Southern Oregon Coast
Spring came with a fury this year, bringing with it a surge of storms that dumped over 100" of rain in Port Orford in the first 3 months of 2012, 60 of it in March. Rain, rain, rain. And the rains signaled an end to our fall/winter mushrooming forays. We picked the last of the hedgehogs at the end of April, and they were beauties: large, perfectly formed and flavorful. What a great way to end the season!
And what a way to begin the spring season: picking picture-perfect oysters off fallen alders down by the creek. Thanks in no small part to the persistent rains, the oysters are fruiting in profusion! We loaded today's bounty into the dehydrator and will savor this batch of oysters in future soups and sauces.
We donated chanterelles and matsutakes to the Wild Game Banquet this year.
Portland and Mt. Hood
Towards the end of April we made our traditional trip to Portland to provide mushrooms for the annual Hilaire's Wild Game Banquet at the Monarch Hotel in Clackamas, Oregon. Steven's proud to have been the banquet mycologist and part of the chef-for-a-day crew for a number of years. During their day-long cooking marathon, Steven and the other volunteer chefs (under the watchful eye of Master Chef Shawn Hanlin of SWOCC in Coos Bay) prepared about 2 dozen items, ranging from squirrel and razor clams to whole wild pig and antelope to serve to the two hundred or so members and their guests.
What a great occasion! It's a charity event, with proceeds going to the Boys & Girls Club of Portland, the Friends of the Children, and the Boys and Girls Aid Society of Oregon. Scroll down to the bottom of this post and you can learn more about Hilaire's Wild Game Banquet.
The Banquet weekend is traditionally our first mushrooming trip on Mt. Hood. Frequently, we come home with a basketfull of giant puffballs and perhaps some verpa bohemica. Being the first of the spring mushrooms for us, they are indeed a special treat. This year was an exception: on Saturday we only collected 2 medium-size puffballs. They were a delicious addition to the pasta sauce we prepared that evening, but the quantity found was somewhat less than anicipated. A reminder, we guess, not to count our chickens before they're hatched!
While the mushrooms were scarce, the wildflowers were prolific - calypso orchids, stream violets, western trillium, Oregon grape, bleeding heart, skunk cabbage, flowering currants, scotchbroom, rhodies - the woods were alive with color and fragrance. We can't recall ever encountering such a rich display of blooms at the end of April on Mt. Hood. Maybe those rains did serve a purpose!
We're planning a return trip to Mt. Hood in the next couple of weeks. Perhaps there will be morels and boletes awaiting us!
Hilaire's Wild Game Dinner - the Tradition
In 1943, the Portland shipyards and war industries were booming. Hilaire's on SW Broadway and Washington was one of the town's great restaurants. In the back of Hilaire's, a friendly group of businessmen would gather daily around the large round table at lunch time to tell stories and plan their next fishing or hunting trip.
During the war, this group had to endure two critical shortages: whiskey and shotgun shells. The latter was made nearly unbearable when South Dakota advertised for hunters to rid their cornfields of an out of control pheasant population. Through a miracle (no one asked for details), two cases of shotgun shells appeared in someone's basement. A group of patriotic volunteers quickly formed and departed by train to aide these poor South Dakota farmers. The exact number of pheasants taken is still held in confidence (the statutes of limitations and all).
As payment for the ceaseless boasting, The Gentlemen of the Round Table that stayed behind thought the least the returning hunters could do was throw a pheasant dinner for the group. This request came in the form of a challenge to the hunters' culinary skills. The hunters took the bait and immediately began to quarrel over who had the best recipe and skills in the kitchen.
That's how it all started some sixty years ago: seventeen friends enjoying a good meal of wild game, a cold drink and some red wine.