- So Eleana's down there foraging a few more ingredients for the miso soup, and I was excited to see what miso we were going to use.

Pulled this out.

Oh, my gosh, kombu garlic miso.

Love this.

Morel mushroom miso.

Oh, my gosh.

(upbeat music) - (laughs) Yeah, you're going through my stash?

- Yeah.

(upbeat music continues) Today on "Geronimo Eats the Bay," we are out here in beautiful Pacifica, just south of San Francisco.

I'm here today with my friend Eleana Hsu of Shared Cultures, her fermentation business.

And we're going to go foraging out here today and make a miso soup with the Shared Cultures miso, with the foraged ingredients that we found.

- I'm excited.

Let's get going.

- Let's go.

(upbeat music) Wait.

(laughs) (upbeat music continues) - So it's summertime right now.

For me, the best time to forage is really the spring and the fall.

Though in the summertime, there's still things out, you just have to be a little bit more mindful of what's out here.

- Yeah, I have a hard time seeing stuff in the summer.

- Yeah, let's see.

So this is chickweed all here.

You can tell by the white little flowers.

- It looks like basil.

- Yeah.

Chickweed is usually pretty abundant.

The whole plant is edible and it kind of tastes like spinach.

- [Geronimo] So we just found some dandelion over here.

- My favorite thing to do with dandelion is if you pull up the root on the bottom- - Oh, wow.

- And you dehydrate it, it kind of tastes like coffee.

So dandelion tea is something a lot of people used as a coffee substitute, especially during wartime.

- [Geronimo] Oh look, we got some fennel.

- That's everywhere this time of year.

I often find it kind of like right by the sidewalks.

- Yeah.

- That's where I mostly find it.

The entire thing is pretty much edible.

The flowers are great and the leaves are great garnishes.

I got into foraging maybe eight or 10 years ago when I was working my desk job.

I was unhappy at work and I remember running in the woods and finding a patch of yellow chanterelle mushrooms.

They made me so happy.

I didn't know what they were.

After doing some research and realizing that they were edible, I was hooked.

So that's actually how I started my business was because I actually needed a solution to all the things that I was finding in the woods.

(upbeat music continues) Getting our steps in today.

- [Geronimo] Oh, yeah.

(Eleana humming) - [Eleana] This is actually the plantain plant right here.

- Oh, that thing?

- So these are all seed pods.

And when it gets a little bit more drier in the summer, they actually taste like nuts.

You can find even plantain even in the city sidewalks.

They're quite abundant- - Oh, wow.

- And everywhere.

When you're foraging too, I always say be careful of what you're picking.

Sometimes you're foraging for something, but there could be poisonous things that grow around or next to it.

- Yes.

- And actually, this is a great example because there's poison hemlock right behind Geronimo here.

- It's that white one, right?

- Yeah.

Poison hemlock, if you eat it, it paralyzes all your muscles.

About 6 grams will kill you.

Poison hemlock, you can tell because there's these purple splotchy things on the stem here.

It kind of looks like a port wine stain.

It has a hollow stem.

So we can take this with us and then we can use this to compare it to maybe some more useful plants, like I see some yarrow back here that we can talk about.

- Oh nice, yeah.

- Sometimes people could maybe get it confused a little bit because it's white flowers.

The yarrow kind of has these like fern-like petals here.

So yarrow is actually one of my favorite, favorite medicinal plants.

Back in the day, they used this as like a poultice.

Yarrow's also really great as a tea.

Let's talk about the wild carrot real quick.

So this is the yarrow, which looks very different, but the poison hemlock is the thing that looks the most similar.

Wild carrot, you'll notice it kind of has this like skirt.

Another thing to note is it has hair, whereas poison hemlock doesn't really have the skirt.

I've pulled this root up and you'll see that there's kind of like a baby, a baby carrot basically on the bottom.

You can smell it.

It smells like carrots.

That is edible.

You can roast them.

- Can I eat this?

- Yeah, you can eat it.

- It smells so good.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll try it with you on the other side here.

- Carrot, wow.

- It tastes like a carrot.

Everything in this family, if you're not confident, don't forage because again, see how they could be very similar?

Like if I were to hide this in here- - Yeah.

- Could you tell?

I think that education is the most important part of all of this, and I think a lot of it too is like the journey of learning.

It takes a few times to actually positively ID something.

- Yeah.

- And sometimes, you know, going out to forage doesn't mean that you're going to actually go pick things and bring them home to eat.

Maybe you pick it to go home and you're just getting yourself acquainted with the plant.

- Yeah.

- And it maybe takes five or 10 times until you feel comfortable.

- Hard to talk and hike, too.

(laughs) I was like, "Eleana, you're killing it!"

(Eleana laughing) So we just wrapped up foraging and we're going to make some miso soup with Shared Cultures miso with the foraged ingredients that we found.

- Two cups?

- Yeah, two cups feels good.

(upbeat music continues) When I forage, it really connects me to time and place.

So you know the season just by different plants and mushrooms comes up throughout the year.

Paying attention to those little cues I think makes foraging special.

So we have here this chickweed that we can put in there.

We have some of these like baby fennel pods.

And then we had some cleavers.

Oh, and then maybe we can put some of these plantain seeds for that extra fiber.

Starting to become very herbaceous.

- It looks fancy.

- Then we'll add some miso.

This one has kombu in it.

Very sweet.

- Hmm.

- We'll just put like one tablespoon.

- Yeah.

- So this is the morel one that we'll mix in.

And it's nice and chilly today, even though it's summer.

Typical Bay Area.

(laughs) - [Geronimo] I love it.

I love the marine layer.

- Serve it up.

(upbeat music continues) - We have our fiber in here.

All these wild greens.

Cheers.

(laughs) - Cheers.

Thank you, Eleana.

- Mm.

- I about to eat the chickweed.

- Chickweed.

- That looks like basil spinach.

- Honestly, it tastes like spinach.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I can definitely taste the kombu.

- I think you got the chunks.

I wish I got the chunks.

- [Eleana] Oh, you get... I went last so I had more of the bit.

- Concentrated.

- [Eleana] I got more of the concentrated parts.

- Oh, there we go, yep.

- So we're primarily a miso and soy sauce fermentation company.

We ferment with the seasons, and it's always changing.

- Yeah.

- And we source all the ingredients locally.

All the products hopefully reflect respect and love for the land.

I think that we should all be empowered to learn how to forage sustainably.

We shouldn't be gatekeeping this stuff.

- Yeah, 100%.

I wanted to give you your flowers- - Oh.

(laughs) - Because I feel like as a chef, Shared Cultures has been an inspiration for a lot of us in respecting the bounty of the Bay Area and everything that grows around us, and really is a representation of California cuisine.

Can you tell me where people can find you online and where they can learn more about Shared Cultures?

- Yeah, yeah.

So you can find us online at www.shared-cultures.com.

Our Instagram is @sharedcultures.

That's it.

- Perfect.

Thank you so much for watching "Geronimo Eats the Bay."

I'm Geronimo Ramos from NorCal Public Media, and I'll see you in the next one.

(upbeat music continues) Hi everyone, Geronimo here.

This show is supported by public media viewers like you.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like and subscribe and consider donating to NorCal Public Media so we can keep making quality content and I can continue eating the bay.

Visit norcalpublicmedia.org/donate, and I'll see you out there.

(upbeat music continues)