Mad about Mushrooms . . .

Welcome 2021!

As 2019 was ending, I gave thanks  ...  “for what lies ahead is more challenging and exciting and engaging than I can ever image.”

Little did I know what I was prophesying!  Then, on January 1 of last year, we were joyful and excited about the New Year. Now, twelve months later, we are daring to be optimistic, cautiously optimistic about the coming year.

From time to time my mind drifts to the splendid Japanese garden where I am a volunteer gardener. Here there is a source of perseverance and of courage as we notice how winter has painted this beguiling landscape, brushing it into a symphony of colors and textures, with the realization that each season, each event is a cause for celebration. There is solace in its simplicity.

Photographer Bill Peterson beautifully captured
raindrops glistening on holly,
a promise of the wonder now and to come.

We observe how the evergreen holly leaves glisten with raindrops while holly branches are alive with bright red berries, soon to be devoured by squirrels and birds. Here and there fungi are breaking ground, seeming to traverse the pathways and tucking themselves protectively under the foliage of the holly and other plantings.

In the background a solitary stone lantern maintains its reticent vigil, beckoning and lighting the way. Nearby, but unseen, a moss-draped rock turtle, a symbol of wisdom and peace, patiently awaits the arrival of the New Year.

Thus it is that we end 2020 and greet 2021 in the stillness of this Japanese garden as well as in the surrounding woodlands where their pristine beauty rejuvenates and offers hope for an abundance of healing and a resurgence of kindness. All is at rest and awaiting the arrival of a new spring to stimulate the bounty and beauty of the garden and forest floors.

Yes, welcome 2021.  We await you with great enthusiasm!

 

Considering Chad Hyatt's The Mushroom Hunter's Kitchen

It wasn't that long ago that I was pleased to participate in a Zoom event with Chef Chad Hyatt of the Bay Area, thanks to the very active Wild Rivers Mushroom Club.  It was an amazingly entertaining session with Chad offering sound advise and concentrating on what he calls "weird" mushrooms. 

In his introduction, Chad promised to steer away from the traditional, old fashioned mushroom recipes that we too often encounter in our cookbook collection.  Instead his goal was to step up to a higher level, away from myth, into the atmosphere of science.  How does something work?  What is going on?

I am sure that my fellow audience members would agree that he did just that as he prepared 4 different "things" pretty much at the same time during his presentation.  Ably assisted by his wife, Rosa (who is from Catalonia where they are "absolutely insane" about mushrooms), Chad detailed the science behind the preparation of the seviche served over boiled sweet potatoes, "creamless" cream of mushroom soup, black trumpet jam, and parfaits with candied mushrooms.

Yum, a tasty, "full meal" served up with great panache in less than a hour and a half!

Oh, I mustn't forget.  You can order Chad's cookbook direct as I did and receive a speedy delivery.  Even in the midst of the holiday shipping rush, I was cooking up a fungal feast from The Mushroom Hunter's Kitchen in time for Christmas dinner!

December, 2020's Recipe of the Month: Chef Lucas Sin's Golden Fried Rice with Salmon and Furikake

Over the past month it felt as if I kept bumping into Hong Kong raised Chef Sin.  There was a photograph of his Golden Fried Rice on the cover of Bon Appétit, followed up by a two page introduction to the recipe before we even found the list of ingredients and instructions 24 pages later.   And, if that were not enough, he and his recipe popped up my public radio station, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the other day when I turned on The Splendid Table.  It didn't take much to convince me that there must be more than meets the eye with this simple-sounding recipe.  I suspected straight away that it wasn't going to be another version of my mother's soy sauced fried rice, and it wasn't.  In fact, for me, the recipe turned out to be somewhat of a trellis upon which I could hang other ingredients such as wild mushrooms.

Oh,  yes, surely you noticed that the recipe doesn't include mushrooms.  Well, when I served the dish to a friend, his first comment was:  You really need to add some fresh boletes to this or white chanterelles ... perhaps matsutake, a great suggestion that you, dear reader, may also wish to consider.  

We considered adding slices of   
wild mushrooms to this entrée.