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Archive for February, 2010
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
You didn’t think there would be all these posts about trumpets without a recipe did you?
A lot of people like black trumpets in cream sauces but I’m not a fan of cream sauce. I like to enjoy them simply.
All I did was saute them up with a handful of chopped kale and one clove of garlic. I threw everything in the pan at once with the olive oil and cooked it on medium heat until the water evaporated. Added some salt, tossed it with pasta and topped that with some toasted pecans.
So yummy, so easy!
Posted in black trumpets, recipe, recipes, self pleasuring | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
The trumpet is a trickster. It hides, disguising itself as a leaf shadow. You can be looking at a hillside covered in leaves and see nothing. Then, you find one trumpet! Score! After that you realize there are many more around you that were hiding!
Hunting these is so different than hunting porcini–which are so huge sometimes you can see them while driving by. My husband’s first porcini was a drive-by find! Or hunting chanterelles which is like an Easter egg hunt–pretty little (or big!) orange beauties peaking out from under the leaves. Both of those mushrooms you can hunt from a relative distance, they stand out. Not black trumpets. They blend, they hide in the shadows.
My apologies for the quality of this pictures, it is from my phone, but that will just make the challenge that much more fun. Pretend it’s blurry because you’re foraging in the rain and your vision is obscured by it.
Now, find the trumpet:
Did you find it? It’s a lone little creature, not hanging out with any of its friends.
Do you see it?
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Does this help?
They are well worth the search. I know, finding it in the picture does not help you taste them but maybe it will inspire you to find a local mushroom group or foray and search for youself!! Just a disclaimer here, if you’ve never foraged for wild mushrooms, don’t do it alone and randomly eat things you find it the woods. I don’t want any of my readers to die from hardcore food porn attempts. I want you to live on to eat well!!
I will be sad when this season comes to an end since I’ve found some good new trumpet patches this year! I will just have to enjoy them while they last.
Posted in black trumpets, hardcore | No Comments »
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Michael Ruhlman, a man whose books have inspired me tremendously, asked people to answer this simple question, “Why do you cook?” I love this idea. I’d love to extend that question to anyone who reads this as well. I made sure I wrote this before I started reading other people’s answers. I didn’t want to inadvertently copy them!
Why do I cook?
–I cook because I love food.
–I cook because I’m picky.
–I cook because I’m good at it.
–I cook because I want my family to eat well.
–I cook because it makes others happy.
–I cook because it makes me happy.
–I cook because I know what I like things to taste like and can perfect things to my liking.
–I cook because if I tried to get what I cook in a restaurant every night I’d be broke in a month.
–I cook because I want to know exactly what is in my food.
–I cook to set a good example for my child.
–I cook because that’s what I feel in my heart I need to do to contribute my small part to organic farming and sustainable food culture.
Now off to read Michael’s post as well as responses.
Tell me why you cook? Or why you don’t?
Posted in food, organic | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 19th, 2010
 I have a hard time just hiking. Hiking to me is like an easter egg hunt. I rarely look up, I rarely even look at the path, my eyes are always scouring the hillsides and duff.
Unfortunately, I usually don’t have my real camera with me either. So the photos are less than perfect but these lovely little fungi were just popping through the green moss (is that moss?) that was growing on the hillside. I don’t know what it is but I never find trumpets on flat land, it’s always somewhere that I have to perch precariously on a hillside and try not to slide all the way down it!
I did pretty well yesterday. Enough for this weekend’s frittata at least!
Update:
I cooked up the black trumpets the same way I did last time but had many more to savor today!
I put them in olive oil with one small minced clove of garlic over medium heat and let them cook off their water.
I think the best way to enjoy trumpets, or really any tasty wild mushroom, is simply on a piece of buttered french bread. Well, I didn’t have any french bread! So atop a frittata they went again.
I don’t know if these are one of my favorites because I get so few of them or not. I’m torn between trumpets and porcini as my favorite. My son said this morning that his favorites are grilled porcini and black trumpets (he’s 5). I think I agree!
Posted in black trumpets, hardcore, mushrooms | No Comments »
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Dashi:
6 cups water
6-8 inch chunk of Kombu seaweed
Small handful of bonito flakes
6T soy sauce
3T mirin
Bring water to a slow boil with the kombu in it. It should take 15-20 minutes for it to boil (not a problem on my crappy stove, even on high!). Remove the kombu, kill the heat and put in the bonito flakes. Let them steep, off the heat, for 1 minute. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer. Add soy sauce and mirin and you have dashi!
I usually put the pot of dashi back on the stove on the simmer burner on low to keep it warm. I’ve also thrown dried shiitakes in to add some more flavor. This time I was out of them…woops.
Meanwhile, boil water and cook the soba noodles. When they’re cooked, rinse them thoroughly in cool water. Set aside (or put in bowls to anxiously await toppings and broth).
Meanwhile, meanwhile, sauté up some sliced, fresh shiitakes in a little oil.
1. Bowl
2. Soba noodles in bowl
3. Top with sauteed shiitakes
4. Top with favorite protein. This time I used seared ahi. I’ve also used salmon, chicken and tofu.
5. Ladle in dashi
6. Garnish with green onions and, if desired, nanami togaroshi (also known in our house as “sprinkles”)
Enjoy!
Tags: soba noodles, soup
Posted in ahi, asian, recipes, self pleasuring | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
  Sorry to my Midwest peeps out there but it’s a gorgeous day. It’s been a gorgeous week. My lettuce is leafing, my kale is getting bigger, my parsley is parsleying. We’re supposed to get more rain next week but it’s ok by me as long as we keep getting these wonderful spring-like breaks!
Posted in gardening, photos | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 8th, 2010
A few nights ago I made sausage and lentil soup. It was quite yummy, very simple. I had some left over but I had some for lunch the next day and the rest was just sitting in the refrigerator. So last night I dumped the soup into a colander to strain out the liquid and used the lentil-sausage-onion-carrot-garlic mixture that was left as ravioli filling. It worked so well!
I have been keeping wonton wrappers on hand as a quick and easy way to make ravioli. One doesn’t always have time to make pasta dough.
I think this method would work with most any soup (that doesn’t have pasta in it already!).
I topped the raviolis with parsley-marjoram-pecan pesto:
1/2 c. marjoram (or thereabouts, loosely piled)
1/2 c. parsley
1/2 c. pecans (toasted)
juice of 1 lemon
1 clove garlic
1 t. salt
Zap in the food processor and add olive oil until it’s the desired consistency.
Quick, easy, yummy, and seemingly fancy!
Posted in lentils, raviolis, recipe, self pleasuring | No Comments »
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
I went for a hike, knowing there was a chanterelle patch in the area but really not wanting to find any. I’m done with those for the year (I found two anyway, even though i wasn’t looking for them!). I was really on the hunt for black trumpets. It looked like good terrain for them, I was convinced they were there.
So, like staring at one of those 3D prints with the hidden pictures, I stopped and stared at the hillside. Slowly, these leaf shadows become mushrooms before my eyes. Success!
Unfortunately, I scoured the area and only found a small handful of these black beauties but that’s fine by me. I’d rather have a few than none, they are truly one of my favorites. Nom nom.
And since I had so few and wanted to savor them as much as possible, I sauteed them in just olive oil and shallots and put them atop my Sunday food-church frittata. Sooooo yummy. I also added the two little chanterelles I found just because, what else could I do? I couldn’t let them go bad. I need to head out and find more trumpets, this whet my appetite for them, they are such a wonderful little fungus!
Posted in black trumpets, craterellus, hardcore, mushrooms | No Comments »
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