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Baked Fish with Black Trumpet Crust

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Baked fish with black trumpet mushroom crust recipeWhen Sitka Salmon sent me loads of fish to cook with this year in preparation for a project we were working on, I started working on a few great ways to use frozen fish, especially white-fleshed fish like black rockfish and cod. Making a topping with dried black trumpets, leeks and tomatoes was one of my favorite preps on the first round of things I made, and it is a great method you can apply to lots of fish, using a number of different mushrooms.

Dried black trumpet mushroom and ramp leaf butter recipe

This recipe uses black trumpet butter, along with fresh trumpets, but regular butter is ok too.

Black trumpets take well to a lot of preparations, but one of the best parts about them is that they dry and rehydrate like a dream, making cooking with dehydrated ones really easy, so they were the first mushrooms I reached for here. Other mushrooms with a similar structure like yellowfoot chanterelles, as well as things like porcini could work well here too though. 

Baked cod with black trumpet mushroom crust recipe
Before.
Baked cod with black trumpet mushroom crust recipe
After.

The recipe itself I started working on after I was flipping through an old book by Swiss chef Fredy Girardet, a favorite chef of mine in the world of old-school masters. The dish had no image, but I could see it in my mind. It was just a simple dish of freshly caught white fish (bream I believe) baked with a topping of freshly cooked garden vegetables referred to as a crust. 

Baked cod with black trumpet mushroom crust recipe

The “crust” is more of a juicy mushroom and vegetable topping than a crispy, crunchy something.

In America we hear the word crust and think crisp, or crunchy, but here it’s used more in the sense of a juicy topping that keeps the fish juicy as it cooks. Tweaking it around a bit wasn’t difficult at all, and the black mushrooms make a great contrast to some white fleshed fish. It’s a great way to use some dried mushrooms, and you could use the topping on a number of different things, for example:

  • Chicken cutlets 
  • On top of slices of baked pumpkin or potatoes, baked the same way as a gratin
  • Take a slice of good bread and toast it, then top with the mushroom topping, maybe some grated cheese, and bake. Cut into wedges and serve as an appetizer. 
  • The black trumpet-veggie mixture, without the breadcrumbs, would make a great foccaccia or flatbread topper. 
  • Use the mushroom filling, along with some cheese, to stuff tomatoes that have been halved and had their seeds removed, then bake until browned per usual.
 
Baked fish with black trumpet mushroom crust recipe
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Baked Fish with Black Trumpet-Vegetable Crust

Fish baked with a mushroom and vegetable topping. Serves 4-8 if you add some side dishes.
Prep Time20 mins
Cook Time15 mins
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: French
Keyword: Black Trumpet Mushrooms, FIsh
Servings: 4

Ingredients

Black Trumpet-Vegetable Crust

  • 4 oz fresh leek tender parts only, cleaned and diced ¼ inch
  • ½ cup vegetable stock
  • 4 oz fresh black trumpets
  • 6 tablespoons black trumpet butter or unsalted butter, melted
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • A few grinds of fresh pepper
  • 4 oz finely peeled seeded tomatoes, finely chopped
  • 2 Tablespoon sliced Italian parsley
  • Vegetable oil for drizzling
  • 4 tablespoons breadcrumbs

Fish

  • 4 six oz filets of a white fleshed fish like cod halibut, catfish, etc
  • Lemon wedges for serving

Instructions

  • Heat the leeks and stock in a pan and cook until dry and the leeks are tender, then transfer to a bowl to cool. Cut the trumpets into 1 inch pieces roughly, then add to the leeks along with the tomato, salt, melted butter, pepper, and parsley.
  • Spread the mushroom mixture over 6 oz pieces of flaky white fish, like cod, sole, rockfish, catfish, etc, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, criss-cross with oil, and broil at 500F for 10 minutes or until lightly browned and just cooked.
  • Serve with lemon wedges and whatever vegetable accompaniments.
Black trumpet mushrooms

A good haul of Craterellus fallax.

 

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🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Last entry. I’ve saved t 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Last entry. I’ve saved the smallest, fern gulliest plant for last. 

False Mermaid Weed (Floerkea proserpinacoides) is a good little plant Sam Thayer showed me. It’s tiny, as in all the photos are from me on my belly, in a wet ditch. It’s so small it’s hard to get the camera to even focus on it (see pic with my finger for scale). 

Mermaid weed likes wet areas, like ditches and spots that hold a bit of water (perfect mosquito habitat😁). 

Like chickweed, Floerkia greens are like nature’s Microgreens. They’re in the Limnanthaceae, (a new-ish group of brassicas) and like the Toothwort form earlier this week, you’ll taste a strong mustard-family flavor in a mouthful of their tender stems. 

They’re literally wild mustard sprouts, and, unlike other wild sprouts (garlic mustard 🤬) they stay sprouts, and, they actually taste good. 

It has a wide range over much of the eastern and western U.S., and is listed as secure globally, but is endangered in some states and shouldn’t be disturbed in those places. 

I’m lucky enough to have some large colonies near me so I do clip a few handfuls each year-my annual reward for removing some of the garlic mustard nearby, that, along with atvs, dirt bikes, and contamination from local water pollution, is one of the biggest threats to this tiny green. 

#floerkiaproserpinacoides 
#wildsprouts #mustardsprouts #ferngully #tiny #foraging #mermaid #🧜‍♀️
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Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are one of the most beautiful harbingers of spring I know, as well as one of the most delicious. 

They’re in the Borage family, along with the namesake plant, Comfrey (which I only eat a few flowers of occasionally) and Honeywort. 

The flavor of the greens, like borage, has a rich flavor some people might describe as mushroomy or fishy, but after a just a few moments of cooking (30-60 seconds) they get mild and delicious, with a subtle bitterness. It’s a good bitter though-nothing like dandelions or garlic mustard that aren’t fit to be in the same basket, let alone on the same plate. 

The shoots are sweet and delicious, much more mild than the greens. As they can grow to be over a foot long, they’re almost more of a vegetable than a leafy green, depending on when you harvest them. 

Bluebells love moist, rich soil, but you don’t have to go to the woods to get them. Many people know Virginia Bluebells as a garden plant, and they can make a great edible addition to your landscape.

#virginiabluebells #foraging #ephemerals #springwildflowers #wildfoodlove #mertensiavirginica
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Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / White Ramp (Allium burdickii) 

If you’re in a ramp patch you might occasionally see some with white stems (pic 1,2). These are a cousin to the more common variety with much larger leaves and red stems (pic 3,4,5)

Allium burdickii is not as common as the red-stemmed variety, and in every ramp patch I’ve been in, the white ramp is heavily outnumbered. 

Where I harvest, I like to leave them alone, and mark the areas where they grow with sticks or middens on the ground so I can go back in the fall and help them spread their seeds. I also try and remove garlic mustard when I see it-a much more imminent threat in my mind to ramps than foragers out to gather some leaves. 

2020 was a banner year for ramp seeds, and you can still help the plants right now (pic 7) as some seed heads are still full and would love for you to give them a shake as you walk by. 

#alliumburdickii #ramps #ephemerals #foraging #spring
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#4: Erythronium leaves 

Erythronium (Trout Lily) are another ephemeral that I see widespread in my ramp patches, there’s at least 32 species world-wide, with at least one endangered species in MN (Dwarf Trout Lily). 

They’re a beautiful, delicious plant I eat every year, but I can’t recommend serving them to the general public. Plenty of people say these are edible, but also emetic if eaten in “quantity”. 

I can tell you, at least with E. albidum and E. americanum I’ve eaten, that some people are much more sensitive than others, so if you want to make a salad to serve people, make sure they’re comfortable eating it, and use a few leaves as a garnish. 

Funny enough, I didn’t learn about these from a foraging book. Like knotweed, I learned about them from one of my favorite chefs: Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs of the turn of the 21 century. 

Any chef that works with wild plants owes a debt to Bras. His book, although a little dated now, still teaches me new things all the time. While flipping through the book I also caught a recipe using tansy flowers 😳 that I’d probably pass on. 

The whitefish crusted with sunflower seeds is a dish of mine from 2012, and an example of how I eat the leaves: a few at a time, as a garnish. 

#troutlily #erythronium #michelbras #ephemerals #foraging
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Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) is another beautiful spring wildflower that loves to grow in the same habitat you’ll see ramps and spring beauty. 

Its small at first, but grows to a worthy size for eating as it flowers. It’s related to cabbage and mustard greens (Brassicaceae) and eating just a few leaves will give you a potent, spicy pop of mustard-family flavor reminiscent of horseradish. 

Eaten in combination with other things, like in a salad, the flavor becomes submissive and you’ll barely know it’s there. 

Some people eat the spicy roots shaped like canine teeth, but for the work I hardly think they’re worth it. 

A great wild spring green for the salad bowl-eat them leaves, tender stem, flowers and all🤤. 

#cutleaftoothwort #cadamineconcatenata #ephemeral #springedibles #foraging #wildfoodlove
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #2 is Virginia water 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #2 is Virginia waterleaf, and, I’m cheating a bit as it’s semi-ephemeral. The plant comes up in spring and goes to flower, but gives a second harvest of fresh growth in the fall, where other ephemerals I know do not. 

This is a great starter wild green-easy to recognize with the splashes of white on the leaves that may or may not be present. After you learn it though, don’t be surprised if, like me, you eventually pass it up for more delicious greens nearby. 

The plant gets tough quick, and the flavor is..meh, so I usually have small amounts of very young greens in blends of blanched and sautéed mixes. 

My favorite part is the wee flower buds, that, if you get at the right time, can be harvested in decent quantity and are good steamed as they’ll soak up oil sautéed. 

#hydrophyllumvirginianum #waterleaf #foraging #fueledbynature #weedeater
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