Monthly Archives: October 2008

Chicken with Boozy Chanterelle Sauce

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ONE OF MY FAVORITE wild mushrooms for hearty meat dishes and pasta sauces is the white chanterelle.

Everyone is familiar with the golden chanterelle in its many guises (known as girolle in France and pfifferling in Germany). In the Pacific Northwest we’re blessed with another species that some consider even tastier, Cantharellus subalbidus.

White chanterelles are found on both sides of the Cascades. In drier climates they’re often the dominant chanterelle. They tend to grow in clusters beneath the duff and often require excavation. I find them more aromatic and meatier than goldens, and they seem to endure more prolonged storage in the fridge. I save whites for my favorite dishes.

Here’s a recipe adapted from Jane Grigson’s Mushroom Feast, which she calls Poulet aux Girolles. You can eyeball the amounts according to your own tastes. It’s not necessary to use a lot of cream to get good flavor.

2 lbs chicken thighs
1 lb white chanterelles (or goldens), chopped
butter
2 shallots, diced
cognac
port
chicken stock
heavy cream

Brown chicken on both sides in a few tablespoons of butter, then add diced shallots. Cook until shallots are soft and translucent. Deglaze with a good splash of cognac (1/4 cup or so) and turn chicken again, then pour a splash of port (again, around a 1/4 cup). Scrape pan well so all the chicken bits are mixed into the sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Add a 1/4 cup or more of stock and stir, then an equal amount of cream. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for a half-hour. Meanwhile in another pan, saute chanterelles in butter over medium-high heat, careful not to overcook. When the chicken is fully cooked and tender, remove to a covered dish. Raise heat and cook sauce down as desired, adding chanterelles for final minute or two of cooking. Lay chicken over rice pilaf and pour sauce over. Serves 2, with leftovers.

Cauliflower of the Woods

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IF YOU’VE NOTICED that the cauliflower mushroom might be more aptly named the day-old-clump-of-egg-noodles-stuck-in-the-collander mushroom, then you’re already halfway toward an understanding of how to cook it. In fact, I like to substitute cauliflowers in recipes that call for egg noodles. It’s ideal for a beef stew because you can cook the mushroom in the stew, then scoop it out as the bedding that the stew will be poured on.

Beef Stew with Sparassis

This is a basic stew recipe, codified by Mark Bittman in How to Cook Everything. You can make any number of changes, from the stock to the spices to the veggies, to make it more interesting. Ingredient amounts are largely up to you. As far as I know, Mr. Bittman hasn’t tried it over cauliflower mushroom.

1-2 lbs. stew beef, cubed
2-3 tbsp vegetable oil
2-3 large yellow onions, cut up
2-3 tbsp flour
2-3 cups beef or chicken stock
5-6 large carrots, cut up
3-4 russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
3-4 stalks of celery, cut up
1-2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 lb cauliflower mushroom, cleaned and cut into smaller clumps

Using a heavy pot or dutch oven, brown the beef all over in a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil, then remove from pan with slotted spoon. Cook the onions for a few minutes, then add the flour and cook another minute or two, stirring. Pour in the stock along with the bay leaf and thyme and add the beef back in. Stir well. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer half an hour, covered. Add the carrots and potatoes. After an hour, add the celery and the cauliflower mushroom. Cook covered until tender. Season to taste. Before serving, scoop out the cauliflower mushroom and divide into bowls; ladle stew over mushroom.

A Meal Fit for a King

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1 knob butter
1-2 shallots, diced
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
1 large king bolete, chopped
dry vermouth
salt and pepper
heavy cream
1 lb. pasta
parmesan for grating
parsley, chopped

1. Put a pot of water on the boil. Meanwhile, as it’s heating up, finely chop a couple shallots (or an equivalent amount of yellow onion if that’s what you have on hand) and saute in butter. Mince a clove or two of garlic and add to the saute. Chop up a large porcino or a few buttons and add to the saute, cooking for 5 minutes or so over medium-high and stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Deglaze with a splash of vermouth, then reduce heat to medium-low and stir in heavy cream to taste. The pasta should be nearly done. Drain pasta and serve. Pour porcini cream sauce over pasta, then sprinkle generously with grated parmesan cheese and a pinch of chopped parsley.

Here are a few other king bolete recipes from previous posts:

The Admiral

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The admirable bolete, aka “Admiral” (Boletus mirabilis), is one of my favorites, for its beauty, its lively flavor, and its fleeting collectabilty. Rarely do I find one before the bugs.

Unlike the king bolete (Boletus edulis), which can be used in all manner of culinary ways, the admiral is probably best by itself, sliced and sauteed, an amuse bouche for the table. The taste of lemon is distinctive and usually requires something to balance it such as butter or soy sauce. That said, I’m told the lemony flavor is produced by a compound in the velvety “skin” of the mushroom’s pileus, or cap. Presumably one could peel this off and then use the admiral in any standard porcini recipe.

The admiral is a mushroom of damp Pacific Northwest forests. I generally find it in older hemlock stands with spongy moss carpets where it likes to fruit off nurse logs, and though it can get quite large, with a cap approaching the size of a salad plate, edible specimens are usually smaller.

Pining for Pines

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This is the mushroom that kick-started a fungal gold rush in the early 90s, introducing hundreds of hopeful new commercial pickers to the “mushroom trail” and changing the non-wood forest products economy probably forever. It’s the matsutake, or pine mushroom (matsu for pine, take for mushroom). The Japanese species is Tricholoma matsutake, while the closely related North American species is named Tricholoma magnivelare.

Here’s what happened. The Japanese love their matsutake, and having depleted their own resource in the red pine forests of Japan, they turned to the export market. Commercial pickers in the Pacific Northwest, where the mushroom is found in abundance, cashed in for a few years, getting absurd prices like $50 or even $100 per pound, and then the market collapsed. Turns out matsutake are fairly common in many other temperate conifer forests around the world, including those in China, Korea, and even other parts of North America. It was a simple case of supply outstripping demand. Right now pickers are getting around $6-8 per pound. What galls them most, though, is that Japanese consumers at the other end of the supply chain are still paying top yen for their beloved matsutake, if not the ridiculous prices of a decade ago. Even in this country prime matsutake buttons command an exorbitant price; in Seattle’s Uijimaya market the other day they were going for $49.99 a pound.

During the go-go years, huge mushroom camps popped up outside of places like Terrace, B.C. (the “Zoo,” as it’s still called) and Crescent Lake, Oregon. The camps grew into little cities where open-air soup kitchens and even brothels catered to the pickers. Meanwhile these same pickers laid claim to productive patches and legend has it there was the occasional gunfight in the woods. When prices fell back to earth many of the pickers stayed in the game, expanding their expertise to other mushrooms or non-wood products such as salal and berries.

There’s this lingering rumor that you can still make some money picking mushrooms, so the woods remain full of commercial pickers. The good is that wild mushrooms are now a staple of the best restaurants around the country; the bad is that recreational pickers such as myself must look a little harder for a patch that hasn’t already been picked; and the ugly is that some commercial pickers continue to see the patches, even those on public land, as their own private stashes and will use threats, intimidation, and sometimes even violence to protect “their” crop. Mind you, I’ve never personally encountered such miscreant behavior, but I’ve heard stories and been threatened in an online forum.

Emotions tend to run high when it comes to matsutake. If commercial pickers or buyers get ahold of this post, don’t be surprised to see angry comments or corrections. To get an idea of the current picking imbroglio, check out this YouTube video made by a buyer in B.C. who’s sympathetic with the plight of pickers (there are several installments).

On to culinary matters. The matsutake, when young and fresh, is known for its pungent smell, what David Arora, author of Mushrooms Demystified, calls “a provocative compromise between ‘red hots’ and dirty socks.” The aroma is unforgettable, and so is the taste. It only takes a small amount of the mushroom to put its stamp on a dish, and a bunch of them can quickly fill a room with their smell.

As with other cultural icons in the East, many westerners wonder what all the fuss is about. The matsutake is an odd bird, with a flavor that is frankly too intense or unusual for many. It doesn’t work well in traditional western cuisines such as French or Italian. Don’t try cooking it with cream or butter. But when matched with ingredients from the Far East it can be exquisite. There’s a reason why it’s a delicacy in Japan. Try lightly grilling it and eating with a dipping sauce. In stir-fry dishes its meaty texture can be a substitute for animal flesh, as the porcino is in Italy.

Matsutake Sukiyaki

This is a traditional dish made by matsutake hunters while in the woods. A cast iron dutch oven is perfect for cooking it, whether indoors or out. I adapted the recipe from one in Hsiao-Ching Chou’s informative article on matsutake from the October 13, 2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Despite the long list of ingredients, this is a nearly fool-proof dish and fast. For a slightly different approach that can be a lot of fun with a group of friends, try this recipe for Matsutake Sukiyaki Hotpot.

2 cups beef stock
1/2 cup sake
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup mirin
1 bunch green onions
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 small yellow onion, cut into 1/2-inch wedges
1 cup Napa cabbage, shredded
1 cup bok choy, shredded
8 ounces matsutake mushrooms, brushed clean, trimmed, and thinly sliced
8 ounces bean thread or cellophane noodles, pre-cooked
1 package (about 14 ounces) firm tofu, cubed
1 1/2 pounds thinly sliced beef
2 tablespoons sugar, optional

1. Combine the stock, sake, mirin, and soy sauce in a pot or kettle and warm over medium heat. Thinly slice enough of the green onion tops to make 1/4 cup; set aside for garnish. Cut the remaining green onions in half.

2. Heat peanut oil in wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the green onions (minus the garnish), yellow onion, cabbage, bok choy, and matsutakes and stir-fry until they begin to soften, 3-5 minutes. Transfer the vegetables and fungi to the broth along with tofu cubes, and keep warm over low heat.

3. Cook the beef quickly in batches, just until nicely browned, 30-60 seconds on each side, drizzling about 2 tablespoons of the warm broth and 1 teaspoon of the sugar over when you turn the meat. Bunch these pieces to one side of the wok/skillet and continue with the remaining meat.

4. Add pre-cooked noodles to bowl and ladle over hot broth, mushrooms, tofu, and vegetables. Top with beef slices and drizzle some of the cooking liquids over. Sprinkle with a garnish of green onion.

For more on the matsutake trade and the mushroom trail, check out this article from The Atlantic by Lawrence Millman, and this one from Whole Earth by David Arora.

The Bear’s Head

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Check out this crazy looking fungus. From a distance it looks like a frozen waterfall. Close up you can see that all those little icicle-like projections are attached to arms, like the tentacles of an undersea creature. This is Hericium abietis, better known as the bear’s head mushroom. Other mushrooms in the Hericium genus include the lion’s mane (Hericium erinaceus) and the bear’s head tooth fungus (Hericium americanum). I usually find the bear’s head in old-growth forests, where it colonizes conifer stumps and logs and can be found fruiting in the same spot for several years. To harvest it, you slice off the appendages with a knife, careful to leave the attached stalk so it will fruit again.

I found this one while hiking in an ancient, moss-draped forest near Mt. Rainier with my friend Cora. On a day filled with edible mushrooms of various species, this one was the most spectacular. To give some perspective, the fungus in the photo above is about 18″ X 18″. Amazingly, we found it right in the middle of a trail where an old log had been cut to open a passage. How many hundreds of hikers and bikers had already brushed past this incredible mushroom without knowing they were rubbing elbows with a true delicacy of the forest? How many didn’t even stop to admire its ornate, even outlandish form? We left some for those who do notice such things.

The bear’s head is best simply sauteed in butter. Cook it longer and more gently (i.e. lower heat) than other mushrooms or it will be chewy. The taste is nutty, complex, a bit like cooked crab, as is the texture. Some mycophagists like to make faux crab cakes with it. Cora sauteed this one with both shallots and garlic and served it with a grilled halibut fillet topped with cherry tomato salsa.