I have a lot of different ways I like to preserve mushrooms I’ve learned or come up with myself over the years. This method is one of the more interesting ones, and, I can’t take credit for it. When I started working at Heartland, with it’s daily changing menu that the staff collaboratively designed, one…
Fresh Mushroom Recipes
Fresh mushrooms work in two basic ways: as the main ingredient in a recipe, or as a supporting character working in the background. Here you'll find a little bit of everything.
Hen of the Woods Roast with Leeks and Black Walnuts
Since hen of the woods can have such a large size, I love swapping them out for meat in recipes. With the maitake coming up in earnest in late September/October right now I’ve had more than my share of them hanging out in the fridge waiting to get cooked, so big ol’chunk of hen has…
Beefsteak Mushrooms with Sorrel
Here’s a study in how a dish can be completely different in a short time after it’s been composed. I was thinking about how to eat a beefsteak mushroom / oxtongue fungus (Fistulina hepatica) I had the other week, those shelf fungus that give red juice when cut, have a slightly tart taste, and, that…
Whole Seared Matsutake, Medium-Rare
When we think of how to cook mushrooms, generally the thought process is they should be cooked through, then you proceed with whatever dish you’re making. Rarely, there might be some special wild mushrooms you can eat raw, like porcini, Amanita caesarea, or my little matsutake here, if any of them aren’t horribly bug riddled,…
Vietnamese Coral Mushroom-Chicken Noodle Soup
I’ve been working on recipes with Rau-Ram, or Vietnamese coriander, as it’s basically my new favorite herb. If you don’t like cilantro, you should probably close your browser immediately, and walk away slowly from the computer, using your fingers to form a crucifix. Trust me, it may not be in the cilantro family, but the…
Beefsteak Mushroom Relish
Cutting up my first beefsteak mushroom (Fistulina hepatica) was a mess. My cutting board looked like a murder scene, my hands were tacky and red, there was sticky trim scraped off of the knife in little piles around the board. In the end though, I did get a nice pile of dice from it to…
Pig Ear Gomphus Tacos
Gomphus clavatus are an increasingly rare edible mushroom also known as the violet chanterelle, the pig ear, and likely a bunch of different cultural specific names I don’t know of yet. These pictured in the recipe are actually a rare version of Gomphus clavatus that grows with hardwoods as opposed to pine, currently called pseudocraterllus…
Yellowfoot Chanterelle Broth with Tiny Pasta
Midwestern yellowfoot chanterelles are small–no doubt about it. As such, their the sort of ingredient that is so difficult to source in volume as to make them near impossible to find on a restaurant menu, no matter the cost. They’re literally a chef’s dream, and I made one of the best wild mushroom soups I’ve…
