Stuffed morels filled with crab meat napped with melted butter, a dusting of breadcrumbs and baked to a golden brown are a classic, and make for a great appetizer made with both fresh or dried mushrooms. With the end of winter coming, I thought it was about time I start really using up the previous…
Dried Mushroom Recipes
Hot and Sour Soup with Wood Ears and Yellowfeet
I’ve been saving a bag of wood ear mushrooms my friend from Forest Mushrooms gave me the last time I saw him for a good batch of hot and sour soup for months. Wood ears are special in that, after rehydrating they’re nearly indistinguishable from their fresh state. Finally I got around to using them…
Candy Cap Tres-Leches Cake
After Lucia’s closed, I didn’t feel like running another restaurant quite yet, so I negotiated a part time job consulting on the menu of a little French restaurant near Edina. I was slumming, but I just couldn’t bear tackling another large operation just yet. It wasn’t a good fit. I ended up turning what was…
Candy Cap Marshmallows
Candy cap marshmallows are exactly what they sound like, and they’re one of the most creative candy cap recipes I’ve ever worked with. Credit goes to my favorite pastry chef. I’m not a pastry chef, but I always loved collaborating with them, since they were the conduit that allowed me to speak to guests through…
Almond Candy Cap Cookies
Simple butter cookies are a tried and true recipe for using up those dried candy caps, and David Arora even shares a recipe for them in his excellent book All That the Rain Promises and More (get yourself a copy if you don’t have one, it’s a good, portable reference for when you can’t bring…
Candy Cap Flan / Creme Caramel
Flan infused with candy cap mushrooms has been on my list to make for years now. I finally got to it, and, yes, it’s a great recipe for those delicious, maple-y tasting candy cap mushrooms, darling of mushroom enthusiasts the world round that they are. Flan vs Creme Caramel Real quick, for culinary nerds, flan…
Daikon Radish Steaks with Wild Mushroom Ragu
Vegetarian or not, you’re going to love these little daikon radish steaks with wild mushroom ragu, but first, I have to give credit to where my inspiration came from. Like most of my colleagues, I’m always hungry for new information and secrets from others in the culinary industry. You can find recipes for just about…
Angelos Dried Wild Mushroom Ragu
A simple ragu of wild mushrooms was one of the recipes on the saute station back in the day when I was working at the now-closed Trattoria Da Vinci under Chef Angelo Volpicelli. Angelo was super talented, barely spoke English, and had owned his own restaurant in Rome for 12 years. Twelve years is a…
Baked Fish with Black Trumpet Crust
When 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…
The Black Staining Polypore
A number of years ago I got an envelope in the mail, ground dried powder of Meripilus sumstinei, the black staining polypore or rooster of the woods. it the first time someone sent me mushrooms in the mail I’d never met, which, is now a pretty regular occurrence (currently I’m waiting on honey truffles to…
Dried Black Trumpet-Ramp Butter
I’ve never met a wild mushroom butter I didn’t like, and the few variations on the simple theme (especially the fresh porcini butter) are some of the most trusty and popular recipes on this website. For the most part, you can substitute different mushrooms in the basic recipe, but this one I developed especially to…
Morels Stuffed with Morel Sauce
Morels stuffed with morel sauce is exactly what it sounds like: pretty much the ultimate stuffed morel, at least to me. One year during the spring hunting season, I ended up feeling gluttonous (and victorious) as I picked morel after morel, and after bringing them home and drying, I found I’d forgotten about the rest…
Toasted Porcini Aioli
During the Winter after a really good year for boletes (likely the legendary Pallidoroseus haul of 2013) I started making all kinds of things with my dried shrooms. Cooking with European porcini is easy: just throw them in anything and the flavor will take over. The porcini I pick in Minnesota (Boletus atkinsonii, or whatever…