The best part of butchering your own animals is the creativity, giving you the ability to make all sorts of things, and one of the grand daddy’s of them all is a rack of venison. If you want to know how to cut a rack, just search you tube, there’s lots of info out there….
Black Trumpets
Cisco with Fragrant Black Trumpets and Summer Greens
Here’s a simple salad you can make with wild shrooms. I made this specifically for fragrant black trumpets, but many different wild mushrooms would work here, just make sure all of your ingredients are the best you can find. It’s easy: gather a salad, cook some fish, then saute some mushrooms in a large amount…
White Pheasant Stew with Chanterelles and Black Trumpets
After Anthony Bourdain passed away I spent the following week tearing through his first book and then his cookbook, a sort of half mourning, half refresher course on one my favorite chefs I’ve always looked up to. The days after his passsing were announced for me were sullen, as they were for a lot of…
Black Trumpet-Peacock Dumplings in Broth, With Sweet Corn and Amaranth
When I was butchering my peacock, I knew that working with the thighs and legs would probably be the easy part. The bird was over four years old so the breasts, even with the skin on would be temper mental and challenging to cook well. Poultry meat from an older bird is going to be…
Jacques Chibois’s Carbonara of Chanterelles and Black Trumpets
Getting to meet one of your personal heroes is a great experience. Since I’m a food nerd, most of my heroes are chef’s or personalities somewhere in the industry, with the exception of Marcus Arelius. When I went to Provence last year, I had the chance to eat at Jacques Chibois, whose work I’ve been…
Beluga Lentils With Black Trumpets and Mirepoix
I love black trumpet mushrooms and their fruity aroma, but they can be difficult to cook with though since they turn things black you cook with them. One way of getting around this is by just going with it and adding them to things that are black already. This simple recipe with black beluga lentils…
Black Trumpet Coulis
Here’s a way to use up those dried black trumpet mushrooms that really showcases the mushroom itself-a rich thick puree, or coulis. Technically a coulis is a dessert sauce made from fruit, but I’ve used the term coulis to refer to any sauce that resembles a smooth puree for years, and I’m definitely not the…
Black Trumpet-Shell Pea Soup, With Purslane
The black trumpets are out now. After I found the first flush of the year, I remembered some frustration I had working with them a while back. I was playing with a big batch of them, testing out a creamy trumpet soup recipe for a cookout I was making an appearance at. It was going…
Rabbit Braised In Milk, With Black Trumpets And Carrots
Nothing says Easter like a dish with rabbit and carrots. I was just trying to source some new rabbit too, in time for the Easter Brunch menu at the Salt Cellar, but I couldn’t make it work, so it’ll have to wait for next year. I did have a rabbit in the freezer though, as…
The Fragrant Black Trumpet Mushrooms: Craterellus Cinereus and Foetidus
I’ve heard hunting for black trumpet mushrooms compared to looking for black holes in the woods, and that isn’t far from the truth. Even mycologist Chuck Barrows, (a guy who found undiscovered species of porcini and has them named after him) didn’t even find his first one until he was an elderly man. Until I…
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…