Thinking of cooking chanterelles in the summer fills my head with ideas. Their floral, fruity smell means we need some light accompaniments that won't take over and steal the show. Thinking of how their smell is so sweet, almost like flowers, reminded me of the daylilies growing outside next to my haggard, midget-mint plant. I grabbed some of their buds and a flower for it's petals, then made a dish out of them to compliment some freshwater herring filets, which are also known as tillabee, or lake cisco. If you don't want to make the entire dish the sub-recipes here for the endamame puree and the soy-vinegar sauce are useful by themselves.
Ingredients for the dish: chanterelles, cisco, daylilly pods and flowers, endamame.
Cisco, Chanterelles, Daylilies, Endamame, and Soy-Vinegar Sauce
Serves 4 as a light entree
Ingredients
- 4 5 ounce cisco filets cut in half if large If you don't have cisco, you could use rainbow or brook trout, or another mild fish, such as sole.
- 1 recipe endamame puree follows
- 1 recipe soy vinegar sauce follows
- 4 ounces fresh chanterelles
- day lily pods and petals: about 4-5 pods/person and 3 or so petals
- tablespoon fresh chopped chives
- bergamot flowers optional-these were fruiting at the moment and added a nice herbal punch along with the chives
- grapeseed or other flavorless oil for sauteing
- Kosher salt and fresh pepper
Instructions
- Heat two 10 inch saute pans and put some searing oil (grapeseed or canola/vegetable) or lard in each one. When the pans are hot, season the cisco on the flesh side with salt and pepper, then on the skin with salt only, since the pepper can burn. Immediately after seasoning, put the cisco filets skin side down in the pan, without letting the filets touch.
- In the other pan, add the chanterelles first to make darn sure that they get a nice color on them. When they are caramelized nicely add the day lily pods, season with salt and pepper taste, and then cook until the day lilies are wilted, about 2-3 minutes.
- By this time, check on the cisco and make sure it is golden brown and seared on the skin side.
- When the skin is golden brown, you can just turn the pan off, they will cook through gently with the residual heat.
- Toss the chanterelles and daylillies with the chives
- Finishing and plating
- To serve, start by placing a nice scoop of endamame puree on the middle of each plate, then place the cisco filets on top. Next drizzle some of the sauce around the fish and endamame on each plate, followed by the day lily buds and the chanterelles.
- Finish by placing some day lily petals around each plate, followed by the optional wild bergamot flowers then serve.
Endamame Puree
Ingredients
- ¼ cup vegetable oil like grapeseed, olive, or whatever you like, if you want to use extra-virgin olive oil you can, just use 50/50 with a flavorless oil to temper it's strong flavor which can get bitter
- ¼ cup water
- 1 cup shelled frozen endamame
- Kosher salt
Instructions
- Place the endamame in the bowl of a food processor and buzz until chunky and broken up a bit, then add the water and blend until it starts to turn creamy.
- Then drizzle in the oil slowly until it is as smooth as you can get it, and all the oil has been added. It should have the consitency of mashed potatoes.
- Season this to taste with salt and reserve.
Soy-Vinegar Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoon water
- 2 tablespoon nice soy sauce
- 2 teaspoon vinegar preferably champagne or rice wine
- 1 egg yolk
Instructions
- Heat a small sauce pan half full with water until it is simmering lightly.
- In a small metal salad bowl, whisk the water, soy, and egg yolk well. Now place the small bowl over the pot of simmering water and whisk continuously for a few minutes until the mixture starts to look a little creamy, thickens and warms up a bit, about 4-5 minutes.
- Make sure that the water isn't at a rolling boil, or it can cook the egg in the mixture and make it lumpy. (If you cook it too much and the egg coagulates like scrambled eggs, don't fret, you can puree the mixture with a hand blender and strain it. or just start over, its not that tough to do.)
- When the sauce has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon, add the vinegar to taste, until it is as sharp as you like, then set aside and reserve. Essentially you have made a creamy egg based salad dressing, something of a cousin to mayonnaise.
Dan Farmer
That makes a beautiful plate, Alan! I tried daylily buds for the first time last summer, when I pickled a small batch. I enjoy the fresh crunchy texture.
I'll have to try that sabayon some day. Sounds very interesting!
Alan Bergo
Thanks Dan, this was a fun one to study and put together. Sometimes I like to pickle Cisco too like herring, along with some sweet pickled vegetables. Good luck in the drought too.
Rebecca Bryant
FYI - you list no egg yolk in your ingredient list for your soy-vinegar sauce, yet it's in the directions.
Alan Bergo
Thanks for noticing. I added it.
Nicola Cataldo
I'm so excited to have found you! I will be here often
While we're on the ingredient, day lily, I wanted to pass along that although I know of one well-known author who recommends eating the green shoots as well as the flower, that that was the most memorable day of my foraging life. For a while I thought it might be the last one. I have since determined that every once in a while a person will have a very bad reaction to day lily shoots. I will spare you the details, but the experience left me qualified to write a book I could call, How to lose 10 pounds in 24 hours.
Alan Bergo
Hi Nicola. The biggest question is were the shoots raw or were they cooked. If I eat the shoots raw I will get very sick, but If I cook them I'll be fine, yes GI issues from eating something are a horrible experience, but one that it's good to understand if you want to pick your own food.