FOOD & DRINK
Impact of foraging
Naturally, foraging across Jordan Estate has influenced Knoll’s cooking in a variety of exciting ways.
Chef says he’s always thinking about how he can incorporate items from around the estate, always trying to make his dishes “more Jordan.” Second, dishes always have an exotic and unfamiliar element—a flavor or consistency that’s familiar to diners, but just foreign enough that it keeps them guessing.
Foraging also has influenced Knoll’s wife, Nitsa, director of hospitality and events at Jordan, who often incorporates flowers, branches, leaves, and other wild items from the property into dinner table centerpieces and floral arrangements for Jordan culinary events (see “Foraged Floral” on page 60).
The couple often forages together, and they bring their 8-year-old son, meaning foraging time also is family time for the Knolls.
“It’s a great opportunity for the three of us to be outside, working together, quietly doing our thing,” says Knoll, who notes that he often gives his son assignments for collecting certain materials when they’re out in the woods. “Some of my favorite days of the year are days we spend foraging as a family.”
Looking forward, Chef Knoll says his goals are to incorporate even more foraged ingredients into his cooking, and to continue building signature recipes around the items he finds. The creation of the Jordan Chef’s Reserve Caviar by Tsar Nicoulai, made with homemade sea salt and dried kombu Knoll harvested off the Sonoma Coast, is one of his most exciting, ongoing foraging projects. And because so much of what’s available on Jordan Estate lends itself to ice creams and granitas, Knoll says he has a personal mission to make more of those desserts, and to serve them with a side of education, so guests know that what they are eating has come right from the land around them.
He also wants to use more food science with the ingredients he forages, and incorporate different methods of preserving and concentrating the materials without losing the color or flavor along the way.
“Harvesting these items from the land around us is only really one part of the process,” he says. “That’s what makes foraging fun—once you gather the ingredients, there’s still quite a challenge to resolve.”
Matt Villano is a writer and editor based in Healdsburg. Learn more about him at
whalehead.com.
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Clockwise from right: miner’s lettuce; fiddlehead ferns; pine needles and buds; crimson clover; wisteria blossoms; sea beans: black trumpet mushrooms; red clover, wild onion.
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