Burbot was one of those interesting local fish, like sunnies, crappies and perch that were hard to source through fish purveyors, no one seemed to carry it. Eventually I got to try my first after someone was nice enough to grab me a couple packages from a fish shop up in Cumberland, Wisconsin. I knew…
Dried Mushroom Recipes
Venison Rib Chops with a Black Trumpet Crust
The best part of butchering your own animals is the creativity, giving you the ability to make all sorts of things, and one of the grand daddy’s of them all is a rack of venison. If you want to know how to cut a rack, just search you tube, there’s lots of info out there….
Jaegerschnitzel with Leccinum Gravy and Acorn Spaetzle
The snow is quickly melting, and I’ve been working hard to use up my stores of 2018 preserves. I have a lot of mushrooms and game (mostly venison), but, it was a great year for acorns too-I discovered a new white oak that gave the best acorns I’ve had yet. Thinking of how I could…
Puffball Mushroom Bratwurst
Here’s a fun way to use meat, and dried mushroom powder, specifically puffballs. In charcuterie and sausage making, milk powder is often used, especially in finely ground emulsions like bologna and hot dogs to achieve a nice, bouncy texture. Here, instead of using milk powder in the sausages, I use toasted, dried puffball powder, which…
Parched Wild Rice-Mushroom Bisque
If you’re a mushroom hunter who likes to pick different types of boletes this mushroom bisque is for you. 2018 was a great year for boletes with our steady, late summer rain, and I got a lot more variety than what I’d say a typical year brings. The great part about boletes is that with…
Dried Lobster Mushroom Rub
If you hunt lobster mushrooms, chances are you end up with a surplus of dried ones at the end of the season. If you don’t keep on top of using them, that surplus can double up if there’s any left once mushroom hunting season starts again where you live. Unlike some other mushrooms I pick,…
Candy Cap Caramels
Holidays remind me of seeing butter caramels sitting out on the counter at Grandma’s, or being wrapped for sale in the corner nook that’s always populated by different sweets at her house. I never ate a ton of them, but I’ve been having fun dreaming up flavored caramels for a mignardise platter, a tray of…
Chicken Fat Bolete Caramelle
2018 update Forgive me for the silly plating, I, like a lot of chefs, I went through a paint brush stage. It’s much cleaner to spread dollops of the celery root sauce out with a spoon or ladle. Italian food was what drew me into the kitchen in the first place. Story goes that I…
Venison Tenderloins Crusted with Dried Morels
Here’s a quick, easy recipe I whipped up the other day to celebrate butchering my first deer: tenderloins crusted in dried morels. I’m definitely not the first to think of it, but it’s worth sharing. It was great to finally be able to cook some bambi tenderloins all to myself as a reward for putting…
Lamb Broth With Boletus Pallidus and Rice
Whole animal butchery is something I’ve wanted to be more skilled at for a number of years. Sure, I’ve purchase thousands of pounds of ruminant meat and try to process whole fowl whenever I can, but whole lamb, pigs, and cows can be big, costly and intimidating. Luckily my girlfriend has a farm where all…
Dried Morel Butter
Over the past few years I’ve had a few chats about creating value added products for commercial outlets or things like that, which is a lot easier to talk about than actually do. One of the first things people mention to me is: “You could make wild mushroom butter!”. I nod and agree it’s good,…
Wild Mushroom Sourdough
When I first started to be interested in mushrooms I remember reading somewhere that pioneers, out of desperation, would make a sort of bread from puffballs. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to make, or just taste, bread made with wild mushrooms. There was only problem: I had no idea how to make bread. As fate…
Candy Cap Mushroom Semifreddo
A while ago at the restaurant I got a wild hair and was craving candy cap mushrooms in some kind of dessert. I’d made ice cream, bread pudding, marshmallow, custard, all the usual things, but I wanted something a little different. I also know that they’re a hard sell in Minneapolis since most people have…