Beer-Battered Lobster Mushroom Confessional

Lobster mushrooms are hands-down my favorite mushroom. Not only do they have a unique biology, but they're incredibly delicious! A lobster mushroom starts out as the mildly uninteresting, pure white Russula brevipes.

Shortly after Russula brevipes emerges on the forest floor, it becomes victim to a delicious pathogen; Hypomyces lactifluorum, which usually completely covers the mushroom in a firm red-orange crust, very reminiscent of a cooked lobster shell.

photo from here

Sometimes the gills from Russula brevipes are still intact inside the lobster mushroom!

It's lobster mushroom season right now in the Pacific Northwest, and Alex and I were in Seattle a few weeks ago for two reasons. First, we originally bought plane tickets to attend our good friend's wedding (at Tree House Point, OMG it was gorgeous!). And the second reason we were in Seattle was completely on the other end of the emotional spectrum. 

My good friend, previous neighbor/land-lady, bridesmaid in my wedding, and reader-of-this-blog passed away all too young after her arch nemesis, metastatic breast cancer, took a turn for the worse. For years Candice and her husband, Joe were outstanding hosts of our weekly potluck/game-night gathering of friends. Even when Candice wasn't feeling well or even when she was in the hospital, she insisted that the potluck will go on! Because that's exactly who she was. She did everything in her power to live a totally kick-ass life (and inspire others to do the same!), and she loathed the thought of anyone canceling their fun plans on account of her. And so, after she left us, it seemed necessary that the potluck should go on. Even though some of us had scattered out of state, we all made the trip back to This Old House for a bittersweet potluck/game-night reunion.

I've never lost someone so close to me before, and this roller-coaster of grief is really bizarre. Food is certainly an extension of my emotions and I've been swinging between complete lack of appetite and manic elation over seemingly random foods. For example, lobster mushrooms. The morning after our potluck/game-night reunion, a few of us went to the University District Farmers Market. When I saw that Foraged & Found Edibles was selling lobster mushrooms, I was ecstatic. I bought way too many because I was certain, in that moment, that lobster mushrooms were the key to happiness and I desperately wanted to share this happiness with all my friends.

When choosing lobster mushrooms, I look for the cleanest ones, with the fewest nooks and crannies for dirt to hide in. Even the cleanest lobster mushrooms will still be dirty though. Running water and sometimes a brush are the easiest ways to clean these mushrooms.

We decided it was best to beer-batter and fry these mushrooms. 

Beer Batter

 1 bottle of beer (we used Sierra Nevada Pale Ale)

1 cup flour

1 egg

Salt & Pepper

Mix together the batter. Slice up the mushrooms into roughly 1/2inch thick slices. And prepare a plate of flour seasoned with salt and pepper.

Coat each mushroom slice in flour, shake off the excess, and then coat them in batter. Meanwhile, have a pot of vegetable oil heating up on the stove.

When the oil is hot (test it by throwing a pinch of flour in, if it bubbles wildly, it's ready), throw in some battered mushroom slices and fry them till they're golden brown.

Remove the slices from the frying pan and place them on a plate lined with paper towels. These can be kept warm in an oven while you fry the rest.

It can help to divide the work - Alex fried while I battered.

Elwood helped too.

A feast of beer-battered lobster mushrooms!

Previous posts about Lobster Mushrooms:
Fish & Chips
Tempura Lobster Mushroom
Creamy Cheesy Mushroom Medley with Rice
Lobster Mushroom Etouffe
Lobster Mushroom Fried with Brioche Crumbs

A "recipe" from Candice:
Baked Eggs

Gluten-Free Broccoli-Mushroom-Cheddar Pie

Woohoo!! I figured out how to make gluten-free pie dough! (for my GF buddies, cause I love them, and I love a culinary challenge) ...though admittedly, it's somewhere between pie and biscuit dough.  I did a bunch of research, and while everyone seemed to suggest that it's best to make your own flour blend, I decided I was semi-lazy and bought Pamela's Gluten Free flour blend.

I started with my sister-in-law's recipe, then compared it with the recipe on the back of my bag of Pamela's flour, made a few tester pies, and ultimately settled on this recipe:

Gluten-Free Pie Dough

6 Tbsp Butter

1 1/4 Cups Pamela's GF Artisan Flour Blend

1 tsp Baking Powder

1 Large Egg

1/4 Cup Cold Water

Pinch Sugar

Two Pinches Salt

I like to use frozen butter, cut into small cubes. Then squish the butter into the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar, salt) with your fingers. The key with pie dough is that you want to keep it cool so that the butter doesn't melt. Crack the egg into a bowl with the water and beat them together with a fork or whisk. Combine the wet stuff with the dry stuff and knead it all together - if it's not easily forming a cohesive dough, add more water, a Tablespoon at a time.

Once the dough is made it could be used for anything. I made 6 personal-sized hand-held pies, and the second time I used this recipe for two 9-inch pies.

First, to roll out the dough is a little bit different than rolling out a gluteny dough. FLOUR FLOUR FLOUR. Flour everything incredibly well with GF flour.

Then, very gently, roll out the dough. The weight of the rolling-pin alone was enough pressure to achieve this. And "keep the dough moving", meaning between every roll; rotate it, lift it up, make sure it's not sticking to the table.

I placed some chopped broccoli, cremini mushrooms, and white cheddar cheese in the center of my dough, then gently folded the dough over the filling and crimped it shut.

To get nifty ruffled edges, simply poke them with your finger.

I thoroughly egg-washed the outside of each pie and topped it with more grated white cheddar.

These pies need to bake for at least 30min at 350F.

In the end it kind of looks like a blobby mess, but it sure is tasty!

Lobster Mushroom #4 - Tempura

To recap, I've used lobster mushrooms in Fish & Chips, Risotto, and Etouffee. Last night, I made tempura lobster mushrooms. I can't remember the last time I made tempura, so I had to look up a recipe. I fairly quickly settled on the recipe on the Food Network website, partially because I had all the ingredients lying around, anyway, long story short, I'm not totally happy with the tempura batter, and it's something I want to play with in the future. That being said, tempura is super easy and it did turn out to be quite tasty!

To make a dinner out of tempura I cooked up some udon noodles and stir fried some onions, carrots, garlic, sweet peppers, broccoli, and finished it with cilantro, green onions, liquid aminos, fish sauce, salt, and sriracha.

Fish & Chips

The best fish and chips you will ever have is not made with fish at all, but rather a fungus-infected mushroom. The plain white mushroom, Russula brevipes, gets consumed by Hypomyces lactifluorum, which contorts the mushroom and covers it with a hard bright red-orange coating. This appearance has won it the name of Lobster Mushroom. Russulas (and close relatives) have a unique cell structure that makes them "brittle like chalk". That's not to say they are delicate, Lobster Mushrooms in particular are quite sturdy, but if you try to bend the flesh, it snaps cleanly. This also gives it a wonderful "al dente" mouth feel. Here is what a Lobster Mushroom looks like in the wild:

To make this into fish and chips just follow the standard breading procedure, which is as follows:

1) Cut item to be breaded into pieces roughly 1/4 inch thick

2) Dunk a piece into flour, pat off the excess flour.

3) Dunk the floured piece into lightly beaten eggs, allow excess egg to drip off.

4) Plop the eggy piece into some seasoned bread crumbs. Cover the piece thoroughly with bread crumbs. (Season with salt at least, feel free to have fun with herbs or spices though)

5) Immediately fry the breaded piece in bacon fat or any other oil. Cook until golden brown!

Here's the logic behind the standard breading procedure if you're curious - The flour absorbs any natural moisture (this is incredibly helpful for breading meats that are naturally quite moist). Egg is essentially edible glue that can be used to stick dry things together, in this case, the egg is holding together the flour and bread crumbs while the flour is stuck to your food item. Then as you cook the breaded item, the egg works to cement everything together.

Now for the Chips part of Fish & Chips. Olsen Farm sells some amazing potatoes, in particular, the Bintje variety makes amazing fries! We just slice them up and fry them in bacon fat. Minimal turning/stirring helps to give them a nice crisp texture.

Morels!!

Spring is official as soon as the morels start popping up. Morels are easy to identify, but that doesn't mean you can just go picking anything that looks like a morel at first glance. If you're foraging early in spring and think you've found the first morel of the year, chances are it's actually a Verpa. Some people eat Verpas and love them, others think they taste gross, and some people get violently ill from eating them. There have even been reports of people eating Verpas for years, and then one day, suddenly developing a violent allergy to them. So, eat them at your own risk (they wont kill you), but here is how to tell them apart:

On the left is a true morel (Morchella esculenta) and on the right is a Verpa (Verpa bohemica). They look pretty similar, especially since they can both vary in color. The difference is how the wrinkly cap attaches to the stem. Morels caps are continuous with the stem making sort of a single hollow tube. Whereas Verpas have the wrinkly cap more or less draped over the stem and not as connected. It can actually be hard to keep the stem and cap connected on a Verpa, they fall appart easily. But morels will stay intact unless you take a knife to them. Here's a picture of a morel and a Verpa cut in half to show the stem attachment:

It's morel on the left and Verpa on the right again. Also, notice how the morel stem is nice an smooth on the inside, whereas Verpas can have cottony-looking tissue filling the stem.

So why go to all the trouble of finding and correctly identifying a mushroom? Because it's DELICIOUS.

Here are some morels sauteeing in butter with some spring onions and fresh garlic.

Morels and butter make excellent pasta sauce.

(In addition to the onions and garlic, I also added Italian sausage and sea beans.)

The Mac And Cheese

I have to give my friend, Sarah Richardson, some credit for the creation of this dish. She made a mac 'n cheese with butternut squash a few weeks ago that filled my soul with squishy delicious comfort, joy, and inspiration - the best kind of comfort food! So I took Sarah's idea and ran with it... here is my mac 'n cheese in the making.

From left to right, top to bottom, here's what's goin' on: sauteed chanterelles and baked delicata squash, onions pepper and sausage frying in a liberal amount of butter, cheddar cheese, and pasta. I made a cream sauce with all that butter plus some flour and milk, then added the cheese and everything. Topped it all of with some breadcrumbs under the boiler and here's the finished product.

IMPORTANT EDIT: I totally failed to remember the most brilliant part about Sarah's Squash-Mac-n-Cheese! She actually substituted the squash puree for the roux! More squash means less carbo-coma!

They can run, but they can't hide...

Every day that bike to work, I pass a spot that usually has some shaggy mane mushrooms. However the trick with these mushrooms is you have to catch them right when they pop up out of the ground, otherwise within a few hours they turn into an inky mess (these mushrooms are also called "inky caps"). Here is what an inky mess looks like:

It's been cool and stormy with plenty of rain the past few days, and then today was quite warm and sunny - this must be exactly what shaggy manes like, because I found more today than I've ever seen before! And lucky for me, some of them were still young enough to eat!

Coprinus comatus

The hunt is definitely the point of eating this mushroom, it really doesn't serve much of a culinary purpose. It's fairly flavorless and has a texture comparable to sauteed onions. But, since I finally found it, I had to eat it out of principle. I sauteed my catch with onions and cabbage and then smothered it with Golden Glen Creamery Red Pepper and Onion Cheddar and topped it with cilantro, voila:

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!

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.

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!

Bridal Trail Fruits!

Today might be that last day for wild mushrooms since the rain seems to be gone and it's only supposed to get hotter and hotter. To catch to end of the season I headed out to the Bridal Trail state park in Bellevue. I found a plethora of mushrooms, the only edible ones I recognized though were these oyster mushrooms:

I stopped and chatted with a kind woman on a horse and she introduced me to these local red huckleberries! They tasted just like tart grapes, with a hint of apple!

A Snack Fit for a Prince!

Today in my rush to class I stumbled on these lovelies just outside the Biology department! Their botanical name is Agaricus agustus, but you can call him The Prince. I made sure the cap stained gold and the flesh smelled of rich almonds before snatching them up and bringing them home! I took a tip from my Mycology professor and decided to quickly saute them with onions and spread it on toast.

Absolutely delicious!

Fruits of Spring!

We've been having ideal mushroom weather here in western Washington lately; frequent rain showers with mildly warm weather and sun breaks. The morels especially love the sun breaks. At the farmers market this past weekend, Foraged & Found Edibles had an impressive plethora of morels along with a small basket of Gyromitra montanum. I had no idea Gryomitra's were edible, as they're commonly called "false morels" - I just assumed that meant they were not morels and therefore inedible. But after consulting several sources I was convinced that they're not only edible but a popular (and cheap) morel substitute. Then on my bike ride home today I slammed on the breaks at the sight of a log bulging with white mycelium and a collection of whitish, gilled, shelf-mushrooms emerging. It could only be one thing - Oyster Mushrooms!! Naturally, I came home and made a mycological feast:

Here's the cast of characters from left to right:

Pluerotus sp., Morchella esculenta, and Gyromitra montanum

Below is a quick and poorly done picture of the finished product. I made some pasta with olive oil, salt, and pepper. On top is a saute of the mushrooms, four different Allium's (leeks, baby onions, green-garlic, and walla walla onion scapes), chard, and sea beans (Salicornia) - delicious!

Mushrooms!Mushrooms!Mushrooms!

It's that time of year again when there are mushrooms EVERYWHERE! The Burke Gilman Trail has a veritable plethora of mushrooms popping up along its edges. I even found some edible ones! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera to catch these guys in the ground, but here they are on my kitchen counter getting ready to be eaten:

Coprinus comatus, a.k.a. the Shaggy Mane

One characteristic of Coprinuses is that they deliquesce, that is, they decay by melting into ink rather quickly. And by quickly I mean a few hours sometimes, so the window of opportunity to find these guys, cook, and eat them is fairly short. Once a mushroom begins to decay, it's inedible, just like other foods; rotten is no good! Anyway, as soon as I picked these Coprinuses, I brought them home, cut them in half, made some tempura batter, and set about frying them in bacon grease.

They were interesting. They didn't really have any flavor, or perhaps a delicate one that got overpowered by the tempura/bacon grease. The texture was fasinating though. They were kinda slimy and stringy, but firm and tender at the same time. It had sort of a calamari-like quality to it. One cookbook describes them as "not slimy like okra, but delicious like octopus" - That's pretty much it. I want to try sauteing them next time.