Search this site:
Loading
|
|
Archive for the ‘porcinis’ Category
Friday, January 4th, 2013
We had Christmas at about 5 different houses this year. Bouncing from family to friends and back again. We wanted to have Christmas day at our own house though. So since we’d already made the rounds, we extended and invite out to any friends who didn’t have a place to go on Christmas…Christmas Orphans. We had a couple of people take us up on the offer and I decided, since it was a small group, to make something a tad fancy: Rack of lamb.
I made the recipe that I love but can’t take credit for, I didn’t make up the amazing combination of cocoa, cumin and coffee that’s in the dry rub. I honestly would never have put those together. But it is so good and is the only way I make lamb now.
Alongside the lamb I served a simple salad of fennel, satsumas and pomegranates in a pomegranate-lemon-shallot dressing.
The lamb turned out perfectly. I had gone to Whole Foods assuming I’d be picking up lamb imported from New Zealand since it’s winter. Turns out there’s a northern California rancher raising lamb year-round now so I got locally raised, grass-fed lamb. I was pleasantly surprised.
I hadn’t planned dessert but my eight year old jumped in and scooped up some Mission Hill Creamery Salted Caramel ice cream and topped it with some chocolate-covered pralines we made for gift bags. Not bad for no planning huh?!
The day after Christmas we went to our friends’ place for their annual Boxing Day party, had a lovely time, and came home with a bag of porcini from their “back yard.” Most were dryers, one was a griller. Perfect, firm, white, awesome.
We mostly struck out on our Thanksgiving foraging trip so this was a treat.
I’m finally coming up for air after the crazy holiday season. Just when I get back to the real world we’ll be leaving for the Cayman Cookout again this year. Our once-in-a-lifetime crazy trip is happening again. I can’t wait. I’ll be reporting live as much as I can!
Posted in amateur, christmas, dinner, flavor, food, hardcore, holiday, mushrooms, porcinis, santa cruz, self pleasuring | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 28th, 2012
This year’s hardcore adventures were a little more low key than usual. My husband got in a motorcycle accident at the end of September and, although tremendously lucky, severely injured his left foot and, after 9 weeks, still isn’t walking on it.
So, foraging fell on to me and our 8 year old. Hubby stayed in the car with the walkie talkie to alert us if rangers came…none did. So, we didn’t cover as much territory as usual or stay out as long but we found a couple of porcini and about five pounds of chanterelles.
The other task that isn’t usually mine was the charcoal grill. I am the master of our gas grill but fire building is not one of my skills. I managed to get the fire lit (which was a surprise, I thought it was out but it smoldered to life). Still, the porcini didn’t get to the crispy state I like and the chanterelles took FOREVER.
The next night when I cooked the chanterelles down on the stove top and put them on top of NY steak, now that was how I know how to cook!
Posted in chanterelles, dinner, food, hardcore, porcinis | 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, December 16th, 2010
It’s gotten cold and rainy. When that happens, I start making more pasta and soup. More comfort foods. More warming, cozy foods. One of the easiest is usually pasta with red sauce.
2 onions, chopped
3 oz pancetta, diced (optional for vegetarians…not optional otherwise!)
Cook down until onions are soft and starting to brown.
Add 1c. white wine and 2 cloves minced garlic. Cook off almost all the wine.
Add 3 cans of tomatoes (not sauce).
Rehydrate some porcinis. I put as many into my 2 cup measuring cup as I could comfortably do. It’s not 2 cups of dried porcini per se because they aren’t packed in but they add great flavor so if you have them, use them! We have a few.
Chop up the porcinis once they’re soft and add them to the sauce. Let that reduce for, oh, awhile. You want to cook off most of the water bit of the tomatoes so you have a good thick sauce. When almost all of the liquid is cooked off add a huge handful of minced herbs. I use thyme and marjoram.
When the sauce is saucy and not watery, dump it into a food processor and zap it until its perfect.
Once again, I ate before I snapped a final picture. I wish I had smell-o-vision. This is one of my favorite smells in my house: garlicky goodness.
Posted in amateur, pasta, porcinis, recipe, recipes, self pleasuring, tomatoes | No Comments »
Friday, December 18th, 2009
I went to a friend’s house yesterday and we went for a walk. Found this beautiful, HUGE, bolete and one other she kept…She was gracious enough to let me take this one home. Just so you know, that knife is my 10″ chef’s knife…that is a huge mushroom!
It was pristine. Not a bug in site. Gorgeous.
We savoured it, it may be the last we get of the season!
We grilled the stalk and sauteed the cap with some garlic and tossed it with farmer’s market fresh pasta.
Pork bacon?…pshaw…Turkey bacon? No way! FUNGUS bacon is the way to go!! (grilled until almost crispy…drroooolll)
Posted in hardcore, porcinis | No Comments »
Monday, November 30th, 2009
As I pointed out in my last article, we were a bit late for porcini season this year. But not so late that we didn’t get any at all. We had a couple of beauties! On the first night we didn’t have the time or the materials for a barbecue so we just sautéed the porcini in a little olive oil and shallots and tossed it with some farfalle pasta. I’m a big fan of not doing much to the mushrooms and just enjoying their earthy flavors on their own.
 
Day two however allowed for a trip to the store to pick up some mesquite for the barbecue. This is my favorite way to enjoy porcini. Once it was cleaned up, we just sliced it, basted it with olive oil and herbs and grilled to perfection. Once off the grill we squeezed a little bit of lemon juice and sprinkled a little bit of salt on them. Heaven!
 
We went back to one of our spots thinking we’d probably struck out but I stumbled upon two pretty little friends. The caps were destined for the dehydrator but the stalks were gorgeous grillers.
Having exhausted the porcini stash, we still had an insane number of chanterelles to consume. Along with Thanksgiving leftovers, we had chanterelles cooked in butter on toast. I felt a bit Top Chef-like serving chanterelles and bread two ways (on toast and in stuffing). ;-)
 Day three — or was it day four — I decided to venture out into the chanterelle territory again. Who knew I missed a whole patch of them!? I had to think of another way to cook them. I thought, “I wonder if they grill well?” Since it’s my favorite way to eat porcini we decided to try it. It is now my favorite way to cook chanterelles too!!
If you have access to any of these lovely golden fungi, you must make this recipe.
Spinach tossed w/ dressing of:
Chopped shallots
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper
Cook french green lentils in chicken stock w/ a clove of garlic
Slice each chanterelle and half, toss with olive oil and pepper and grill. I used 3 large mushrooms for 2 people.
Chop and cook bacon to make lovely little bacon bits.
Assemble into the most beautiful warm mushroom salad ever created. Spinach first, then lentils, the shroomies, then bacon, then love….love the whole time actually, including with every fabulous bite.
Posted in bacon, chanterelles, hardcore, pasta, porcinis, recipe, spinach | No Comments »
Monday, November 30th, 2009
We head up to Mendocino every Thanksgiving. We’ve been going up for about 10 years. The purpose of the trip is to crawl through the woods looking for fungus. Some years it’s quite successful. Other years, not so much.
  
This year we were a bit late for the porcinis. we found a few to grill, and a few to dry, but the real star of this trip was the chanterelle. Day one brought us a basket full along with a couple of coccoras (a mushroom that still makes me nervous to eat!).
  
I selected a handful of the chanterelles, cleaned and prepped them for wild mushroom stuffing. The recipe I used is based on this Bon Appétit recipe but I’ve modified it a bit. Firstly, it called for 1 pound of shiitake’s and 1 pound of button mushrooms… I had pounds of chanterelles in my fridge! I used about 2-3 pounds of the chanterelles. I put them in the skillet with a stick of butter. I let them cook for quite a while because they had a lot of moisture. I cooked almost all of that moisture away.
 
Next I added the chopped leek and garlic and let that cook through for about five minutes.
Once the leek was softened I added 2 cups of good white wine, a huge handful of rehydrated porcinis (from last year’s hunt) and about 1/4 cup of chopped thyme and marjoram from the garden. At this point I don’t think there’s much I cook without thyme and marjoram in it! The plants are out of control!!
 
Once most of the wine had cooked off, I stirred the whole mixture into a 1lb package of bread cubes (unseasoned). I added the liquid I used to rehydrate the porcinis and then some extra chicken stock because it still seemed a little dry. I put the whole bit into a baking dish and baked it at 350° for about 45 minutes until the edges had some yummy crunchy bits.
 
Meanwhile, I said we found some porcini right? We can’t forget about those! We sliced up the stalk, brushed it with some olive oil and grilled it on the Weber with mesquite wood.
 
Meanwhile meanwhile… I roasted a whole chicken in lieu of a turkey since 1: I’m allergic to turkey and 2: there were only three of us. It’s a foolproof excellent way to roast a chicken by the way. Take six pats of butter and wiggle them under the skin of the chicken breasts (three for each side). Then take chopped herbs… guess what I used? Yes, marjoram and thyme! Work those under the skin with the butter. Sprinkle the entire bird with salt and rub the entire outside with olive oil. Roasted at 400° for about 40 minutes until the internal temperature is 160°. I love my digital thermometer for this. I just put it in the chicken when I first put it in the oven, and set the alarm to beep when it hits 155° so I know I have a couple minutes left to finish the rest of the dinner prep.
It was a very successful Thanksgiving endeavor. The final meal: roast chicken, wild mushroom stuffing, grilled porcini, Caesar salad and cranberry relish.
Posted in chanterelles, chicken, hardcore, porcinis, recipe | No Comments »
|
|
|
