Foraging with Dyllan Dale

Growing up in the country, I noticed wild food growing everywhere—blackberries on the bushes behind my house, mushrooms popping up every summer and greens covering the ground. But I never thought about grabbing them to cook up a nutrient-packed, cost- and preservative-free dish. Dyllan Dale has made a career out of doing just that.

Dale owns Wild Foods by Dyllan, a company that offers pop-up dinners, foraging walks, catering, private dinners and general foraging advice on social media. “I’ve always been fascinated by nature,” Dale says. “When I was about 12, I would sit at home and watch Good Eats with Alton Brown. That’s when I decided I wanted to be a chef. Eventually, I put the two together—you can eat what’s out in nature. That’s how I got into foraging.”

On a cloudy but rather warm day in February, Dale took 417 photographer Katy St. Clair, 417 intern Tori Swem and me out in the woods near Millsap Farms to forage ingredients for lunch. He already had an idea of what he wanted to make: striped acorn ravioli with a spicebush pumpkin cream sauce, persimmon pickled mustard seed and nettle pesto, topped with Millsap Farm goat cheese. He had some ingredients prepped in his kitchen, but we were on the hunt for nettle and acorns. The nettle was easy for Dale to spot; it grows right next to henbit, which is also edible so it’s not a big deal if they get confused for each other. “Once you know the identifying characteristics of common edible plants, it is not easy to get plants confused,” he says.

Dale pointed out some invasive plants along the way—like garlic mustard—that are edible and that you want to pick for the safety of other plants. “That’s a part of foraging that’s cool,” he says. “You’re actually helping the native plants and the native ecosystem because you’re picking edible, invasive plants that destroy our ecosystem.”

Some plants grow right here in the Ozarks that I never knew about until Dale called attention to them—like sumac and bamboo. Sumac, a popular spice in Middle Eastern cuisine, is used in many curry dishes, “and it literally grows everywhere,” Dale says. This is an example of a spice that is often bought for cooking but grows freely in many backyards.

Let’s Get Cooking

After our foraging adventure, we went to Victory Mission + Ministry, which houses the kitchen where Dale works. Six years ago, Victory Mission helped Dale through recovery. “I have managed the kitchen for Victory Mission ever since,” he says.

To make the pasta dough, Dale combined equal parts acorn flour and 00 flour. He’s still working on the measurements for the perfect consistency. He creates all the recipes himself, as there is not much information out there on cooking with foraged foods. “I’m always experimenting,” he says.

Dale rolled out the pasta dough and added dollops of ravioli filling made with ground venison, goat cheese and caramelized onions. He carefully cut the ravioli and plopped them into boiling water. While those cooked, he added nettle stems to a mortar and combined them with foraged sorrel juice—which has a lemony flavor—pine nuts and salt, then ground them with the pestle to make the pesto. When plating, he topped the ravioli with the pumpkin mixture, pesto, pickled mustard seed, wild onion dust and goat cheese. We finally got to taste the creation we watched come together, from the wild to the kitchen table, and it was worth the wait. The flavors worked perfectly together.

We also tried some items Dale had prepped already, including a fermented, pickled and then candied gooseberry, candied wood ear mushroom, pickled purslane, mulberry balsamic and pickled mushroom medley. While they all looked—and sounded—intimidating, everything was delicious.

Dale has done pop-up dinners at Finley Farms, St. James Winery, the Walnut Street Inn and more, and he’s officially taking his work full-time starting in August. “I love the Ozarks,” he says. “I was born and raised in the Ozarks, and even though I have traveled a lot, I will always call the Ozarks my home.”