I got wind of a cookbook project and began talking with the Cascade Mycological Society behind it last week. They were looking for dishes featuring lactarius and slippery jack species, and just so happens I had a few recipes laying around I hadn’t shared. I agreed to donate 6 dishes or so for their book,…
Recipes for Fresh Wild Mushrooms
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.
Roast Chicken “Demi-Deuil”, With Black Truffles
A couple days ago someone who received a batch of Italian truffles in Minnesota was referred to me for some advice on how to use and preserve them. It gave me the chance to write up a recipe I made a while back, and it’s a great one: Chicken Demi-Deuil. The first time I read…
Triple Black Trumpet Polenta
After the recent “Hunt ‘N’ Munch” event in Minneapolis I cooked there were a lot of requests for this recipe, so here you go. Originally the “Hunt ‘N’ Munch” was supposed to be a mushroom centric, low key appetizer cookout in a parking lot. Sometimes the woods doesn’t give you exactly what you are…
Black Trumpet Bouchées With Chanterelle Mousse
Here’s the appetizer I started out with at the Hunt ‘N’ Munch: little savory eclairs flecked with black trumpets, filled with a chanterelle cheese mousse, and topped with a pickled chanterelle. The “bouchée” description is just the pretty name given to savory, filled bites of pate a choux like this. If pate choux isn’t…
Chanterelle Custard / Pot du Creme
Our chanterelles in the Midwest are delicious, in my opinion much more than the variety that I see coming in from the Pacific Northwest. The P.N.W chanterelle I’m familiar with I suspect to be one cantharellus formosus, it turns brown after pickling, where our chanterelles will stay golden, it’s flavor is also less intense, less…
White Chanterelles Roasted With Thyme
When I brought the white chanterelles to the kitchen to play, I wanted to make something that would highlight their identity, something really simple. There are a couple things about them I wanted to showcase: their texture, and aroma. Texture wise Chanterelles have a meaty tooth to them, they’re dense and weighty, and take longer…
Roger Verge’s Morel Quiche
I wanted to end the morel season with a bang, so I waded through a couple piles of old French cookbooks. I found just what I wanted in an old 80’s recipe by Roger Vergé. There’s just something about dated cookbooks that turns me on. The plating is usually super cheesy and over the top….
Grecian Black Morels
I made a new friend this year. I’ve never met her, but I know her name is Teriyaki, and that she lives in Athens and loves to hunt mushrooms. Out of the blue online I got a message from her on my birthday, kinda like getting a present from the other side of the world….
Fresh Wild Mushroom Duxelles
The one and only mushroom duxelles. This is one of the oldest, most traditional, and especially useful recipes for preserving mushrooms there is along with simply drying, and mushroom catsup/ketchup. At it’s heart its really just a finely chopped, concentrated mushroom base-nothing too crazy. It’s a lot more though. Duxelles is a mother ingredient, one…
Sweet and Sour Venison-Honey Mushroom Soup
Hot and sour soup! Is it Asian food? Nope. Asian cuisine is not the only one to take advantage of the awesome combination of sweet and sour. There is another locale that values the combo of sweet and sour, and it’s Eastern Europe. Just thinking about a bowl of sour, sweet, meaty soup makes my…
Gnocchi, Northern Pike-Porcini Ragu and Escarole
This recipe is an great example of how Italian and cooking has shaped the recipes that float through my mind. Geographically speaking, you wouldn’t think that Minnesota shares much with Italy, but that just isn’t so. Minnesota is the land of ten thousand lakes, formed by the movement of glaciers so long time ago. Interestingly…
Matsutake Smothered Grouper, with Kohlrabi and Spinach
When I was a kid, fish was typically some frozen fish sticks pulled out of the freezer for a quick meal. I would drown them in lemon juice, the strong, concentrated stuff that comes in a green bottle, and I loved it. The fish, once crispy, would begin to get soggy with the lemon juice,…
Wild Mushroom Conserve (Pickled Mushrooms)
There really is no substitute for fresh mushrooms in everyday cooking, but we can get pretty close. Of course they can always be pickled for long term storage, but there’s another method, almost in between a pickle and a marinade: the almighty conserve. Think of it as the best pickled mushroom you’ve ever had. Seriously….