What do you do when a bushel of lovely yet slightly suspect fruit turns up at the kitchen door? If you’re Michelle Derer, bartender at The Craftsman, you bring it in and see how it fares on the seasonal drink menu — but only after a fortifying soak in spirits, of course.
Recently, one of her co-workers abandoned the Minneapolis restaurant for what sounds like a more bucolic life, living aboard a houseboat in Winona, working on a farm and harvesting wild food. “Emily’s always been a big forager for mushrooms and things like that,” says Derer. “She called to tell me she’d collected all these sumac berries for me, and I thought, ‘Oh, what am I going to do with those?’”
[Appeared in Heavy Table magazine. Photo credit: Kelly McManus]
Susan Pagani 