Timing is Everything

Sharp knives, clean hands, and an organized kitchen – all of these things tell us that a chef is educated and prepared. But if those attributes were all it took, we’d all have James

Beard Awards. A chef’s talent and longevity is derived from his or her intuition. When something doesn’t go according to plan, a successful chef must be able to seamlessly pivot from one idea to the next – without the diner being aware of there ever having been a hiccup. Without the faculty to think on your feet, you’re dead in the water.

Last month, CT Food and Farm Magazine’s Gena Golas and Jennifer Marcuson linked up with Chef Jesse Powers on a mission to forage local mushrooms and use them in a dish back at Millwright’s. What happened next demonstrates perfectly the kind of dexterity a career chef (and forager) should possess. Sometimes, you get skunked. What you do in that moment speaks louder than what you would have done.

Without his chef whites on, hiking through the woods in a tee shirt, shorts, and boat shoes, Jesse Powers looks more like an average guy on a walk than the chef de cuisine of the James Beard Award-nominated Millwright’s Restaurant and Tavern in Simsbury – until he starts talking about his food; then, there is no doubting he’s a knowledgeable and passionate epicurean and forager.

“I got into foraging because I started to think about, ‘What do we serve? Why do we serve it? Where can I find it around here?"

It is day two of our attempt at foraging, and Powers is leading the way slowly up the trail at Talcott Mountain in Simsbury, a State park just up the road from Millwright’s. We set out for mushrooms, berries, or whatever else we might find on, or just off, the established path. When restaurants boast locally-sourced ingredients, as does Millwright’s, few are willing to go just this local. Fewer still are the chefs who are expert enough to forage for themselves.

Powers began searching years ago, while hiking with his now six-year-old daughter Lucy. She, in a carrier on his back, both of them exploring their favorite local hiking trails. For Powers, foraging is not about unearthing every usable plant from the depths of the woods and figuring out how to use it in a dish, but rather, setting out on the trail with a clear idea of what he wants to bring back to the kitchen.

“Do we use wild ingredients because they’re great, or because they’re wild?”

For Powers, wild is great, but not at the expense of great taste. Quality is paramount, down to every last factor. He chooses to focus his foraging knowledge on the components with which he enjoys working, learning to identify them without question, so he is able to use what he finds both in the restaurant and at home.

“I got into foraging because I started to think about, ‘What do we serve? Why do we serve it? Where can I find it around here?”

Ironically, this is not how we set out on our first day . Powers’ triedand-true foraging locales are nearer to where he lives; but, in an effort to stay closer to the restaurant, we instead adventure out to the unknown, untested trails of Stratton Brook State Park in Simsbury.

Just as magicians never share their secrets, I don’t get the sense that Powers would be forthcoming with his favorite sites. As we walk, he tells the story of how, after much peer pressure, he took his friends to his secret chanterelle patch. He smiles slyly as he remembers how he led them through the woods, far off any trail, on a convoluted route that no one in the group could ever replicate. Eventually, they came upon the patch; unbeknownst to Powers’ friends, it was on the other side of the trees from where they had parked their cars.

With dark clouds already rolling in and the threat of rain imminent, we know our time on the trails is limited. We quickly

choose a marked path and start out. It doesn’t take long to realize that we might not find what we hoped to in this location – we are surrounded by pines, and mushrooms grow better near oak trees. We continue on, however, because we are on a cleared path, which means potential damage to the surrounding area – ideal conditions for mushrooms (that thrive in the weak and injured spots of other plants). Eventually, the trail loops back around to our starting point and we opt to leave the pines for another location that might prove to be better. On the way back to the car, Powers points out our first foraging find – wild sorrel, a plant resembling clover, growing at the edge of the parking lot. Edible, but

With plants and fungi falling into such large genera, getting it right - especially when serving the public - is crucial.

not ideal, given the fact that it is growing out of the shallow gravel that borders the pavement. Staying true to his foraging philosophy, Powers passes on gathering the sorrel for use in his dish back at the restaurant.

While strategizing our next location from inside the car, the skies open up with the storm we knew was coming. Back at Millwright’s, we watch the lightening flicker over the river from the rear windows of the restaurant. Our foraging adventure will have to wait until the next morning.

The next day, we regroup at Millwright’s. After gathering what we need from the restaurant, we head for Talcott Mountain State Park, where we hope for better luck.

“It smells like a wet forest,” said Powers. “That’s a good sign.”

Mushrooms like wet conditions, Powers explains – which really is a good sign, given the intense storm we got the day before. Hopeful, we start up the steep incline that begins the trek towards Heublein Tower at the summit of the mountain. As we climb, potential finds start catching Powers’ eye, drawing him off the path, and he picks what he finds so we can examine them – Boletus mushrooms, possible autumn olives, oyster

mushrooms. We uncover unidentifiable berries; examine what looks like mint; and marvel over a yellow mushroom which, when cut in half, bruises blue right before our eyes. Our basket remains empty; each of these finds deemed inedible or questionable for one reason or another.

Powers is the first person to admit he is not a mycologist, but it is clear he is an informed and careful forager. With plants and fungi falling into such large genera, getting it right – especially when serving the public – is crucial. The similarities between an edible specimen and an inedible one can be subtle, so knowing exactly what qualities to look for is imperative. Powers educates us on the various traits of the

Foraging is not a try-this-at-home activity, unless you have been taught by a professional and have allowed yourself a lot of careful practice.

mushrooms we found – real gills versus false gills; how the color white is usually a quality to stay away from; how, for certain varieties, single-growing mushrooms are safer than similar-looking specimens growing in clusters.

Powers has spent a tremendous amount of time educating himself through books, videos, and hiking with other chefs, in order to learn how to safely forage; yes, he reminds me that foraging is not a try-this-at-home activity, unless you have been taught by a professional and have allowed yourself a lot of careful practice. Even Lucy knows this lesson well; these days, she hikes beside him, no longer in a carrier on his back. She knows to ask Dad first before touching anything: advice we all should follow before attempting to forage.

I imagine that, when we find what we were looking for, it will be a scene straight out of a movie. We’ll round a bend in the trail and there will be “The Spot,” just off the path – a lone, fallen tree in a grassy clearing, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight breaking through the cover of the trees, the fungi growing from the damaged bark glittering in the sunlight.

When we do finally find edible oyster mushrooms toward the end of our hike, it gives me a better feeling than the theatrical one I had envisioned: sweet satisfaction. At last, something we can bring back to the kitchen! And yet, upon closer inspection, we discover they are soaking wet from the rain, and speckled with bugs. Again, unusable. With our hiking time nearing an end, we turn around to head back down the trail, checking to see if we missed anything the first time around.

“Timing is everything,” Powers said wisely. Perhaps if we had found the oyster mushrooms a day earlier before the rain, they would have made it to the kitchen.

We leave the forest with empty baskets. Do we reschedule for another time? No way – we improvise – just as chefs do day in and day out. Back at the Millwright’s kitchen, Powers gathers ingredients for his dish out of the walk-in, including chanterelles sourced from his usual, local purveyor. Powers moves agilely around the kitchen, giving equal attention to this dish as to the chefs who begin to arrive to prep for dinner service. Bantering lightheartedly with his staff, he shucks and juices late summer corn, roasts pungent leeks and tender chicken, and cooks a ragout of the chanterelles, corn kernels, chopped leeks, diced shallots and herbaceous lovage cream. In a matter of minutes, the dish comes together, complete with a drizzle of chicken jus and the most enchanting, crispy chicken skin.

As Powers’ dish is being photographed for this story, I am blindsided with the “Holy Grail” moment I expected in the woods. The dish, poised on a dining room table, is floodlit by a beam shining off the river just outside the window. The chanterelles are the star of the dish; they aren’t straight out of Talcott Mountain State Park as we had hoped, but out of a kitchen whose chef de cuisine is well-versed in flavors and in foraging.

Just as it is in the forest, timing is everything in a professional kitchen – it’s putting product to plate à la minute, and using seasonal ingredients in a likewise menu. For Jesse Powers, cooking is the thrill of the hunt, whether that hunt takes place in the woods or in the walk-in. It’s working with what you find, or what you are given. We may not have found what we were looking for on our foraging adventure in the woods, but we found it on an artful plate from Powers’ kitchen.

by Gena Golas

Jennifer Marcuson photos