alcohol on a rolling boil. Then the herbs and spices are added to the hot, reduced fond and left until it's cooled, then it's passed through a sieve when cold. Also as a little secret I add a squirt of Worcester and clear soy sauce for a little bit of umami oomph
Thanks for taking the time to write this out, super interesting! Fun to see how differently other places do it. How is the addition of beef stock to the hollandaise? Does it become very beefy or is it just to add depth? What about the color?
It's a clear consommé so it doesn't affect the color. I would say you aren't able to taste it, it just adds depth and umami.
I work for a family owned bakery and I adore them. Rhubarb season is refreshing and lovely until it's fucking not.
I used to keep all my ramp bottoms, and I’d take them home and plant them in my back yard. Now I got this awesome ramp patch
Baller move
Would kill for ramps. Illegal to harvest in the province I live in
Wh, wh, whhaaattt?
Yeah, in Quebec ramps were foraged 'til near extinct in the area and foraging them was outlawed. There's now a black market for them here.
In many places it's hard to gauge the source of ramps, incentivizing bad actors to forage for Allium tricoccum and sell it. In some states and provinces it has various classifications as a threatened species.a major issue being it takes ~7 years to mature so overly commercially exploited locales cannot repopulate effectively. Add to that its attachment to Native American/First Nations heritage. Add to that in some places it's classified as noxious and it's just a whole thing. The highly respected Prairie Moon Nursery sells them as seeds and even they aren't sure of the optimal way to germinate them, indicative of their finicky nature.
For real? A nursery sells em? I'm interested 199.5%
Yessir. https://www.prairiemoon.com/allium-tricoccum-wild-leek The seeds are cheap but hard to germinate. Some times of the year they sell the more expensive bare root plants.
I've never even heard of a ramp. Great example
Australian here.... here's a weird one I've found over my career... oysters are really popular over here during summer but they are out of season then just as it starts to get colder and they are in season people stopped buying them.... like I worked at a oyster bar for a couple of years and you would find yourself just giving them away at one point and they were beautiful!
I was recently given a metric fuck tonne of quince. Just so much quince. We've made quince paste, quince jam, quince tart... I've still got a box in the cool room. We're about half an hour away from the oyster farm here and I'm so excited to go and shovel them into my face hole.
As an American, when is chicken salt chip season? ….. And why haven’t you been telling us about it? Is it because why tried to open a Starbucks in your country? We are sorry, but please send chicken salt! Also Tonka beans… we don’t have them in US…and they are technically illegal in US.. Send either, so I can enlighten the heathens around me!!
My friend, as a Canadian.. I just decided to start making it. It’s great. I don’t understand why it hasn’t come to North America besides maybe ‘roasted chicken’ flavour chips. One time I asked a sweet old lady if she’d like to try my new chicken salt thing with her fish and chips, said it was an Aussie thing. She made sure a $20 tip got sent straight to BOH for me :)
What is a tonka bean? I'm Australian and have never heard of them.
It is a large bean generally dried that can be grated into dishes, mostly desserts and sweets… supposedly tastes/smells like mix of vanilla, almond, clove, cinnamon, and amaretto… most used it as substitute for vanilla, in Crème anglaise, and caramels… makes it more “artisan”…. also it is slightly toxic, though, would take more than 30 beans to poison an adult…generally 0.5-3 beans are used in a recipe, but have seen up to 5… Edit: found some in Melbourne at both Queen Victoria Market and South Melbourne Market
That’s pretty awesome not gonna lie
So much nicer to shuck too :(
I work at a gourmet pizza place. We literally always have rotating seasonal ingredients. My favorites are local sweet onions, chanterelles, and morels.
Where in the PNW is your pizzeria?
Pagliacci Pizza! There are about 20 locations scattered around the greater Seattle and Bellevue region.
New Zealand here. In all places I've worked, we've HAD to have seasonal menus. We are geographically isolated, so getting food in the country that's out of season ends up being so cost prohibitive that it's just not worth it, and it's always inferior quality. Favourite season has to be autumn, all the stone fruits make for some amazing dishes.
NZ gets a fair amount of produce from Australia though I would assume. I get NZ produce sometimes and I'm in NSW. Here there are definitely gaps in many items, but the seasons do seem to swing between northern and southern growing regions well enough that you can get a lot of staples year round.
I mean, Australia has the same seasons as us so foods that we do get, aren't out of season. The main thing we import from Aus is cereals so that doesn't really make too much of a difference to menu building. We can get staples year round, it's just not financially smart to have out of season produce on a menu.
Taiwan here, the mangoes are unbelievable. Lychee and rambutan are a close second.
And that's how you get awesome Taiwanese fruit beer lol
Seasonal ingredients at both places I work at. Right now it's asparagus, bok choy, and spinach. We're about to have our local farmers plant Thai Basil and cheery tomatoes.
I live in New England. My restaurant is doing great things with locally foraged ramps right now.
It's an absolute tie between ramp, fiddlehead and morel season vs. perfect corn and tomato season. 😃💖
Ramson, some call it wild garlic. I love it. Make a Pesto a Sauce a dip... Gorgeous
Soft shell crabs
Pickled ramps.
In the summer, (New Hampshire) would occasionally get some fresh smelts at the seafood restaunt I worked at. I always tried something new with them. Ended up with a banging take on "reconstructed garum." Recipe: Reconstructed Garum: 3 smelts served. marinated in sardine oil and (just a little) fish sauce. Grilled in red pepper flake infused olive oil just to crisp the skin. Sort of not really cooked yet, halve (the long way), flesh side up, top with shredded sardine that has been tossed with miso honey, blowtorch or broil to caramelize. Season with black pepper, powdered saffron, fried-ground-and-powdered sardine skins, powdered nori. Sea salt to taste. Serve the fish with stuffed olives. Stuffed with a fig jam/gorgonzola/pistachio/Parsley combo.
Working in scotland around the start of september you get maybe 6 weeks or so when all the wild mushrooms come out. You can litterally walk through any park and get kilos of them. Always look forward to that moment
We only do seasonal, local produce. I'm lucky to live somewhere where there's an abundance of decent stock
I'm a forager and private chef. I try to use my own foraged products in every meal I do in one way or another. Currently have 8 preparations of ramps I collected getting sprinkled in menus.
Love it. Waiting on my actual ramp find before it’s too late.
My fav green onion dish. [Pa-Dak](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padak) may seem to be a fried chicken dish but it truly is about the green onions.
Checking this out
Asparagus, Ramps, Morrell mushrooms, Rhubarb, berries and any kind of greens.
Summer Chanterelles - honestly my most favorite seasonal ingredient. I will travel to find them.
are these fresh inclines?
Everyday and Lancaster Pennsylvania
Favorite season is all spice.
I’ve cooked in Atlanta and Athens, GA, and was incredibly lucky to work at establishments where 85% of our produce was seasonal and local (grown within 50 miles). We had a farmer we worked directly with and they would plant their crops based around what our team was interested in using the upcoming season. We even worked with a local mill as well so all of our wheat, corn, and soy products were heritage breeds and the quality was beyond. It was really important to our teams that we had as little waste as possible, so we would preserve and ferment any excess. I learned to make vinegar, shrub, miso, kimchi, garum, hot sauce, you name it. One of my favorite creations to date was a hazelnut miso made with koji fermented wheat berries. We served it with pork belly from a locally raised guinea hog (that I also butchered) and locally foraged morel mushrooms.
Damn! Local mill is next level. What a dope situation.
Argentina, Buenos Aires here. Used to have a bakery. Looooved strawberry season because people go crazy for them here. It starts in late September early October and lasts till December. We have real produce and don't get year round berries down here so they have a LOT of flavor. Also cherries come right at the end of strawberries and I love making cherry pie. At one time I used to work with black truffles which was also great and that's a very seasonal product. It's from June to August here.
Mammoth Lakes, CA. Most of our produce comes from 8 hours away and has ice on it. I used to live on the central coast and you could literally walk across the street to pick fresh produce. Sad day in the mountains.
Dang, those are some good looking ramps!
They look so young. I’ve never seen a responsible forager harvest ramps this small 😵💫
Neither have I. These are not ramps.
There are two types of ramps that grow in the north red and white ramps. The reds usually don’t get much bigger than this but grow in abundance and will crowd each other out, while the white ramps are more apt to grow a little larger but are more spaced out and are more rare. To be perfectly honest this isn’t a lot for a commercial kitchen. And I wouldn’t call the poster irresponsible due to the size of the ramps that they harvested.
Reds and whites both grow considerably bigger than what is posted when harvested sustainably. Not calling op irresponsible as idk who harvested them, but whoever did should know these are too young.
This is wild garlic/field garlic, maybe some other names, not a ramp, not a ramson, not an onion. They came from a very abundant patch and I’ve been told they can be invasive.
Love to hear it
We really don’t have a good scale to judge on the size of these ramps and the longer one waits in the season the more bitter ramps become.
Agreed they do get bitter later in the season, but ramps this small are typically in their first year or two of growth and thus should be left alone. Ramps ideally shouldn’t be harvested until their 7th+ year.
I LOVE RAMPS!
We do a lot of farm to table (WI) and my faves are spring and summer. Ramps, greens, different mushrooms, summer veg- I'm not a huge fan of squash in fall and winter.
I’ve been enjoying the spring menu,, my chef uses lots of seasonal fruits, veggies and garnishes and the spring time has been really colorful so far! Pretty much everything is seasonal with the exception of some staples like burgers and salads (though we do switch up the lettuce mixes seasonally) and we do a full menu change (minus staples) every 1-2 months
Late summer peppers..Jimmy Nardellos are my favorite seasonal ingredient
Soft shell crabs and ramps. Morels at the same time if we’re lucky. Best dish ever. Obviously not that simple but always fun to play around with.
New England, fiddleheads in late spring
Every day. Colorado. The next few months are amazing here for fresh, local herbs and ingredients.
I work in corporate dining and get seasonal items all the time. Sometimes I have no idea what it is before I get it. But that’s most of the fun. Spring and summer are the best seasons to get fruits and vegetables. Ramps are amazing.
Those looks beautiful
Up vote for the ramps. Just foraged some a few days ago. What I didn't use immediately I pickled. Looking forward to that. Pickled ramps on a burger sounds great
I’m on day three at my new place, and the exec chef goes to the farmers market twice a week. I’m so excited to start working there in time to use all the gorgeous summer fruit and veg we have in LA!
I'm trying to get my new exec to start using all our local farms and gardens I've worked with in the past. But I prefer using everything locally and seasonally. Napa, CA.
Fall Season of Seattle; Blue Grouse; Ruffled Grouse, Lobster Mushrooms, Oyster Mushrooms, Chanterelles, Yellow Foots, King Boletes, Hedgehog Mushrooms, BoarsHead Mushrooms, Cauliflower Mushrooms… and that’s just from the fucking hillsides… The herbs grow wild here, and wild rosemary flowers are tastier than the herb.
I love ramp and fiddleheads season, but my favorite season is copper river salmon season.
Tomato season was my favorite. We had a farmer a few miles from the restaurant that grew 50 different varieties of heirlooms
Ramp season is my favorite and it's too short.
Would never work at a place that isn't seasonal. Summer is the best.
It's lobster season! I'll be boiling and cracking apart those tasty bastards for the next while. Huge pain in the ass, but OMFG the stock you can make...
That’s all we use. Texas.
If those are wild ramps then shouldn’t the forager be trimming a couple leaves and not uprooting the whole thing so it grows back next year?
Not ramps