Shroomin’! August 27, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, Dinner with TCR, macro photos.Tags: black chanterelles, boletes, chanterelles, death trumpets, edible wild mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms in a cream sauce, red capped butter boletes, russulas, Sigma 50mm macro lens, ziggy
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After a dreadfully hot and dry start to the summer, which meant that the local mushrooms weren’t blooming, we’ve had a good mix of rain and sun lately. Consequently, we’re seeing a lot of mushrooms in the woods and at roadside.
I’m totally all over that. Free food of a mysterious and slightly dangerous nature… not really, because I’m faint of heart… but the “free” part is all true, and there’s nothing like freshly foraged food.
The Boletes are out, some pretty good to eat and some really choice. I’m fond of Red Capped Butter Boletes, which are really hard to confuse with anything else. Firstly, they’re a bolete, so they have a spongy underside instead of having the fine gills of most other mushrooms. Plus, they’re bright red on top, butter-yellow on the underside of the cap, and shading from bright yellow to a vibrant red moving down the stem. There are other red mushrooms, but none which look like the Red capped Butter Bolete, so it’s a safe choice for mycophagists.
Here’s a freshly picked RCBB lying next to a Russula, which has both gills and a pure white stem which snaps like a piece of chalk when picked:
Some people eat Russulas, some people are sickened by them, so I just keep to the boletes and whatever else I know to be safe and delicious.
I also found some chanterelles, including red (rare,) yellow (common) and black (exquisite!) The black aren’t uncommon so much as they’re invisible on the forest floor. I’ve hunted then fruitlessly for hours, then suddenly realized I’d been walking through them most of the while.
The ones I got this week were thin tubes, a bit browner than their more trumpet-shaped black brethren:
I put a load of these into a cream sauce, and they’re exquisite, with a strong nutty flavor and a texture suggestive of al denté penne. They’ll meet their end on a bed of polenta tomorrow.
I have a variety of really choice boletes to prepare tomorrow, including king, queen and yellow-footed in addition to the red capped butter boletes. I’m not sure if I’ll get to eat them or just dry them for later; I’ll be away for most of midweek, and don’t want them to go to waste!
Dinner(s) With TCR! September 24, 2009
Posted by littlebangtheory in Dinner with TCR.Tags: celery, chanterelles, mushrooms, quesadilla, raviolis, sun-dried tomatoes, wild mushrooms
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Courtesy of the last ‘shrooms of the season.
First, a Bolete quesadilla, made in this case with a pair of King Boletes.
This was fun, doing the mushrooms first at high heat, then adding celery and chunky garlic, then taking the whole lot out and reserving it before adding a little butter and frying a large flour tortilla a bit ’till it was ready to receive back the ‘shroom filling:
It folded over quite nicely, thank you, before I crisped it up for the kill.
‘Twas guuud.
‘Twas equally guuud to think of something to do with my last harvest of chanterelles for the season. They’re a summer mushroom around here, and are most likely done blooming.
I sautéed the chanterelles with celery and sun dried tomatoes, then unceremoniously removed them all from the pan and replaced them with my new love, fresh goat cheese raviolis poached in chicken broth. Then, as above, I added back the niceties to dish up Raviolis with Wild Mushrooms:
I made noises eating this. I may have bothered the neighbors. I didn’t care. Life is too short to not appreciate what’s good, and I’m just not into dampening my enthusiasm for what I have left of it.
Not that I’m checking out, mind you, but I’m no Spring chicken either.
And one never knows, now, does one?
Dinner With TCR – Mushrooms, Part 1. September 10, 2009
Posted by littlebangtheory in Dinner with TCR.Tags: black trumpets, chanterelles, half-and-half, mushrooms, mushrooms and more mushrooms!, omelets, raviolis
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My fridge is bursting with ‘shrooms! They’re being crushed beneath each others’ weight, forcing the half-and-half to sweat and fade on the counter, keeping me up late at night, challenging my imagination and culinary stamina.
What to do with a basketfull of Black Trumpets?
…or a bag’s worth of Eastern chanterelles?
Perhaps a breakfast omelet of local duck eggs, chanterelles, caramelized onions and cheddar:
…and a dinner of black trumpets and chants with garlic, white wine, basil and a crumble of Gorgonzola, served over fresh lobster raviolis:
… prime examples of my Hundred Yard Diet, being largely from my garden and the nearby woods.
If anyone has a pickling recipe for a shopping bag’s worth of Oyster mushrooms, I’d be more than happy to entertain it, as my half-and-half needs a place to stay…
‘Shroomin’! September 2, 2009
Posted by littlebangtheory in Dinner with TCR, Love and Death.Tags: black trumpets, boletes, chanterelles, chicken-of-the-woods, wild mushrooms
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After a crappy Spring/Summer wild mushroom season, we entered September with a flourish.
A flash of color and a stop along the road on the way home from work yesterday yielded a cornucopia of fungi, beginning with a tender bloom of Laetiporus sulphureus (or Sulphur Shelf, if you don’t naturally go around speaking Latin) :
These will be great in curries and stir-frys!
And all around and along the way, there were ‘shrooms of other genera begging me to eat them.
Some will get their wish!*
* That’s a pretty clear example of Man being the center of his own universe, non?
Anyway, here’s part of the haul. Clockwise from the upper left:
A nice fat (unidentified) coral, some beefy Chicken of the Woods (Sulpher Shelf,) a mess of nice Winter Chanterelles, Cahtharellus infandibuliformis, some black trumpets , or Horn of Plenty if you will (Craterellus cornucopioides) on the right, surrounding what a local vendor calls “chocolate boletes,” but despite his assurances I’m not eating them until I can put a real name on them, then bottom center, some Hedgehog Mushrooms, Dentinum repandum, which I’ve since dispatched in a sauté, followed leftward by a beefy bunch of Eastern Chanterellles, Cantharellus cibarius, and on the far left, one of several Green Russulas, Russula aeruginea, which I may or may not eat.
Oh, and in the muddle are two King Boletes (Boletus edulis,) the prize of the lot. Delicious anyway they’re done, though I’m leaning toward butter and garlic, perhaps over pasta.
Stay tuned. 😉
Dinner With TCR! July 5, 2009
Posted by littlebangtheory in Dinner with TCR.Tags: asparagus, chanterelles, chicken, ginger
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A couple of days ago I came acrosss a healthy stand of chanterelles and picked enough for a couple of meals. They were fat and clean and really nice:
…and found their way into my belly, thusly –
Ginger Chicken over Basmati rice, with local asparagus and localler (!) chanterelles:
Enjoy!
The Runt’s Rude Recipes, Take 1 July 12, 2007
Posted by littlebangtheory in Dinner with TCR.Tags: chanterelles, wild food
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…And so begins a new series dedicated to a subject I love dearly: FOOD.
I love to cook. I LOVE to eat! If I didn’t have the metabolism of a chipmunk, I’m sure I’d be as big as a house, albeit a one-story job.
Unfortunately, I can’t follow a recipe to save my ass. So I cook from the palate, which has generated some extraordinary fare over the years. But since I never measure anything and don’t write any of it down, a lot of my best efforts were One-Shot Wonders, never to be seen (or tasted) again. Oh well.
In the service of “full disclosure,” I should also confess that since I never taste my cooking ’till it’s in everyone’s plates, I’ve created a small number of total disasters, such as Chili con Codfish, Chicken Chernobyl, Lentils Dégulas and Gifelte Melts.
Never ignore the Warning Signs.
Tonights meal was a nice, safe Pasta Primavera, inspired by yesterday’s small haul of chanterelles, a beautiful, easy mushroom for beginners and a gastronomic treat for us Old Farts. It was basically a stir-fry of organic squashes, a big bulb of coarsely-chopped garlic, red onion, the afore-mentioned chanterelles, and garlic scapes in some wicked friggin’ hot olive oil with a dash of tamari. It looked like this:
Threw it on some angel hair, though I would have preferred fusilli because of the structure of the veggies, and topped it off with some cheap grated cheese, on accounta I’m poor. Younger Progeny loved it; Elder Progeny opted for some month-old jarred sauce. That’s OK; more for me! 😉
That’s about the depth of detail you can expect from me on the “recipe front,” ’cause that’s all I remember.
But it was delicious!
Little Bang Theory 