Dreaming of Stuffed Morels

Rarely in dreams, I’ve seen complete dishes, or things in the process of being made. I don’t remember all of them, but I tell you what, I make sure to write those down. I've found it helps if I repeat simple trigger phrases over and over while searching for a pen.

"Morels stuffed with turkey mousse....Morels stuffed with turkey mousse".

One time I saw a salad of fresh green beans and other ingredients that all had to be green. Another time it was pates de fruits colored with flowers I later made from milkweed. But, the most memorable dream recipe started in my morel patch.

If you're a morel hunter, you might have shared in the hunting dreams that come at the end of Winter, I know a number of my friends have.

I remember being conscious, walking through fog, that sort of cold, wet fog you get in the spring. I walked up and up over a hill on the way towards my best morel patch, the spot my hunting buddy and I can always count on.

My morel hunting partner with me, I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was there. I walked through the patch and the buckthorn slowly, looking through the fog. I don’t remember picking many morels, just looking down into my bag and seeing a nice pile, nothing to really brag about, but some were big, big enough to stuff.

The next thing I remember is hearing a sound: a turkey gobble. I looked around back and saw turkeys standing on the hill near the entrance to the patch. There was a whole bunch of them, walking in a line.

The next thing I know I’m in my kitchen. There’s a cutting board with morels on it and I’m holding a pastry bag filled with something I’m piping into the morels, stuffing them. I know that the mixture in the bag is turkey mousseline and I’m stuffing the morels with it, after that, I don’t remember anything. If you want a quick refresher on meat mousse, (a great way to use tough game meat), see my post on cooking peacock, or my old post on forcemeat.

A few tips for stuffing morels 

• If you use a filling that will expand, (meat mousse) I found that wilting the morels first in a pan helps the filling not ooze out while cooking, I've had a couple good mishaps with this. Another way to help it not evacuate from the mushroom is to make a mousse without egg white, using only cream.
• If you want to stuff the mushroom with meat filling, I like to wrap them in plastic and poach to coagulate the protein filling, then gently brown in a pan to deepen the flavor of the mushroom.
• Don't get crazy with the stuffing flavors. Morels are mild, so the flavor partners should be too. A bit of ramp leaves, wild onions, mild cheeses like ricotta, cream cheese, parmesan, etc. Fish mousse made from a white fleshed fish or shellfish would be good too, especially shrimp.
• Use a pastry bag to fill the morels precisely. If you don't have a pastry bag, a freezer bag with a corner cut off can work in a pinch.
• Small morels are good to stuff too, but there's something special about the sheer girth of the  morels so large you can make a meal out of a single mushroom as I'm outlining here.

5 years in the making

Of course I had to make the dish I saw in my dream, and I did, many years ago. It's been on my mind to share every year, but every year something else always seems comes up. It's more than a simple stuffed morel mushroom, it also ends up being a kind of collage of my image work, and the progression it's gone through over the years.

More 

Forager's Guide to Morel Mushrooms