Guest contributor Karen Uy shares a recipe for a popular Filipino snack food best enjoyed while indulging in your favorite beer.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs. June beetles
• 1 cup vinegar (recommended: sugarcane vinegar)
• 3 heads of garlic
• 1 tsp. whole peppercorn
• ½ cup of soy sauce

Directions

1. Soak beetles in salt water overnight in refrigerator.
2. Drain. Remove and discard head, legs, and carapace, and rinse bodies well.
3. Sautee all ingredients together in a pan until boiling
4. Simmer 1 hour over low heat.
5. Remove from heat and let cool 1 hour before eating.
6. Optional: add an additional deep fry for maximum crunch and easy eating! Garnish with garlic.

June Beetles. Photo Credit: Karen Uy

Baking cookies this holiday season?  Try this holiday party staple with an Invasivore twist!

Ingredients

1.5 cups softened butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3.5 cups flour
0.25 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten (egg wash)
flaked coconut
Autumn Olive jam

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 350°F.

2.  Mix butter, sugar, vanilla, flour, and salt to form cookie dough.

3.  Roll dough into 1-inch balls, dip in egg wash, then roll in coconut.

4.  Place on ungreased cookie sheet and press thumb in center to make a small depression.  Add a small spoonful of Autumn Olive jam into each depression.

5.  Bake for 18-20 minutes until cookie turns a golden brown.

Traditional cookies with an invasivore twist!

This recipe was contributed by Rachel Hesselink Gentile, Notre Dame graduate student and autumn olive jam enthusiast.

A fist of autumn olives.

Those autumn olives we collected? Some  got to be delicious jam.  The rest, get crushed, fermented, and bottled.  It’s invasivore wine time.

My own vintage:

I made my first batches of wine while an undergraduate in Bellingham, WA.  One even featured invasive blackberries.  Several things intersected back in 2003 that made this a great idea: 1) A home-brew culture and store down the block, 2) A tree filled with apples and 3) a juicer I got for my birthday.  I made a gallon of apple wine, about five bottles, the last of which was sipped with my soon-to-be in laws the night before the wedding in 2010.  But this is an invasive species story…

Autumn Olive wine making 101

The entire process of making wine is ancient, and the details of which are well beyond what I myself have mastered.  I won’t presume to try to cover everything, many of you out there can probably do it better.  What I do know comes from Jim and George’s Home Winemaking: A Beginners Book.  I’ll just cover some basics steps, and let you experiment.

Instructions

1) Sterilize everything.  I use a 10% bleach solution, followed by lots of rinsing.

2) Get the juice, make it sweet.  There many ways to do this, depending on what type of wine you are making, ranging from stomping with your feet, presses, juicers, concentrates etc.

I crushed 4.5lbs of autumn olives in a nylon bag inside a food grade plastic bucket, which acted as the primary fermenter in the next step.  I added a 2.5 lbs of raw sugar dissolved in a gallon of boiling water (which was cooled before adding), and about 2 teaspoons of acid blend.  I sulfated the juice overnight to kill off any bad yeast and bacteria, and added wine yeast the next morning.

Autumn Olives mashed inside a nylon bag, inside a 2 gal food-grade bucket, which acts as the primary fermenter. I haven’t yet added the sugar-water mixture in this picture.

3) Primary Fermentation- bubble bubble.    I let the wine ferment covered in this bucket for 3 days, stirring each day.

4) Secondary Fermentation.  Secondary fermentation takes the wine-juice-mash-must mixture into a large carboys to continue fermentation in an anoxic environment.  Exposing wine to air turns it to vinegar, and to prevent this a gas trap is fixed to the carboy which lets CO2 out but keeps air from getting in (confused about fermentation? try this video).  As the wine ferments, for several months, all the solids in the mix settle out, clarifying the wine.  In the next step, we rack the wine to make, nice clear wine.

5) Racking, once, twice, thrice and beyond.  Racking is the process of removing the yummy stuff, from the dregs.  This usually takes several rounds.

Here’s a gallon of autumn olive wine, right before I rack for the first time. See how it’s clear on top, and crap on bottom? Siphon the good stuff off the top and keep fermentin’.

5) Bottling.  After 3-6 months, most of the sugar has been turned to alcohol.  Alternatively, there was so much sugar that the alcohol content got very high  high (~15-17%), that the yeast basically suffocated in their own delicious, delicious alcohol waste.  In either case, fermentation is complete, the wine is clear, and it’s time to bottle.  I haven’t gotten there yet.  Stay tuned.

6) Imbibing.  Pretty sure you got this covered.

Today’s recipe comes from guest contributor Rachel Hesselink.  As an undergraduate at Calvin College, Rachel studied the competitiveness of  invasive autumn olive in Michigan.  Now a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, Rachel studies the impacts of global change on salt marsh ecosystems.

Ingredients

• Approximately 3 cups fresh autumn olives (berries)
• 3 Tbsp pectin
• 2.5 cups sugar

Autumn olive jam on the stove, ready to boil!

Yum! Fresh autumn olive jam on bread.

Here, we provide a recipe highlighting purslane as the main ingredient, but purslane will also make a tasty addition to any favorite stir-fry recipe!

Ingredients

• 2 Tbs oil
• 3 Tbs soy sauce
• 2 cups purslane leaves and stems, coarsely chopped
• 1/4 cup white onion, chopped
• 1 jalapeño, chopped with seeds and membranes removed
• 1 clove garlic, minced

Directions

1. Simmer garlic and onions in oil until garlic browns and onions begin to turn clear
2. Add purslane, jalapeño, and soy sauce, and cook for about two more minutes, stirring frequently
3. Enjoy served over rice.

This chilled salad is sure to provide a nice treat after a hot day weeding in the garden!

Ingredients

• 3 cucumbers
• 2 cups purslane leaves
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp chopped mint leaves
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Peel cucumbers, then quarter and remove seeds.  Slice thin.
2. Combine cucumbers, purslane, garlic, and mint in large bowl.
3. Add a dusting of salt and a pinch of pepper.  Mix well and refrigerate at least 3o minutes.
4. In a small bowl, combine yogurt and olive oil.
5. Gently combine yogurt mixture and chilled cucumber salad.
6. Refrigerate until serving.  Enjoy!

Cucumber Purslane Salad garnished with mint leaves

This pickled treat is one condiment you will be happy to have invade your next hot dog or brat!

Ingredients

• 16 fl oz apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon celery salt
• 2 teaspoon table salt
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups purslane stems and leaves, chopped
• 1/2 cup red bell pepper, chopped
• 1/2 cup white onion, chopped
• 1/2 clove garlic, finely chopped

Ingredients chopped and ready to go!

Directions

1. In small saucepan, bring cider to a boil over medium heat
2. Add salts and sugar and continue to boil until dissolved (about 10 minutes)
3. Remove from heat and immediately stir in purslane, pepper, garlic, and onion
4. Cool to room temperature, transfer to container for storage in refrigerator, and refrigerate minimum 48 hours before serving

Hot dog topped with tasty purslane relish

Robb from Boise

Robb from Boise gave Japanese honeysuckle a try.  You’ll recall our line of awesome honeysuckle mixed drinks a while back.  He helped us realize we forget to mention something important about brewing it: don’t brew in hot water!  Here’s his story:

1.  Find nice selection of blossoms.
2.  Pick enough to fill a standard size coffee filter.

3.  Using a “Mister Coffee” ice tea brewer (cause thats what I have and was too lazy to do it the old fashioned way), fill brewing tray, water and ice as directed.

4.  Start brew sequence.

The resulting tea had an ominous color, but not too bad.  The brewed blossoms looked like soggy marsh grass and smelled like rotting alfalfa.  Unfortunately, the iced tea tasted like rotting alfalfa, too.  I tried to save the concoction by adding sweetener, which only made it taste like sweetened rotting alfalfa.

5.  Pour failed experiment down drain!

Thanks Robb!  We’ve always said that eating invasive species is a learning process, and sharing failures is as great as sharing success!  Next time, Sheina recommends soaking the blossoms in COLD WATER overnight, in the fridge, for the best results!

This tasty ceviche will make a great appetizer and invasive species conversation starter!

Ingredients

• 4 oz imitation crab meat, flaked
• 25 Chinese mysterysnails, fully cooked*
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 1/4 red onion, chopped
• 1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
• 2 serrano peppers, chopped
• 1 lime
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• salt and pepper

*See our instructions on cooking mysterysnails for details

Directions

1. Toss crab meat and snails in a bowl with oil and vinegar until well coated
2. Stir in tomato, onion, cilantro, and peppers
3. Squeeze in lime juice, add generous portion of salt and pepper, and stir thoroughly
4. Refrigerate at least one hour
5. Serve chilled.  We preferred tortilla chips as our ceviche medium, but experiment to find what works best for you.

Mysterysnail Ceviche served with tortilla chips

Though garlic mustard invasion is nothing to celebrate, this tasty garlic mustard stuffed pepper recipe is sure to be a hit at your next fiesta!

Ingredients

(serves 2)

• 2 large red bell peppers
• 1.5 cups dry rice (we used long-grain white, but substitute your favorite here)
• 1/4 yellow onion, diced
• 3/4 cup garlic mustard, coarsely chopped
• 1/4 lb ground chicken
• 1/2 cup shredded Mexican cheese
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 lime
• salt and pepper (to taste)
• salsa

Directions

1. Prepare rice as indicated on packaging
2. Cut off top of peppers and remove seeds and membranes to produce a pepper “cup”
3. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil, add pepper and continue boil 5 minutes
4. Remove peppers from water and allow to cool
5. Cook chicken in large skillet over medium heat until no pink color remains
6. Add olive oil, onion, garlic mustard, and salt and pepper to skillet and simmer over medium heat, stirring frequently
7. Remove skillet from heat and combine with rice
8. Use spoon to stuff rice mixture into each pepper, packing full
9. After peppers are packed full of rice mixture, squeeze juice of half of a lime into each pepper
10. Top each pepper with a generous helping of cheese
11. Bake 20 minutes at 350F
12.  Serve with salsa.  ¡Buen provecho!