Mad about Mushrooms . . .

May 2013's Recipe of the Month: Todd English's Shiitake Omelette with Crab Salad

Anytime is omelette time! 

And, this delicious variation created by the celebrity chef Todd English is sure to please whenever and wherever it turns up, especially if it features our local Port Orford crab meat.  We believe that you'll find this pairing of the hearty shiitake mushroom (praised for its smokey understones) with delicate, sweet crab meat to be a welcome addition to your breakfast, lunch or dinner table!

Port Orford fishermen continue to bring crab
to the dock - fresh crab is such a delicious treat! 

April 2012's Recipe of the Month: Mushroom Butter

Ah, simplicity in its finest form:  a mushroom butter to accent steaks, vegetables, breads, pasta, eggs, and whatever you would like to enhance with a buttery, mushroom accent.  Gosh, did someone say:  how about popcorn ... well, maybe not popcorn!

This recipe came to us from the late, and very special Patrice Benson, a dear and energetic lady who was a long-time cornerstone of the Puget Sound Mycological Society (PSMS), loved by all.  It's a good, basic formula that can easily be adjusted to suit personal preferences.  For example, our favorite rendition has cilantro, with its citrusy undertones, standing in for the parsley while hedgehogs replace the boletes - it was a banner year for hedgehogs on our reserve so we're enjoying them in many dishes!  

 

We prefer to blend our butter with chopped cilantro,
finely grated Meyer lemon peel and powdered hedgehogs. 

March 2013's Recipe of the Month: Matsutake Mini Muffins

We're often blown away by the creativity of the entries in our annual recipe contest.  Roxanne Chen's Matsutake Mini Muffins recipe is a perfect example of thinking outside the realm of the usual.  Who would think to blend together matsutakes, seaweed, sesame oil, ginger root, and black pepper and come up with a muffin recipe?  Well, Roxanne did, and the result is amazing. 

She e-mailed us the following information about her contribution:

I developed them as a first course to accompany goose pâté for my annual New Year's Eve party. My husband and a friend are foragers and they had brought matsutakes back after a successful trip just before the 31st. I enjoy creating recipes from the produce I grow in my garden as well and love the challenge of a recipe contest.

The mini muffins are the perfect accompaniment for salad, soup and chili, but they are also a welcome addition to an appetizer table. 

However, we think that they really deserve a very special place on the table.  Bite into one of these little treasures, and you are greeted with a gigantic burst of flavor.  After just one bite, you'll find yourself hovering over the remaining mini muffins, attempting to hoard them all for yourself.  Yes, they really are that good!

 

What a delicious find: 
Matsutakes emerging from the forest floor! 

February 2013's Recipe of the Month: Healthy Cooking's Makeover Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Mushroom Sauce

Like so many people, especially those of us who are still clinging to our New Year's Resolutions to eat more healthy and to be more fit, we're always on the lookout for a way to lighten up favorite foods without lightening up flavor.  With that in mind, Healthy Cooking's revision to Julie Stack's great-grandmother's recipe for stuffed chicken breast with mushroom sauce in their October-November 2012 issue caught our attention. 

We couldn't resist the temptation to see if the makeover would live up to our flavor expectations.  Our judgement call:  quite a nice, easy preparation that fills the bill when you're longing for comfort food.  Why not give the recipe a try and let us know your thoughts!

We found these tiny treasures growing in a thick bed of oak leaves. 

January 2013's Recipe of the Month: Chicken Thighs in a Golden Chanterelle Cream Sauce

Our last foray of 2012 brought us a collection of quite large and firm golden chanterelles along with our first hedgehogs.  What a nice way to end the year with mushrooms in our basket!

Chanterelles,  hedgehogs and cream are a perfect combination of flavors and textures when served over quickly sauteed chicken thighs and accompanied by steamed rice.  This quick and easy dish makes an elegant and delicious entree for family and friends!

Our last of 2012 chanterelles were quite large!

December 2012's Recipe of the Month: Nepenthe's Pappardelle with Chanterelles

Planning our annual pilgrimage to places south makes me yearn for Nepenthe, that legendary Big Sur restaurant perched high on the majestic cliffs above the Pacific Ocean.  What better choice, then, for the Recipe of the Month, than a selection from Romney Steele's My Nepenthe, written by the owner's granddaughter in 2009. 

This delightful 336 page book celebrates the 60+ year history of Nepenthe, the cultural icon which came to stand for free-living bohemian lifestyle.  But, the book is so much more than a history.  As the cover states, "Ultimately, My Nepenthe is a  story about food, family, and the culture of place, and how it all unfolds around the table and why that matters." 

A plate of chanterelles and pasta is always welcome! 

November 2012's Recipe of the Month: Cheese, Wild Mushroom 'n Bacon Pie

Sometimes when you're leafing through a magazine a recipe will simply jump off the page.  That's what happened the other day when I was looking through the August/September 2010 issue of "Taste of Home" and came across Barbara Estabrooks' Cheese, Wild Mushroom 'n Bacon Pie recipe which was the Philly Cream Cheese grand prize winner.  And, deservedly so.  It's a silky, savory update to the traditional quiche, thanks in large part to the inclusion of our seasonal wild mushrooms.  We folded rehydrated Birch Boletes along with fresh chanterelles (which we gathered earlier in the day on our refuge) into the dish and served it as an appetizer to very appreciative guests!

We used the remainder of our dehydrated Birch Boletes in our pie.

October 2012's Recipe of the Month: Pork Dumplings with Lobster Mushrooms

What's not to like: they're quick to make (take about 35 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to steam), lovely to look at and delicious to taste!  And, they incorporate diced lobster mushrooms in the filling, rather a wonderful use for a somewhat mundane mushroom.  Now, don't you wish that everything in your life was this simple?

These tasty dumplings are surprisingly quick to make.

September 2012's Recipe of the Month: Martha Stewart's Eggs & Morels Baked in Cream

Sure, I know that it is September and chanterelles are the order of the day, but when I came across this recipe in a very old (April, 2006) issue of Martha Stewart Living, I was just too curious not to try it with some of this spring morels.  What a great decision that turned out to be!  It's rich with flavor and perfect for a late summer brunch...or pretty much any occasion.

As usual, we slightly modified the recipe by boiling down the liquid that remained after the morels were rehydrated, adding it to the cream and thereby intensifying the morel flavor of the sauce.

Morels are such a delicious gift from the forest floor!

August 2012's Recipe of the Month: Creamy Sausage & Bacon Casserole with Boletes

Every once in a while you find a wonderful recipe in an unexpected place.  So it was with us not too long ago. 

We'd briefly stopped at Safeway on our way up to Brightwood to pick up a couple of things for a quick breakfast, including a package of Hormel Little Sizzlers, a couple of oranges, and a bag of sourdough muffins.  We wanted to have a light breakfast at the cabin before starting off for a mushroom hunt in a favorite prime bolete area later in the next day.

It's great to have dried boletes on the pantry shelf.