Self-sufficient Culinary Exploration with the Forager Chef

Leading culinary authority Alan Bergo, the Forager Chef, will be the keynote speaker for Happy Dancing Turtle’s 20th annual Back to Basics on February 7, 2026. The James Beard Award winner is a Midwestern native and expert on culinary uses of mushrooms and plants. His 2021 book, “Forager Chef: Flora” is a study of rare and forgotten plants, herbs, vegetables, and culinary techniques. The keynote, titled “The Grocery Store Outside,” will focus on how to feed more people with less inputs. Bergo enthusiastically looks at plants that are literally at our fingertips and under our feet for their use in our everyday food.

Alan Bergo and his book, The Forager Chef's Book of Flora. Photos provided by Alan Bergo.

Talking with Bergo, one comes to have a whole new perspective on seasonality. “With wild food, it's much more complex,” Bergo explained. “I also like how plants will change. When the lamb quarters are really young, I will use just like the whole sprig of the plant. As they get older, I might use individual leaves.”

War of the Worlds – Plant Edition

One of Bergo’s Instagram reels is 80 edible plants that grow in his backyard. For those who are startled by the idea of eating Creeping Charlie, Bergo explains: ”Creeping Charlie's an herb. I cooked it for like 250 people at a slow food event. You will use it as an herb. It has a flavor that is not incredible by itself, but mixed with other things that have kind of a thyme aroma, it can work. So I mix it with other herbs in wild rice [find details in Bergo’s book.]. 

Pineapple weed. Photo from https://foragerchef.com/

Historically, Bergo said, Creeping Charlie was used in place of hops to brew beer. “Nettles as well–nettle beer is still a thing in Scandinavia. It's very good."

But even better? "Pineapple weed [also known as wild chamomile] is incredible; it makes wonderful syrups. I save it for different wild tea blends with different wild flowers and things like that," Bergo said, his enthusiasm lighting up his voice. "But the best thing to do with it is to take the blossoms or the flowers or some of the leaves. The flowers have the strongest flavor, and you add them directly whole to a salad as you would, like small leaves of herbs and things like that. So as you're eating the salad, you get this pop of like fruity pineapple flavor here and there. I transplanted, like over 100 little small plants to my yard. I'm trying to grow it because I like it so much. It's been difficult. It's been difficult to replicate the compacted soil that they really thrive in.”

Bergo’s creativity and innovation for plants many of us might wish were not in our yards is intriguing, especially since it could mean not having to resort to chemicals. He expands that this is part of a bigger strategy. ”One thing that I like to say is that everything in my yard must pay rent, and instead of spraying, I've been calling it War of the Worlds.  I'll take other plants that are maybe a little bit aggressive, but I like them more than Creeping Charlie and I plant them in competition with Creeping Charlie–in this case, I planted lemon balm near my Creeping Charlie, and I could just let the lemon balm go.” Another way to manage things is taking them out and then putting other things in their place or near them that I know can stand up to them. So on the side of my house, I have ground elder, which I'll get removed, and I'm putting in sheep sorrel next to it, which is doing really well.”

The Rewards of Time and Attention

Bergo seems to be someone who is so passionate about and talented with food that he cannot help but take deep dives into finding wild food and how to prepare it. But for many people, just getting to the grocery store once a week feels like a major time commitment. So, for Bergo, what are the rewards for gathering your own ingredients?

“Well, you're going to have food that tastes better than you can get in a restaurant. It's also important for gardening, cooking your own food, making things from scratch. It's a learned skill, and it's also a luxury. It's something you have to devote some time to.” Bergo says it’s OK to start small: “I encourage people to make little substitutions.” At the time of the interview, Bergo was working with a few hundred home cooks who were testing recipes for his next book. He points out that often big publishers won't do that. 

“I will note those comments from home cooks in the manuscript. So I also tell people, baking is one thing where you typically want to use a scale because it's going to be the most exact. But most savory recipes, you can ad lib a little bit. And I encourage people to experiment–maybe you use homemade apple cider vinegar instead of white wine vinegar or something like that. Small changes can be okay, but that's also another part of the learned skill that will come with time. The reward, though, is really the satisfaction of learning a skill that you will have for the rest of your life. Of becoming self-sufficient and being able to do things yourself. And, for me, having control over flavors and how things taste.”

Several Seasons of Zucchini

Bergo is currently at work on a new book. “Originally when I pitched Flora,” he explained, “I was trying to write about everything in one book.” It resulted in a manuscript that was 30,000 words over limit. “So I split up [everything I want to say about cooking] into a series of three books: Flora, Fauna, and Fungi.”

The Flora book, Bergo outlined, is the vegetable portion of his life. Now he is working on Fauna, “which is more centered around meat. And these two books are going to be like companion books. I'll be referencing things from Flora that are in Fauna. So where Flora was kind of a comprehensive look at leafy greens, herbs, vegetables, nuts and starches, and using a forager's perspective of how I work with them.”

Bergo went on to tell the story of how, as a chef, he had never seen a zucchini growing in a garden. “And I'd worked with every variety of heirloom squash that I could. But when I saw the plant growing in a garden, I didn't know what it was, so I cooked the shoots because that’s what looked good.” His research (“down the rabbit hole” Bergo calls it) led him to discover that’s how they cook them in Mexico and “They make them into curry in Nepal and it's a delicious vegetable.”

First Interest, Third Book

The third book in the series will be Fungi. “It will be completely devoted to wild mushrooms. I'm trying to make it the most comprehensive book on cooking wild mushrooms that has ever been written. There's going to be an entire section on indigenous North American truffles.”

Bergo owns the oldest inoculated truffle orchard in Minnesota. ”People don't think that they grow here. I had a friend who discovered a brand new species written up in an article from the University of Lacrosse. All kinds of cool stuff happening in the mushroom world.” 

Since most people know Bergo for mushrooms, it might seem logical he would have put that book first. But just like a good meal, it’s almost as if Bergo wants to savor the writing of the book about fungi. “I really wanted to take my time,” he said. “That's a huge, huge project because it’s not as simple as going to the store for a pork shoulder. With Fungi, I'm going to a specific place at a specific time of year with a specific soil type for a very particular mushroom.

For an example, he mentioned the Midwestern Candy Cap. “I finally got my first ones this year. You use them in dessert and they taste like maple syrup. People don't think they only grow in the West Coast but we have an analogous variety here. It's called lactarius camphoratus and it tastes basically the same, maybe a little bit less strong.” This kind of enthusiasm and deep interest in sourcing and preparing local foods demonstrates why Minnesota is fortunate to have Alan Bergo as a local food champion.

Alan Bergo’s keynote speech, “The Grocery Store Outside,” will be the kickoff to the 20th annual Back to Basics event at 9am on Saturday, February 7 at Pine River Backus School. Prior to the speech, Bergo will be available to sign copies of Flora (also available for purchase). The keynote speech and vendor fair are free to attend. To register for workshops and learn more about the event, please visit: https://www.happydancingturtle.org/back-to-basics

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