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Archive for the ‘mushrooms’ Category
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Posted in chanterelles, cumin, dinner, flavor, food, hardcore, mushrooms, organic, photos, seasonal menu, table dance, wine | No Comments »
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
 Prepping potatoes for the campfire There’s no reason not to eat well when you’re camping. I packed my CSA and garden veggies, chicken and eggs up and hauled them to Lassen National Park for a weekend camping trip. Before we left I cut the chicken into pieces and put it in a ziploc with wine wine and herbs so it was all ready to go.
 Grilling chicken and potatoes I always pack my knives with me wherever I go so it’s quick and easy to prepare everything. The potatoes go into foil with onions, garlic, butter, salt and pepper.
 Campfire dinner: Chicken, potatoes and homegrown tomatoes The tomatoes don’t need anything but salt! When they’re straight from the garden, they need no additional flavoring.
 Searing albacore When we go to my dad’s cabin, we cook many nights over the campfire but we also have a propane-fueled kitchen so I can get even fancier with my dishes. We had seared albacore with an orange-reduction sauce.
 Steaming clams in white wine and garlic Alongside the albacore were clams that I steamed with white wine, garlic, butter and parsley.
 Grilling the one porcini we found Every year we go to to the cabin we find ONE porcini. Just one. Every year. It’s wonderful and frustrating at the same time. It gives us the hope we’ll find more and we never do. Unfortunately there are cows that are left to roam wild and they eat the mushrooms! I bet that beef tastes fantastic.
 Gorgeous grilled porcini We sliced and grilled the porcini over the campfire, just like we do every Thanksgiving trek. It’s the only way to eat porcini as far as I’m concerned.
Next time you head into the woods, don’t pack trail mix and hot dogs. There’s no need. If you prep beforehand, you can have just as wonderful a meal as you would at home….plus, everything tastes better in the mountains. I have no scientific evidence for this but it is true. Try it!
Tags: albacore, camping, clams
Posted in amateur, chicken, dinner, flavor, food, hardcore, mushrooms, porcinis, potato, self pleasuring, tomatoes | No Comments »
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
One night I opened the fridge to find a wilted (but not rotten) 1/2 bunch of cilantro, some ginger and not much else. I had a rib-eye in the freezer. I always have garlic, shallots, onions in the drawer and chiles from my dad’s garden in the freezer. I threw what I had in the food processor and made this dish that turned out FREAKING amazing. Unfortunately, I didn’t write down what I did.
That’s why I have this site, if I didn’t post my recipes, I could never reproduce anything I cook! So, I tried to remember what I did. And I elaborated on it with the extra items in my fridge (greens and mushrooms). It, once again, was so delish. And I took notes. Having totally improvised this though, I left it open to interpretation with the recipe title.
Recipe: Asian Beef with Stuff
Ingredients
Marinade/Sauce:
- 2T soy sauce
- 2T fish sauce
- 3T canola oil
- Handful of cilantro (stems and all)
- 2t peppercorns
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1T brown sugar
- 2 inches ginger (peeled and roughly chopped)
- 2-3 small chiles
- ~1lb of your favorite cut of beef (I usually use rib eye)
- Big pile of saute greens
- 1 c. chopped shiitakes
- 2 shallots thinly sliced
Instructions
- Put all the marinade ingredients in a food processor or blender. Zap until it’s a soupy paste. Pour that over your steak(s). Let that sit for as long as you have. In the fridge if you have a long time. If I have an hour or less, I let it sit on the counter, covered.
- Once you’re ready to cook, shake some of the marinade off the steak(s) and cook them on the stovetop until it’s the desired doneness. I like mine still mooing. Remove the steak and let it rest on a cutting board.
- Add shiitakes and greens to the pan with a little water, if needed, to loosen the crusty steak-bits. Cook for a couple of minutes then pour in the remaining marinade. Toss once in a while until mushrooms and greens are cooked.
- Remove mushrooms and greens from the pan, squeezing them with tongs or slotted spoon to remove as much of the liquid/sauce as you can. Set aside.
- Add sliced shallots to pan and reduce the remaining sauce.
- When it’s the sauce syrupy and, well, saucy, thinly slice your steak and toss it back into the sauce.
- To serve, put a mound of rice, a scoop of greens/mushrooms and top with the beef.
Quick Notes
I can’t decide if the shiitakes worked or not. Try it both ways and let me know!
Number of servings (yield): 2
Meal type: dinner
Microformatting by hRecipe.
Posted in asian, beef, dinner, food, mushrooms, photos, recipe, recipes, rice, self pleasuring | No Comments »
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
 I don’t cook with an insane amount of cream. I hate cheese. I don’t eat offal. And I wash my mushrooms in WATER…*gasp*! I don’t understand why there is such a problem with mating water with mushrooms. They grow in the RAIN for pete’s sake!!
I went for a little walk yesterday. It’s been raining here for bloody forever it seems. We finally got sunshine on Monday! It’s been gorgeous all week. Yesterday I had time to hike up to my black trumpet patch. I don’t know who designed this mushroom garden but next time, can you not put  it on such a steep hill? The picture really doesn’t have the right perspective. One wrong step and I’m sliding down an awfully long way. I precariously perch myself on the hillside, trying to plant my feet against trees or logs or rocks, some of which slip away since the ground is so saturated and muddy! What I’ll do for these yummy fungi.
I had a wonderful asparagus soup with a couple of little black trumpets as a garnish at Soif over the weekend. I decided to run with that idea and made a potato leek soup to use as my black trumpet medium. The difference here was that I had a big pile of them so there was a huge trumpet in every bite! I love being a hunter-gatherer ;-)
But even with all that washing under running water, there was grit. I tried to fool my mouth by putting a really crunchy salt on as a finisher, but I still knew there was sand and not just salt! I guess getting sand in my soup isn’t that French either.
I’m reading Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat right now and could completely relate to Grant’s story of traveling and eating in France and Italy. It took me back to L’Arpege and it was a great meal but I was so uncomfortable I had a panic attack. I would love to have amazing food in a subway station…in a park…in a living room. Anywhere that’s not so stuffy, proper and snooty. I loved Italy for that.
Someone recently told me I don’t even need to post recipes, she likes just reading my blabbing-on posts. But I just grabbed this little plug-in that I want to try out:
Recipe: Potato Leek Soup
Ingredients
- 1/2 stick butter
- 2 large potatoes
- 3 leeks (white and light green parts only)
- 1 cup white wine
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 4 cups chicken stock
- salt and pepper to taste
- Mound of black trumpets for “garnish” (optional)
Instructions
- Melt butter in a pot.
- Add chopped leeks. Cook until they start to soften and barely brown on the edges (just barely).
- Pour in wine and add garlic. Let the wine reduce almost away.
- Add chicken stock and potatoes. Simmer until potatoes are cooked.
- Pour into a food processor/blender and puree until smooth. If you want to be fancy, strain through a chinois or cheesecloth. I tend not to be fancy!
- Salt and pepper to taste. Top with sauteed mushrooms.
Cooking time (duration): 30
Number of servings (yield): 3
Meal type: dinner
Microformatting by hRecipe.
Posted in black trumpets, dinner, leeks, mushrooms, photos, potato, recipe, recipes, self pleasuring | 1 Comment »
Sunday, November 7th, 2010
Some friends came over for dinner last night and I decided I would go all out and make a multi-course extravaganza. We’ve been touting the excellence of Mark Bitterman’s new book, Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes , to anyone who will listen so I made sure to highlight salts in the meal.
 To get people started, just a little plate of nibblies: prosciutto, olives, Mt. Tam triple cream brie from Cowgirl Creamery and some walnut levain.
Then we got serious. My ever popular and damn good Ahi Tartare that I have made countless times at this point. It never fails to impress those who have never had it though. I think I finally figured out the right balance of shallots, herbs, lemon, salt. I’m happy with this nearly every time now. I used Shinkai Deep Sea Salt in the tartare and topped this with Turkish Black Pyramid salt.
Thanks to the huge number of pomegranates I got from my dad, I came up with this salad: Butter lettuce with shaved fennel and apples (from our tree) and pomegranate seeds. I made a dressing with just minced shallot, salt, champagne vinaigrette and olive oil. I let the shallots soak in the vinegar and salt for at least an hour or maybe two so they were soft and the flavor permeated through. I topped the salad with a sprinkle of Murray River Salt. Simple and delicious.
I got a huge squash from my CSA this week so into the oven it went for squash soup based on this recipe. The only difference was the squash type and I used leeks in addition to onion. The squash, according to my CSA newsletter was a Orange “sunshine” Kabocha. It was a “thicker” squash when pureed into the soup. I think it has a bit less water in it that a butternut which produced a thick, creamy soup. I fried up some king trumpet mushrooms in butter and topped the soup with those for a roasty, nutty addition. This one I topped with some Big Sur Fleur de Sel that we picked up somewhere locally. Any semi-coarse sea salt would work well, I just wanted something that wouldn’t just dissolve in the soup but give a little crunch every few bites.
Nevermind the main protein course. I had an epic fail with my meat thermometer and over cooked the beef. It was still edible, but very much well done and not how I like my cow. So disappointing. But we had already had so much food it really wasn’t a complete disaster.
Instead we moved on to the dessert which is the spawn of too many apples on our tree and me not liking to really bake. Simple apple crisp with, guess what, POMEGRANATE! I made the syrup last week and have it in a squeeze bottle in the fridge for just such occasions. To make the crisp, just slice apples up, put them in a baking pan and top them with a mixture of:
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces
1/4 cup chopped pecans
Bake at 350° for 1 hour. Serve warm (I baked it ahead and put it back in the oven for 15 minutes before serving it). Top with some pomegranate seeds, a generous drizzle of pomegranate syrup and your favorite vanilla ice cream.
It was a stellar evening, much good wine was also consumed of course. Champagne with the tartare and salad. Burgundy with the soup. Solera with the apple crisp. A happy night was had by all.
Posted in ahi, ahi tartare, amateur, apples, butternut squash, dinner, food, leeks, mushrooms, photos, proscuitto, recipe, seasonal menu, self pleasuring, tuna tartare | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
Before:
2 leeks, chopped
2 green garlics, white and pale green parts, chopped
3 small carrots, diced
Saute all that in some butter until everything is soft.
Add 1 cup white wine and cook most of it off.
4 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
4 c. chicken stock
Add to pot, bring almost to a boil. Simmer, covered, until potatoes are soft.
Meanwhile, slice and grill some king trumpets…the closest thing you can get to porcinis off-season. Just brush them with olive oil and grill until they become fungus-bacon.
Puree the soup, add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.
Ladle up, top with the mushrooms and a few parsley leaves.
After:
Tags: soup
Posted in amateur, dinner, leeks, mushrooms, potato, recipe, recipes, seasonal menu, self pleasuring | No Comments »
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 »
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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