We were looking for Brassica rapa, which you have almost certainly eaten: Over centuries, farmers and plant breeders have selected varieties that eventually became familiar vegetables, including turnips, bok choy and the napa cabbage used to make kimchi.
Acorn farms professional#
One day early this spring, a group of five - McAlvay (who’d driven in from New York for the occasion), professional foragers Tama Matsuoka Wong and Derek Carty, a Post photographer and me - gathered at the field, where Wong had a long-standing agreement allowing her to forage. One of these places was a small cornfield in the exurbs of Philadelphia. Every year, oak trees shower us with a nutritious, tasty and completely free feast - a feast that now, with the exception of a few groups of people such as Koreans and Native Americans of Northern California, we almost entirely spurn. For much of human history, however, acorns have been a major food source for people at least one book has argued that oaks gave rise to modern civilization. I realize this whole exercise may come off as strange. “I could sell as much acorn flour as I can make for $25 a pound to chefs and curious bakers,” he told me. Sometime later, I met Smith at his home, where, over several hours, he painstakingly shelled the nuts, ground them, poured water over them again and again to leach out bitter chemicals called tannins, and eventually produced an actual food: acorn flour. The haul was auspicious - but acorns don’t give up their goods easily. Over a couple of mostly pleasant hours, Smith, one of his colleagues and I partially filled three plastic bins with meaty nuts of red oaks that lined the nondescript commercial strip.