Fruitful Fall

This has apparently been a fabulous fall for mushrooms. I got a new one at the farmer's market that I've never tried, the Saffron Milk Cap. Though, I think the Latin name is more telling: Lactarius deliciousus - Delicious! Lactarius and Russula are the two main genera with a crunchy texture. The difference is, when raw, Lactarius has a milky juice that oozes out when the flesh is broken (thus the name). Russula on the other hand has no such juice. Enough mycology, here are the gastronomic stars of the Russulaceae:

Lactarius deliciousus on the left bruises dark green when touched giving them a sort of spooky appearance that I think is totally appropriate for October! On the right is my old friend the Lobster Mushroom - Hypomyces lactifluorum (parasitized Russula brevepis).

I diced these mushrooms up along with some onions, garlic, and patty-pan squashes and sauteed these all together in some butter. Once the mushrooms were fully cooked, I added some flour and then milk and then white cheddar to make a cheesy cream sauce. Lastly I mixed in some cooked rice. What resulted was fantastic comfort food on a chilly autumn evening with the welcome crunch of the Russuloid mushrooms!

Deliciousus indeed!

Ready for Winter

Two years ago Alex and I decided that we were going to start shopping only at the farmers market for meat and produce. When winter came, we were horribly unprepared - kale and potatoes all winter long gets pretty rough. So last year I went nuts canning and freezing everything summer had to offer. Canning was a hugely involved process that didn't produce the best product, I thought. So this year, I've filled our freezer with corn, peppers, huckleberries, raspberries, ginger, broccoli, and chicken stock. Bring it on, La Nina Winter! We're ready:

A fungus on a mushroom that looks like crustacean

This year I was lucky enough to befriend someone with the scoop on local lobster mushrooms. They're near Mt. Rainier and the Hood Canal... It's a tough choice, but I think lobster mushrooms might be my favorite mushrooms ever. The mushroom part of it belongs to the genus Russula that is known for it's unique cellular structure that makes it's raw flesh "break like chalk". I think it's precisely this cellular structure that gives lobster mushrooms the perfect texture, the perfect "al dente" crunch that almost seems impossible with something so tender. It's the parasitic fungus that attacks the Russula to give it a lobstery complexion, not to mention a sweetly fishy flavor. Here's what it looks like in the wild:

Lobster mushrooms are utterly fabulous breaded and fried, but I decided to do something different this time. A professor of mine mentioned his favorite way to have lobster mushrooms was in etouffee - a classic Cajun dish, so I took that idea and ran with it. Etouffee came from the French method of slowly cooking vegetables and meat in a small amount of liquid inside of a closed vessel (pot with a lid). I essentially did just that with onions, garlic, corn , peppers, oyster mushrooms, and lobster mushrooms. By slow cooking with a small amount of liquid (veggie stock), everything was essentially slowly steamed, so the structural/flavor/color integrity of everything remained.

GINGER!

It's a special time of year...

Ginger! Fresh out of the ground! Grown in Wapato, WA by Mair Farm Take. Absolutely magical!

My Kitchen-Garden

I took a mushroom class at UW over the summer, part of which was creating our own edible-mushroom kits from scratch. My professor made the Reishi mushroom kit and gave it to me at the end of the quarter. Reishi mushrooms are much more common in Asian cultures and used as a daily health elixir, tradition says if you drink Reishi tea every day of your life you will live a longer and healthier life. I haven't made Reshi tea yet, but I will soon! Then there is the kit that I made completely from scratch - starting with a mushoom, isolating individual spores, mating germinated spores, and cultivating the mycellial mass that has gone on the bear many Oyster mushrooms.

Ganoderma lucidum

Reishi mushroom!

Pluerotus sp.

Oyster Mushrooms!

Happenstantial Fusion and other Gastronomic Explorations

Alex and I have been creating some sautéed creations that start out as a method to use up what's about to go bad in our fridge, only to realize later what a fantastically unusual fusion of cuisines we've created. It all started a few nights ago with pork stir-fry meat, then onions, garlic and carrots. I believe some peppers and summer squash, some broccoli, a tomato, and a phenomenal eggplant all went in too. We finished it with soy sauce, fish sauce, and tossed it with quinoa and Firefly Kitchen's kim-chee. Let's call it "Chinese-Korean-Brazilian cuisine with French Technique". Then there was last night's meal that began with fried potatoes and onions and evolved to contain summer squash, tomatoes, cabbage, and green beans. I cooked up some hot Italian sausages to put on the side and Alex brought out the sauerkraut... after one bite, I realize this would taste best mixed together, creating a French-Italian-German cuisine. This is also the beginning of what may be an obsession with combining spicy and fermented foods, they're just so exciting together!

On another note, I was craving grilled cheese and tomato soup the other day, but it was way too hot out, so instead I whipped up some gazpacho and made grilled cheese sandwiches with Golden Glen Creamery's Queso Con Salsa cheese. Just to make it a well-rounded meal I fried up some Stokesberry Farms sweet Italian chicken sausages also. Here's a picture of our perfect summer dinner out on the balcony:

The taste of summer...

Firefly Kitchens is a couple have a passion for pro-biotic fermented vegetables. They're just your average Seattlites with kids (so they only sell at week-day farmers markets), but holy cow they make some amazing stuff! Above is their sauerkraut, that's not only gorgeous, but some of the best and most unique sauerkraut I've ever had! It has an incredible meaty quality to it, like some sort of essence-of-beef, but at the same time its tangy and almost fruity.

CORN!!! The candy of summer! And this is the first of the season...

Also now coming into season in eastern Washington - Cantaloupe! More summer candy, and my favorite afternoon snack. I could easily eat a whole cantaloupe in one sitting, but I've been trying to ration myself to a half a cantaloupe a day... If only there was a was to preserve this to eat throughout the year...