>> "Modern Pioneering" is made possible by... >> Welcome to Total Wine.

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>> My personal fave is this new French rosé.

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>> And made possible by Michael and Susan McGwire, Zina Bash, and many other generous donors.

A full list is available at georgiapellegrini.com.

♪♪ >> Nature is all around us, even when it isn't obvious.

It is where we find creativity and the courage to forge our own path.

But to take care of nature, we have to know it.

And that is possible no matter what kind of city we live in.

♪♪ Today I'm going to find my ingredients for cooking in nature, in what may seem like an unlikely place, and also spend time with two women who are the very embodiment of what happens when you turn your creative inspiration into your life's work and craft.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Foraging for food is one of the ways I interact with nature.

Harvesting wild edibles is also good for biodiversity.

It's good for our palates, and it's good for native plants that might be vulnerable.

Foraging also leads to mindfulness.

It is a natural form of meditation that forces us to slow down, take notice, and see the possibility in the bigger world outside of ourselves.

For me, it is a treasure hunt that gives glimmers of joy in the search and in those moments of discovery.

You know, there's a lot of value where the rest of the world sees weeds, even in urban areas like right here in Brooklyn.

So while I'm here, I'm going to go on a little bit of a foraging expedition to see what we can find.

Let's go.

>> ♪ Through the narrows, near Lake Alsever ♪ ♪ Memories cover my eyes and adhere ♪ >> My favorite wild find is wild onions or garlic.

Both are noticeable in lawns where they often grow faster than the surrounding grass.

It is sometimes called onion grass or wild onion and is actually a wild leek, a perennial herb in the lily family.

It has a distinct garlic-like aroma and flavor with edible bulbs, leaves, and flowers.

A few prescient farmers market vendors are beginning to sell field garlic, but I promise it is likely within yards of where you're standing.

Wild onions and garlic can be the basis of endless recipes from stews, casseroles, soups, rubs, and marinades.

There is no cuisine it doesn't suit.

And I found a beautiful patch right by the water here in Prospect Park.

If you dig deep, you'll even find some bulbs that are like small little garlic, almost like a scallion, and they taste a lot like chives.

When I was a kid, I used to love to go outside and pick exactly this for my omelettes.

I'd dig them up with my bare hands, and then my dad and I would dice them up and toss them in omelettes with a little Parmesan, and it's the taste of my childhood.

I love folding the chopped bulbs and leaves into butter to then freeze in logs.

I'm going to make a recipe with these field onions.

My little purse full of scallions.

Wild onions, field garlic.

I call them a lot of things, including delicious.

Starting off, I'm going to make my compound butter.

I've got some butter that's at room temperature.

This is a really nice yellow butter.

You can tell the cows were eating lots of delicious grass.

And I've got my field onions here.

I have cleaned these ones.

You can see what they look like nice and cleaned.

You could also use scallions if you don't have field onions.

Or you could really just use chives or even a shallot.

I think for this amount of butter it's about eight ounces.

I'm going to use maybe 10 field onions.

Set the rest aside for infusing in a vinegar or just sautéing in an omelette with eggs.

I'm going to cut off those root tips.

Just the little hairy bits.

Set those aside and I'm going to finely slice the white parts.

And then the light green parts.

So here we go.

Just a really fine slice.

Okay.

I'm going to stop that there.

Set this aside, and then I'm going to dice them a little bit more.

Just get them really fine so that they incorporate into that butter really nicely.

Nice.

You could also use garlic.

You can also make a compound butter out of honey.

You can go the sweet route, the savory route.

It's a fun base to experiment with.

All right, dropping those in there.

Now I'm going to take a little bit of salt.

I have started with unsalted butter because I like to salt butter myself.

I'd say that's about a quarter teaspoon.

And now I'm just going to incorporate this in with a fork and a spoon and just mash it in for a few minutes until I feel like it's all in there and fully incorporated.

Okay, we've got our butter fully incorporated.

Now I'm getting a sheet of plastic.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to lay the butter in the center.

And then I'm going to start by giving it a mold slightly by rolling it in here, making it into a cylinder.

Okay, now I'm going to unroll it and I'm going to decorate the outside.

I've got some edible flowers here.

I have Violas.

You could also use pansies.

You could use rose petals.

I just love this beautiful purple color.

And I'm just going to cover the outer surface of this butter.

Another great thing to do is use herbs.

If you don't have large flowers like this, or full beautiful flowers like this, you could also just take petals and chop them up and have a sort of confetti on the outside.

So we're going to cover this whole surface.

And then we're going to wrap it up and put it in the refrigerator.

And when it's in the refrigerator, it's gonna harden and solidify, and then we will slice it up and serve it with some delicious crusty bread for dinner.

I have a roving petal.

I'm going to pop that on the edge here.

All right.

I'm going to tighten it up again.

Secure it with a nice tight wrap.

Twist it again and again.

And then, twist the edges.

Almost like a candy wrapper.

I'm going to pop this in the refrigerator, and it'll be ready in about an hour to slice up and serve with our meal.

♪♪ >> ♪ The flowers bloom in springtime ♪ ♪ The leaves fly in the fall ♪ >> There are guidebooks and experts to help you identify plants.

The more you practice, the more it will become natural.

If you want to use technology for one of its benefits, there are apps that can help you identify plants.

>> ♪ If you're not with me ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ >> In another category of weeds you can eat that are just about everywhere is dandelion.

They epitomize nose-to-tail eating -- root, crown, leaves, flowers, they're all edible.

Dandelions are packed with vitamins and contain healthy doses of minerals.

And they are good to eat almost as soon as the ground thaws, when they are at their mildest and most succulent.

As spring and summer progress, the leaves will become more strongly flavored.

In fact, late fall will often produce a fresh flush of mild leaves.

The mildest are harvested from plants that have not yet flowered and also from dandelions that grow in the shade.

The dandelion greens are everywhere, they're in urban areas like Brooklyn.

You can find them in the sidewalk cracks.

You can find them in fields in your backyard, I'm sure.

And they have tons of vitamins.

They have a bit of bitterness, but they make a fabulous salad from bacon and salt and acid to balance out that bitterness.

It's just a wonderful, fun way to make lunch out of what you have in your backyard.

>> ♪ I'm the salt in the sea ♪ ♪ Come down ♪ >> There's so much you can do with a dandelion beyond a salad.

A quick pickle, a sauté lightly in olive oil with lemon juice, capers, and anchovies, a drizzle of soy sauce and a pinch of sugar.

You can even make a dandelion tea by drying the leaves and crushing them.

Another one of my favorite ways to incorporate dandelions is in a bright green gazpacho that is emulsified with olive oil.

I'll show you how I make it.

While our butter is hardening in the refrigerator, I'm going to make our wild green gazpacho.

Now, to do that, I've got a bunch of different vegetables that I've cut up.

The star ingredient is the dandelion greens.

And I've got also some canned green tomatoes, which are a nice roasted flavor.

I'm gonna pop these guys in.

About a cup of dandelion greens.

They're just packed with vitamins.

I've also got one cucumber that I've diced up.

I've got a nice full cup of flat leaf parsley, onions.

I got a nice sweet white onion.

About half, or one small onion, and then one garlic clove.

Some nice basil.

Basil makes everything taste better.

I have about 10 large leaves.

You could do 10 to 15 depending on how big they are.

And I've got one stalk of celery.

And then, I'm going to add cider vinegar.

It gives it some brightness, which is important.

I'm gonna pop this on here.

I'm going to blend it for about a minute.

♪♪ Okay, that is nice and blended.

I'm going to add about a teaspoon of salt.

I'm going to add my ice to chill it down as fast as we can.

Okay, now this is my favorite trick.

I do this with all kinds of soups.

It's a tip I learned while cooking at a restaurant in the south of France, where they don't have a lot of dairy or cream or butter because it's very dry, lots of heat, very little rain.

So everything is olive oil-based, very Mediterranean.

This is a great way to add creaminess, a very slow drizzle of olive oil, and it will emulsify the texture of this soup.

♪♪ You can certainly keep this in the refrigerator.

It's full of health and vegetables, and it doesn't taste super healthy.

It just tastes creamy and delicious and unctuous.

But this is how you would serve it up.

You can put it right in a bowl.

I love to add some wild edibles.

These are some purple flowers that are edible, little Violas.

You could also add chives.

You could add chive blossoms, coarse sea salt, a little bit of olive oil, maybe a little bit of pepper.

You can use it as your canvas and be creative.

We're going to set this aside.

I'm going to get my bread ready for my butter.

And I'm going to make a delicious foraged cocktail to finish off the meal.

There's one more foraged item that I like to use in recipes, and you can find it almost anywhere.

There are many wonderful things that can be made from a pine tree.

Even the young tender pine cones can be turned into jelly.

I like to rely on the pine needle for its intense flavor.

All you need is a jar, needles, sugar, and water to whip up a quick batch of pine simple syrup to use in your mocktails and cocktails.

People have been using pine needles for tea for many years.

The fresher the pine tips, the better.

This is a white pine tree, and these little pines here are packed with vitamin C, and it's fresh and it grows all year long, so you always have access to it.

I believe that, in life, you have to actively seek your own moments of joy, and this is what does it for me.

Puts some in my satchel.

Finding those moments when you can invest your own effort to produce something worthwhile is what makes life joyful.

This is what living is for me.

I've always been drawn to people that are pursuing the thing that makes them come alive.

I want to know their stories and hear what drives them to pursue their passion.

Since I have a delicious cocktail recipe in mind for this pine, I'm going to collect one more thing while I'm here in Brooklyn.

But it's not from nature.

It's from two women who create beautiful blown glass objects with fire.

They are an example of what it is to pursue a passion that lights them up, a pursuit that gives them that glimmer.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> Glassblowing feels like a place where, even if you spent every second of the rest of your life, you're still not going to learn everything there is to know about it.

And I'm an infant in this industry -- only three years.

For me, it's the place where I focus the most.

Doing the same thing over and over used to be very laborious, and now it's something much more meditative.

The satisfaction of working with Alix and building what we have, it's not just a job, I don't think, anymore.

It's kind of what we do.

>> Something that I take solace in, it's something that is intriguing to me.

It's something that's complex and it's hard to wrap your head around sometimes.

There's, like, the scientific aspect of it that is fascinating.

And then, the practical application of that is even more exciting because you feel like you're a little scientist every time you do it.

It's just a wonderful thing that I'm very grateful that we get to do.

♪♪ >> Alix and Molly met in college and then reconnected during the pandemic when they both realized that they lived in Sunnyside, Queens.

They decided to create together and soon formed Sunside & Co., a play on the name of their neighborhood, and also a reminder to look on the brighter side at a time when life was particularly hard.

♪♪ >> Making things with your hands just feels better than buying it.

I feel like I take better care of stuff.

I don't know if that's good or bad, but I care about it more because I know how difficult it is to make.

>> Glassmaking is thousands and thousands of years old.

It's something that's been around in pretty much every culture that everyone's making something in glass and in any kind of industry.

But being able to keep those traditions alive is so important because, as soon as it's gone and we don't have that information anymore, I think that's a very important reason to keep the handmade alive.

♪♪ My favorite stuff to make is the stemware.

I'm kind of a glass nerd, so I just -- I really enjoy putting the pieces together and trying to keep it as, like, uniform as possible.

But the things that are -- the aspects of that are free blown are exciting to me because it's like a test of skill, right?

Like, are you able to make it the same straightness, the same length, the same weight, all of that stuff every single time.

And also, it's fun to squish the hot glass.

It's really fun.

>> [ Laughs ] ♪♪ ♪♪ >> My involvement as the assistant, all those little pieces that she likes to put together, I'm bringing her from the furnace.

So it's been a good time for me to practice bringing her the exact same amount and, you know, really focusing on the temperature when I bring it to her, how fast or how many paces it takes for me to get, like all of it is dialed in now.

So those I really like to make because of that involvement.

>> The first time I saw glassblowing, I was 7 or 8.

My dad and my uncle were really into glassblowing, so he would, like, drag us and my cousins to these hot shops to go watch demonstrations.

So we would go, and I always thought it was like the coolest thing, but it never occurred to me that that was something that I could do because I only saw men doing it.

Yeah.

So just having more women doing it, I think, is going to bring more women into it.

My dad has always worked with his hands.

My mom has also always worked with her hands, so building stuff was always part of growing up.

So it was never weird that I wanted to make stuff.

>> Both of my parents, like, creative makers, so making something that you need was always in the realm of how you got stuff.

But I had seen glass being blown for the first time at school.

It had always been something I knew happened, but there's not a whole lot of accessibility or I didn't know much about it.

But once you start, it's a very difficult thing to walk away from.

Nice.

Perfect.

>> My first one.

>> Great!

>> [ Laughs ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> I feel like when I tell people I blow glass, a lot of times I get like, "I've always wanted to try," or, "I want to learn."

I tell everyone, if you have the means or you can somehow find your way into a shop, do it.

Even if you never do it again, it's something I think everyone should try at least once.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> But it's hard.

[ Laughter ] >> Each piece comes with their signature glass seal, a reminder that it was made by hand by people.

I'm nervous.

>> Squish it.

>> Right now.

>> Yep.

Yeah!

Nice.

>> Is it okay?

>> Yeah.

>> Look at this.

This is what we just made.

That beautiful Sunside stamp.

♪♪ They make a stunning array of glassware, from vases and cups to cocktail glasses.

With my coupe glasses in hand and a few pine needles, I've got what I need to make one final recipe.

♪♪ Now I'm going to make a cocktail with these beautiful glasses that Alix and Molly created in their studio.

I have made some simple syrup out of pine that I foraged.

You could use spruce tips.

Young spruce tips are especially good.

This pine I'm going to remove.

Simple syrup is one part sugar, two parts water.

You could also do a one-to-one ratio.

A 24-hour infusion is good.

You could do less.

You could do five hours.

But if you want it to have a real strong flavor, I like to do 24 hours.

Got some ice in my shaker.

Now I'm going to do 1 1/2 ounces of simple syrup.

I'll put that right in here.

And I've got some bourbon here.

I'm going to do four ounces of bourbon, and this is to make two cocktails.

♪♪ Now...

I've got some bitters to add to this, as well, that I'm going to do at the very end.

I cap this guy.

I've got some ice in here already.

Let me give it a really good shake.

Okay, I'm going to pour in my mixture here.

Distribute it evenly.

It's a beautiful golden color.

Kind of frothy from all that shaking.

Now I'm going to add five dashes of bitters to each drink.

This is an herbal bitters.

You could really play around.

You could do a fruity grapefruit bitters.

Now, to finish it off, I'm going to do something fun.

I made some flower-studded ice cubes.

I'm going to use a square one in this one, and this just adds to that foraged element.

Makes it feel festive and fun.

And that's it -- super simple.

Delicious cocktail.

Ooh, that's really good.

Wonderful little comforting pine flavor.

I'm going to go grab our butter and we'll see how that turned out.

This butter is perfect.

It's so fun and festive and stunning.

I'm going to cut it into some slices.

I'd say maybe quarter inch slices.

You want to leave it partially intact because you want your guests to see how beautiful it is.

And then, of course, you need some good crusty bread.

Okay.

Our all-important soup.

I love the color of this soup.

It's just bright and vibrant.

It looks healthy.

It tastes delicious.

Mm.

Oh, it's perfect.

And you can store it in your refrigerator and just keep eating it.

And of course, I've got to have a little bit of this butter.

Those field onions infuse into that butter over time and give it a wonderful punch.

♪♪ Mm.

This is so fun.

Foraged with my own two hands.

And you can do it, too.

Cheers.

I hope you all try this at home.

♪♪ The wild is everywhere, even in the most unexpected places.

Experiencing nature reveals the fierce beauty and inspiration in the world.

Finding those glimmers of joy, that thing that makes you come alive, doesn't have to be a big, wild dream.

It can be a small moment.

If we seek it out, nature's reward is just outside our door.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> To learn more about the topics featured on this episode, log on to georgiapellegrini.com, or follow along on Georgia's Facebook and Instagram pages for weekly "Modern Pioneering" adventures, tips, and recipes.

"Modern Pioneering" is made possible by... >> Welcome to Total Wine.

Doing okay?

>> My buddy says rosé all day.

>> My personal fave is this new French rosé.

>> Find wine, beer, and spirits from around the world at Total Wine & More.

♪♪ >> At Muir Glen, we believe that organic farming benefits consumers, farmers, and ecosystems.

>> And made possible by Michael and Susan McGwire, Zina Bash, and many other generous donors.

A full list is available at georgiapellegrini.com.

♪♪