Morel & Pine Tip Salt

When nature gives you a bounty, sometimes you have to dry or dehydrate it and save for lean times. This is also a good way to use the more cosmetically challenged mushrooms.

Both morels and pine/fir tips appear in springtime, but you could use about any dried mushroom here. Also, the tips of about any evergreen except the yew plant are edible. The tips, when fresh, have a lemony, mild pine flavor. They can be dried and made into fragrant tea. Some people like to make a simple syrup out of them for cocktails. But they're nice in a compound salt.

1/8 cup of fir or pine tips

2 ozs of dried morels

1 cup coarse sea salt

(Note - you can add lemon zest, garlic, fresh herbs, sumac, Aleppo pepper, rosemary blossoms, etc. to this.)

Put all ingredients into a spice grinder, or a very well cleaned coffee grinder and pulse until finely ground. Lay the mixture on a tray and place in a sunny spot until it dries out.

Scoop it into a jar.