Introducing our first pocket guide
And a one-of-a-kind ice cream recipe
Open a bottle of your favorite bourbon. Pour a glass. You might catch a whiff of sweet vanilla and caramel. Those are the aromas of oak, imparted by years spent in a charred barrel. Yet when you pull a pecan pie out of the oven and the same smells waft across the kitchen, your first thought probably isn’t of an oak tree towering over the woods.
Centuries of trade have biased us toward spices from faraway places. You’re far more likely to say, “That smells like vanilla!” than “That smells like oak!” But powerful flavors and aromas have roots all around us. Just as we humans share a family of traits, aromatic herbs and spices share common chemical compounds. You might be surprised by the tropical flavors and aromas hiding in our hardwood forests. What is vanilla but a seed? What is cinnamon but a bark?
If I hadn’t come across Scratch Brewing at a beer festival in North Carolina in 2016, I wouldn’t be publishing Midwesterner. I don’t know if I would have ended up moving home to Ohio. That day, their oak leaf gruit brought back happy memories I’d forgotten, of crunching through fallen leaves on my way home from school. My curiosity grew as I sipped my way through their woods and gardens, tasting hickory, pawpaw, sweet clover, and much more. Scratch’s artful, hyperlocal creations aren’t just unique. They’re uniquely Midwestern.
So I’m excited to announce that I’ve been working with Scratch co-founder Marika Josephson on Midwesterner’s first print publication, a field guide that we’re calling The Aromatic Wild Herbs and Spices of the Midwest.
It’s a pocket-sized introduction to dozens of heartland wild edibles, from bee balm to spicebush to wood sorrel, and their uses. Did you know that you can make a year-round substitute for maple syrup by boiling maple bark? Or that you can brew a homegrown “chai” from ginger, turmeric, spicebush, and sweet clover? Have you ever considered making your own filé powder from the sassafras leaves in your backyard... or using it as a pizza topping? This thoughtful field guide draws on generations of folk knowledge and the decade of active experimentation that’s produced some of the country’s most coveted beers.
Marika and I have been working on this guide for more than a year. I can testify firsthand that the final product will change how you see the world around you. I haven’t looked at sycamore bark, wild blackberries, or the brushy plants on the edge of my garden the same way since I started recipe testing last summer. Marika’s quick, easy recipes for soups, pickles, syrups, liqueurs, and more are helpful jumping-off points—inspiration for serious and casual foragers alike.
Starting today, we’re taking preorders for Aromatic Wild Herbs and Spices. We’re starting with a limited number of copies, because Marika and her business partner Rachel Linn are printing and binding each one under the auspices of yet another distinctively Midwestern venture, their Small Letters Press. So if this guide sounds interesting to you, or like an ideal gift for the cooks, hikers, foragers, nature lovers, and curious people in your life, then click here to place your order. We’ll be shipping at the end of September.
Marika Josephson’s “Vanilla” Custard Ice Cream
From The Aromatic Wild Herbs and Spices of the Midwest
Makes about 1 quart
I consider this to be one of the most powerful examples of what we can make with plants found right here. When you serve this over shortcake and dress it with strawberries, you’d never know that it wasn’t vanilla ice cream. On its own, though, you can savor the subtle background notes—the herbal sweet clover and marshmallow-y hickory bark—and appreciate our forests and fields just a little bit more.
Ingredients
1/2 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup hickory bark simple syrup
6 egg yolks
2 tbsp. dried yellow sweet clover
1/3 cup sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
Preparation
In a small pot, bring milk, cream, and syrup to a gentle simmer. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk egg yolks.
Whisking constantly, pour a third of the heated cream mixture into the yolks, then whisk the yolk mixture back into the cream in the pot. Add sweet clover, sugar, and salt. Heat for 30 seconds to about 170 degrees, or until the custard coats the back of a spoon. Remove pot from heat, cover, and allow the sweet clover to steep for 30 minutes.
Strain through a fine mesh strainer. Cover tightly and chill in a refrigerator for at least 6 hours or overnight. Churn in an ice cream maker, following the manufacturer’s instructions.