Mushrooms Gone Wild!

Monday, 14 September 2009

My wife Betsy claims that I can never take a walk in the woods without thinking about mushrooms, and she's right. Lab rats, having once pressed a bar to receive a treat, will go on pressing the bar as long as they are able, hoping for another treat. Having once found chanterelles and morels in the bracken along the sides of the trail, I keep an eye to the side of the trail every time we walk through the woods, searching for the savory prizes I know I might find again. This time of year, I watch for chanterelles. This golden beauty was the first wild mushroom I learned to recognize with any certainty, and it remains my favorite. Finding a patch of chanterelles is like spotting a wild deer. Like that totem animal, these fungi stand for something wild and free. Several varieties of boletus, easily identified by the spongy undersides of their caps, also catch my eye; the best of these is that great king boletus that the French call cèpes and the Italians call porcini. Until recently, I had never gathered my own porcini. But all that changed last week when I had the good fortune to take a hike in the Cascades with my old friend John Sundstrom, the chef-proprietor of Lark restaurant, and a new friend, Langdon Cook, the author of Fat of the Land. Fat of the Land is a wonderful collection of essays about foraging for food and establishing a life that’s deeply connected to the earth. With Lang as our guide, we bagged a dozen pounds of chanterelles and five pounds of firm and fragrant porcini. At home, the porcini were rendered into a garlicky sauté to top toasted slices of rustic bread. Some of the chanterelles were incorporated into a pasta dish based on one of Lang’s recipes from the book. The rest will become a forest mushroom risotto. Cooking with mushrooms has a synergistic quality. The mushrooms themselves are endowed with delightful flavors and textures; but they also enhance the qualities of whatever they are cooked with. Thanks to the presence of certain glutamines, mushrooms have a flavor-building property reminiscent of monosodium glutamate. They may be thought of as umami makers. Try the formulas that follow with mushrooms from the local market or, if you are confident in your own wild crafting abilities, with mushrooms you gather yourself.   Porcini on Toast Simply sauteed with garlic in olive oil, porcini provide a wealth of flavor and texture. Top them if desired with a sprinkle of grated Reggiano Parmesan or Grana Padano cheese. Spaghetti with Chanterelles, Chicken and Cream A quick saute in butter, then a generous splash of cream gave these chanterelles a sumptuous quality that transcends pasta into a feast. The dark meat from a leftover roast chicken had a similar texture to the shards of chanterelles when the mushrooms were pulled apart lengthwise.   West Coast Chanterelle Risotto Risotto is at once home spun and gourmet. Here, the contrasting textures of chewy short-grain rice and sinewy chanterelles make for a sensory delight. The flavor is amplified by an unlikely juxtaposition of Japanese soy sauce and Italian Parmesan cheese.  Check out Langdon Cook's Fat of the Land Blog and go buy his book!

 

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