After I found enough chestnut boletes to actually cook, I planned out a couple dishes they would go in with what I had in the fridge. The first thing was half food/half humor: cooking them with a few other very small things as a sort of play on tiny animals in a tiny land, like…
Boletes
Wilted Amaranth, Chesnok Garlic and Summer Wild Mushrooms
I’ve been eating more and more amaranth in the past few years, for some reason I forgot I could wilt it like spinach. For a year or two all I did was put it in salads, and then it needs to be blended with other greens. If you use it raw, it can be a…
Wild Mushroom Sourdough
When I first started to be interested in mushrooms I remember reading somewhere that pioneers, out of desperation, would make a sort of bread from puffballs. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to make, or just taste, bread made with wild mushrooms. There was only problem: I had no idea how to make bread. As fate…
Slippery Jack Coffee Rub
Come the end of fall It’s getting colder, the mushrooms are fewer and farther between and alot of times I’m just hoping not to get skunked. When the blewits, hens, shaggy’s, puffballs or parasols aren’t playing nice, I know I can probably run over to a patch of pine trees and grab a few slippery…
Wild Mushroom Tartine with Purslane and Pickled Vegetables
It’s the heart of wild mushroom season in the Midwest, the boom time when you can go to your favorite patch and come home with all sorts of different types. Multiple types of chanterelles, chicken and maybe hen of the woods, Aborted Entoloma, Lactifluus, lobster mushrooms, various black trumpets, coral mushrooms/Ramaria, Hygrophorus, all manner of…
Midwestern Pine Porcini: Boletus subcaerulescens
Update 2020 With the help of other local mushroomers, I’m relatively certain that these boletes are Boletus subcaerulescens. I’ve updated this post with new images in-situ. One thing to mention about these that was so confusing, is the “sub-caerulescens” part of the epithet. “Almost blue staining” The confusing part of the name here, and why…
A Raw Porcini Affetatti
Years ago when I was working at Pazzaluna, I was on the garde manger station making hot and cold apps, salads, and desserts, as well as curating a daily changing selection of antipasti I came up with. One of my favorite snacks, and plates to make was the affetati, an Italian platter of cured meats….
Bison Stew with Dried Bolete Mushrooms and Coffee
The good part about the dead of winter is that I can run all the heavy stuff the line cooks like to make, or as we call it: fat kid food. Braised meats galore, pastas layered with cheese, sausage and breadcrumbs, different types of lasagna, ragus of beans and smoked meat, sauces made with…
Wild Mushrooms With Garlic And Parsley
There are some recipes so timeless that they’re known across borders and cultures with the only change being their name. In France, this would be called mushrooms with persillade. In Italian it’s known as mushrooms “la loro morte” roughly “cooked to their death”, a romantically macabre way of describing something. In Spain mushrooms are cooked…
Scaber Stalk-Gruyere Fritters
Crispy on the outside, cheesy, and mushroomy on the inside, these fritters are simple to make, and can be cooked a number of ways besides frying. In a nutshell, they’re just basic pate aux choux dough with a duxelles of scaber stalk mushrooms and some cheese mixed in. Scaber stalks, a.k.a Leccinum mushrooms have a…
Bolete Julienne
Behold the julienne-a molten hot, cheese crusted, creamy mushroom extravaganza. Just about every hunter of Eastern European descent I’ve talked to has told me about this dish in some way shape or form, and for good reason. If you look around, there’s plenty of recipes for mushroom julienne out there, most using button mushrooms. When…
Dark Beer Short Ribs, Dried Boletes And Root Vegetables
I often get asked things like “what’s your favorite mushroom” or “what’s the most interesting mushroom you’ve cooked with?”. They’re questions I can’t really answer, but there’s a particular shroom I like to mention as a conversation piece, since it’s a good example of the possibilities I see in boletes. The tricky part is that…
Slippery Jack Gnudi, Ramps, Wild Rice, And Nettles
Here’s a great recipe I donated to the non profit cookbook for the Cascade Mycological Society of Oregon. They were looking for recipes featuring slippery jacks, as well as a couple other underused species, like Lactarius. I’ve fought off Eastern European grandmothers a’plenty here in Minnesota for them, so you bet I have plenty of…