Tag Archives: mushrooms

Black trumpet, hedgehog, and chanterelle wild mushroom risotto

Last weekend I went mushroom hunting in Mendocino with the UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and SF State mycology classes. It was AWESOME. The mushrooms were out in abundance. After such a dry and disappointing mushroom hunting season last year, I was stoked to say the least.

Yay for mushrooms!!!

I was so excited to finally find mushrooms after so much terrible dry weather things got a little extreme…

Me with the mushroom-fever-crazy-eyes

I found black trumpets (Craterellus cornucopioides) for the first time ever! They really blend in with the redwood duff so it is hard to find them:

Can you see the black trumpet mushrooms in this photo?

I climbed up a super steep slope to find these but it was totally worth it :) I’ve never collected these mushrooms before and I got a pretty good amount of them:

Black trumpet mushrooms that I collected from the redwood tanoak forests in Mendocino

In addition to black trumpets and oak and golden chanterelles (Cantharellus californicus and formosus), I found a bunch of yellow foot chanterelles (Craterellus tubaeformis), which were out very early this year. Usually, they don’t start coming out until December or January, but I’m not complaining!

yellowfoot AKA winter chanterelles

The mushrooms that I found in the greatest abundance were hedgehog mushrooms (Hydnum umbilicatum). I’ve never found so many in my life.

Bowl of hedgehog bounty

These are a really good edible, so I was very excited to find so many! They are also a good mushroom for an amateur since they are very difficult to misidentify. They call them the hedgehog mushroom because instead of gills they have teeth. Can you see the teeth in this photo?

Can you see the teeth? That’s why they call it the hedgehog

With all of my beautiful mushrooms, I decided to invite over some friends and make a wild mushroom risotto. I sauteéd up some of the chanterelles, hedgehogs, and black trumpets in olive oil and put them on baguette toasts for everyone to eat as an appetizer while the risotto was cooking.

Wild mushrooms (chanterelles, hedgehogs, black trumpets) on toast

I have only cooked risotto once or twice before, so I turned to Google for help with finding a recipe. I decided to base my recipe of off this mushroom risotto. Risotto is actually rather easy to make. All you need to do is sauté up some onions and garlic and whatever vegetables you like, then add 1 cup of arborio rice, and slowly add liquids while stirring continuously. Whether you decide to add milk, cream, vegetable or chicken stock is completely up to you! I started out with sautéing 3-4 chopped shallots and a few cloves of garlic in oil. I added a bit of minced celery, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper. Then I added a bunch of hedgehogs, black trumpets, and golden chanterelles to the pan. I used a lot more mushrooms than was recommended, but in my opinion they are the best part :)

Shallots, garlic, parsley, celery, hedgehogs, chanterelles, and black trumpets sauteeing

Shallots, garlic, parsley, celery, hedgehogs, chanterelles, and black trumpets sautéing

After the mushrooms are sautéed, you add milk and cream to the mixture. I decided to increase the size of the recipe to make sure I had enough risotto for all of my friends, so I added 1.5 cups of milk and 3/8 cups heavy cream. The recipe called for whole milk but I found that skim milk still made a very creamy and delicious risotto and was slightly healthier – but you can use whatever you’d like! Next I added 1.5 cups of arborio rice. After adding the rice you start to add stock/broth one cup at a time. I used vegetable broth because one of my friends is a vegetarian, but you can use whatever kind of stock you want. This is what the risotto looks like when you first start to cook it:

Risotto cooking

Risotto requires a lot of stirring. I’m talking like 25-45 minutes of non-stop stirring. You are supposed to stir continuously and add the broth one cup at a time as it absorbs. There is no magic number for how long it takes, you just cook it until it’s done. Make sure you invite a lot of friends over to help you stir :)

Meera being a good friend and helping me stir the risotto

Stirring is tiring stuff. Patrick takes over the stirring for a while.

Taste test the risotto to tell if it’s done cooking. It should be creamy but still a little bit al dente. This recipe took about 4 cups of vegetable broth and 45 minutes of stirring. At this point, we added the cheese. The recipe calls for grated Parmesan – we decided to use a mix of Parmesan Stravecchio and Reggiano. I skipped adding the butter because I thought it was rich enough.

Finally, the stirring is done!

I was concerned my risotto looked a bit drab but luckily Kari was there to suggest that I sprinkle parsley on top to color it up. It worked beautifully :)

Wild mushroom risotto with parsley sprinkled on top

I served the risotto with a giant vegetable salad. It was a nice light accompaniment to the rich risotto and made us feel slightly healthier :)

Wild mushroom risotto served with salad

And of course the most important part of any meal is having good friends to share it with! Thanks to all my friends who came over and helped me cook this delicious wild mushroom feast!

Gavin, Patrick, Meera, and Kari helping me eat the risotto

Bon appétit!

Me showing off my wild mushroom risotto and my awesome mushroom apron

Ingredient list (to make 5 generous servings):

4 shallots
3 garlic cloves
0.5 cup parsley
1 celery stalk
salt and pepper to taste
4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1.5 cups skim or whole milk
3/8 cup heavy cream
1.5 cups arborio rice
1-2 cups grated cheese of your choice (Parmesan-like)

Brunch time! Green pancakes with lime butter

Yesterday I decided to make brunch for my friend Valerie. Valerie and I met at sleep away camp when we were 10 and have been friends ever since! One of the first recipes that caught my eye when I bought Plenty, by my main man Yotam Ottolenghi, was the green pancakes with lime butter from page 150. I am SO glad that I finally made them because they are DELICIOUS. The pancakes are savory and taste like a Chinese egg roll – pancake fusion, or perhaps similar to Jeon, if you are familiar with Korean food.

Green pancakes in all their savory delicious glory

I decided to accompany the pancakes with scrambled eggs with you guessed it, yes MUSHROOMS. My blog has been sadly bereft of mushrooms as of late, so I decided to add them in to my scrambled eggs. Even though they were just regular button mushrooms from the Berkeley bowl, any mushroom is better than no mushroom in my opinion, and I’ve always thought the button mushrooms get a bad rap. Did you know that Agaricus bisporus, the common grocery store button mushroom, is actually the same species as cremini and portabella? Yes, you thought you were being fancy buying portabella mushrooms, but in fact it’s just a button mushroom grown larger. I’m not saying they aren’t still good though..look how pretty these babies are:

mushrooms!

I sauteed some mushrooms with half a red onion for the eggs while Valerie got started on the lime butter, which is a magic combination of butter, lime juice, lime zest, salt, pepper, cilantro, garlic, and chile flakes. Here is Valerie making the lime butter:

Valerie making the lime butter with lime zest, lime juice, salt, pepper, cilantro, garlic, and chile flakes

Here is the completed lime butter before we rolled it up in saran wrap and stuck it in the fridge to chill:

lime butter with lime juice, lime zest, salt, pepper, cilantro, garlic, chile flakes about to be chilled

How beautiful are all of these green ingredients for the green pancakes?

Green onions, cilantro, and limes for the green pancakes with lime butter

The next thing to do is to wash and wilt 0.5 lb of spinach in a pan, drain it, let it cool, squeeze out the moisture, roughly chop it, then set it aside. For the pancakes, Ottolenghi calls for self-rising flour, which you make by adding 1.25 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt to 1 cup of regular all-purpose flour. Melt 4 tbsp of butter in a pan and then add it to 3/4 cup self rising flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 egg, 0.5 tsp salt, 1 tsp cumin, and 2/3 cup milk in a large mixing bowl and whisk until smooth. Finely slice the green onions, then add them and the wilted spinach to the pancake mixture along with a green chile. Ottolenghi called for 2 fresh green chiles but he did not specify which kind and since I’m not huge on spicy I used one large jalapeno pepper. I removed the seeds from the jalapeno pepper before adding it to the pancakes but if you are a big fan of spicy, by all means go ahead and add more! Here is what the pancake mixture looks like:

Pancake mixture with flour, baking powder, egg, butter, salt, cumin, milk, green onions, spinach, and green chile

The next step is a bit complicated – you are supposed to whisk an egg white to soft peaks and gently fold it into the batter. What exactly is a soft peak?? I had no idea about this but luckily Valerie seemed to know, but unfortunately she said my whisk stinks and she could not whisk to soft peaks with it. Luckily the pancakes still turned out gorgeous even with the poorly whisked egg whites:

Green pancakes browning in the pan

Heat a pan to medium high heat, add olive oil, and add 2 tbsp of pancake batter for each pancake and cook them for 2 minutes on each side. Here are the pancakes with lime butter:

Green pancakes with lime butter

For the scrambled eggs, I cracked and whisked up 5 eggs, added salt, pepper, and basil flakes, and added them to the sauteed mushrooms and onion:

Green pancakes with lime butter with scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions

Valerie brought over some fresh lettuce from her mother’s garden and we made a simple lettuce and tomato salad to accompany the pancakes and scrambled eggs. Here is the completed meal:

Green pancakes with lime butter, scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions, and lettuce and tomato salad

Here is Valerie enjoying the lovely meal:

Valerie and her delicious brunch of green pancakes with lime butter and scrambled eggs with mushrooms

Next time you are thinking of going out to one of those trendy brunch spots and waiting over an hour in line to be at the hippest spot in town, think about making this brunch at home instead. Delicious high quality and way cheaper brunch fair all from the comfort of your own home – plus you get to keep the leftovers. I highly recommend it :)

Ingredients:

Lime butter
8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
Grated zest of 1 lime
1 1/2 tbsp lime juice
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
1/2 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/4 tsp chile flakes

1/2 lb (about 8 cups) spinach, washed
3/4 cup self-rising flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 egg
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
2/3 cup milk
6 medium green onions, finely sliced
2 fresh green chiles, thinly sliced
1 egg white
Olive oil for frying

Cheesy mushroom lasagna

I’ve never made a lasagna before but this seemed like a good use for the Italian Velvet pioppini mushrooms, and I thought the Trumpet royales would be a nice meaty addition. I found this recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty, and he claims that it’s the very best cheesy lasagna, and who am I to argue with Ottolenghi? This is definitely not a dish to make if you are watching your waistline, since it involves LOTS of butter and LOTS of different kinds of cheeses. I usually prefer to cook the lighter middle eastern themed dishes, but I figured I should include at least one rich, decadent, creamy recipe with my mushrooms! Besides, this is a great dish to feed a crowd, which was great, since I invited 5 lovely ladies to enjoy the meal with me.

Toasting to ladies and mushrooms!

This dish is also pretty involved and requires lots of different components and long cooking times, so we enjoyed some wine and crostinis with butter and sauteed mushrooms while the food cooked. Ottolenghi suggests using porcinis and assorted mixed mushrooms for this dish, but the Velvet pioppini and Trumpet royale mushrooms worked great! First I preheated the oven to 350 F, then I cut and sauteed the Trumpet royale mushrooms in butter:

Trumpet royale mushrooms

I used some of these for the appetizer crostinis, and the rest I saved for the lasagna. Next I cut and sauteed the pioppini mushrooms in butter and added a few springs of thyme.

Once the mushrooms were cooked, I added 2 tbsp chopped tarragon and 4 tbsp chopped parsley, and set it aside for later. Don’t the mushrooms look tasty with all of the bright green herbs?

Sauteed mushrooms in butter, with thyme, parsley, and tarragon.

Next I made the bechamel, which of course I had never made before. It involves – you guessed it – lots of butter! After melting 5 tbsp of butter and adding a chopped shallot, which I cooked for a minute, then I had to add 0.5 cup flour and stir continuously for 2 minutes. This is the part where things got a bit tricky and I’m not quite sure I did everything right. You are supposed to add 2.5 cups of milk, 0.5 tsp salt, whisk until boiling, then simmer for 10 minutes. This seemed to reduce a lot and didn’t make nearly as much bechamel as I thought I was supposed to have for this lasagna. Granted, we were supposed to add 6oz of Gruyere to the bechamel, which I did not do because one of my friends accidentally brought smoked Gouda instead of Gruyere and I thought the smoked Gouda would overwhelm the dish so I just left it out. Perhaps that would have made a large difference in volume and I would have had a lot more ooey gooey lasagna. So this lasagna only had 4 types of cheese instead of 5! Oh well :) The bechamel is supposed to coat the bottom of the lasagna pan, and is supposed to top every layer of the lasagna, but we definitely did not have enough to top every layer. Here I am chopping the butter for the bechamel:

Cutting up butter for the bechamel

For the next layer of the lasagna, I mixed 13 oz of ricotta with an egg, 3 tbsp of the bechamel sauce, and 5 oz of feta. For the noodles I substituted whole wheat lasagna for spinach lasagna, which I could not find anywhere. My friend Stella graciously boiled each lasagna noodle for a few minutes before I layered them into the lasagna. There seems to be a lot of room for flexibility when it comes to layering a lasagna. Clearly it depends on the size of the pan you use and the size of the noodles, so my lasagna only ended up having 3 layers of noodles and one layer of bechamel sauce to coat the bottom. After coating the bottom with the bechamel, then adding a layer of lasagna noodles, I then spread the ricotta/feta/egg mixture on top.

Spreading the ricotta/feta/egg mixture on top of the lasagna noodles

Next, I added the mushroom and herb mixture.

Mushrooms sauteed in butter and herbs layered into the lasagna

On top of the mushrooms we added shredded Mozarella:

Lasagna noodles layered with ricotta/egg/feta mixture, mushrooms and herbs, and shredded mozzarella

I made two such layers, then added another layer of noodles and topped with more mozzarella and some parmesan (told you this recipe involved lots of cheese!). Then I covered the lasagna in foil, and baked it for 40 minutes at 350 F (thankfully I had preheated the oven!). After 40 minutes you are supposed to remove the foil and leave in for another 10 minutes. At this point the parmesan came out nice and golden:

Mushroom lasagna topped with shredded mozzarella and parmesan

After 40 minutes my friends were a bit antsy, and it was not very easy getting them to wait the required 10 minute resting period after the lasagna came out of the oven. I fed them arugula and tomato salad while they waited for the lasagna, which was a nice pairing (thanks to Ottolenghi for the tip!). Here’s all my friends eating the salad while they eagerly awaited the lasagna:

Stella, Claire, Simone, Lauren, and Meera waiting for the lasagna to come out!

Needless to say, they were very excited once I finally let them cut into it:

Mushroom and cheese lasagna

The lasagna was very cheesy and rich:

Overall, it was a very fun night filled with decadent cheesy mushroom lasagna, wine, and good friends. Here’s to mushrooms and girlfriends – two things I could definitely never do without!

Free mushrooms from Gourmet Mushrooms, Inc!

In a previous post, I talked about my trip to Santa Rosa in Sonoma County to give a talk to the Sonoma County Mycological Association on my research on fungal diversity in Yosemite. While there, I made a connection with Justin Reyes, who works for Gourmet Mushrooms Inc. Justin kindly sent me some mushrooms for me to cook with! I was super excited to try out some new mushroom themed recipes, and I cooked 3 mushroom themed feasts featuring these mushrooms. Last Wednesday night, I made mushroom lasagna with the Velvet Pioppini and the Trumpet Royale mushrooms for 5 of my girl friends. Thursday night, I made an epically good barbequed Maitake Frondosa with Mee Goreng for my friends Meera and Judy, who enthusiastically gobbled it up. With the brown clamshells I found a delicious sounding recipe for marinated mushrooms with walnut and tahini yogurt in Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty. Look forward to some awesome mushroom filled posts :) Here is some mushroom photography for you to enjoy!

Trumpet royale:

2014-04-05 15.10.34

Brown clamshell AKA shimeji:

Brown clamshell mushrooms

Velvet Pioppini:

Velvet Pioppini

Maitake Frondosa:

A note on their ecology:

Since I’m a mycologist, I can’t help but take a minute to comment on their ecology. I’m actually not familiar with any of these mushrooms and have never cooked with any of them before. The reason for this is that I was trained to identify California mushrooms, and none of these mushrooms are native to California. As their names suggest, Pioppini are Italian and the other three originate in Asia. Another reason that I’m not as familiar with these particular mushrooms is that they are all cultivated mushrooms, and they are saprophytic, which means that their ecological role is to decompose dead material and recycle nutrients. This environment is relatively easy to reproduce in culture and thus saprotrophs are readily cultivated. I study ectomycorrhizal fungi, which are mutualistically associated with trees, and thus have to be foraged in the wild order for us to find them since we can’t readily reproduce the environment of a tree in culture. We need wild in tact forests in order to find the prized edible ectomycorrhizal mushrooms such as chanterelles, porcinis, and truffles. So just another reason in favor of forest conservation :)

Can’t wait to tell you all about my three mushroom themed feasts!

Sonoma county mushrooms and wine tasting

So I was invited to give a talk to the Sonoma County Mycological Association on Thursday night. I spoke to them about my research on fungal diversity in Yosemite National Park. Here is the little blurb about me on their website. There are so many mushroom lovers in the bay area you wouldn’t believe it! In October I spoke at the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz and the Bay Area Mycological Society, and this February I spoke at SOMA. People in the bay area really love their mushrooms, and there are so many truly talented amateur mycologists! While my research isn’t on mushrooms per se, I did my best to make the talk fun and accessible to all and entertaining for the full hour that they gave me.

Me showing off some winter chanterelles

The people at SOMA were super engaged and asked tons of good questions and it was super fun to speak with them! I was very energized about my project after speaking with the people at SOMA :) However, rather than rush back to the lab thursday night and drive in the dark, I figured that as long as I had made the trek to Santa Rosa to give the talk, I might as well take the day off on friday and enjoy the fruits of Sonoma County on Friday. After all, we wouldn’t have wine without my favorite fungus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is of course responsible for wine, beer, bread, cheese…basically all the good things in life!

The president of SOMA graciously gave me a long list of recommendations for places to wine taste in Sonoma County, which undoubtedly would keep me occupied for many weekend wine tasting adventures. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by my options, I decided to ask the front desk at my hotel and stop at vineyards located on my way home to Berkeley. Being a poor grad student, I ended up going to the vineyards that the hotel gave me free passes for, and I must say; I was not disappointed!

Vineyards in Sonoma county. How lucky am I to live in northern California??

How gorgeous are these vineyards?? Man it was a beautiful day in Sonoma county – not to gloat too much to my friends inundated in snow on the east coast – but you should definitely come visit me here :) I stopped in at Kenwood winery first, as it was the closest to my hotel in Santa Rosa. The people were a bit surprised to see a lone wine taster, but honestly I think it served me well visiting places on my own. I got to talk a lot with the people pouring the wine at the vineyards, got insider information on new places to visit, and probably got more free pours this way :) Here is the friendly wine pourer at the Kenwood winery.

Kenwood winery

As I pulled out of the Kenwood winery I noticed an olive oil store, so I decided to stop by for a taste.

Olive oil? Yes, please!

They had some delicious mushroom themed oils such as truffle oil and porcini oil, which were tasty, but I was actually inspired to buy some delicious balsamic vinegar. Who wants to bring some nice crusty bread to my house and dip it in my balsamic vinegar with me?

The olive oil and vinegar tasting got my taste buds going so I decided to stop for lunch at Cafe Cetti before continuing on to the vineyards. I figured having an entire pizza in my car was a good idea to get me through all the wine stops. And indeed, it served me well throughout the day :)

Artichoke heart pizza

So after Kenwood I continued on Highway 12 and stopped into Deerfield, which is known for its wine caves. I stopped in and checked out the wine caves, which were super cool! However, it was too crowded and I didn’t have a free coupon, so I stepped out without tasting any wine.

wine caves!

Next I continued on to BR Cohn, which was an absolutely stunning winery with a beautifully situated tasting room up on a slight hill.

Wines at BR Cohn

So much wine…so little time…

Wines at BR Cohn

I started off with a Sauvignon blanc, and then continued with the reds that they are famous for. I enjoyed the Barbera and the Cabernet Sauvignon immensely. Don’t they have the cutest glasses there?

BR Cohn

I met some nice ladies at BR Cohn who were visiting from Seattle and told me that I had to go to Valley of the Moon winery.

vineyards at Valley of the Moon

This was definitely my favorite stop in Sonoma. They had absolutely delicious wine and I surprised myself by buying 2 bottles! I bought a Rosato Di Sangiovese and a Pinot blanc. I didn’t even think that I liked a Rose very much, but this one was delicious. The Pinot blanc was also super flavorful and fruity. Now I just need an occasion to drink them! The wine pourer found out that I forage for mushrooms and got super excited. He is starting a kitchen at Valley of the Moon – who knows, maybe one day we will forage together!

Valley of the Moon Winery

My last stop was at Benzinger, which is a biodynamic winery. They compost everything, grow plants that foster pollinators and predators of insect pests, and have goats to eat cover crop and fertilizer with their manure. More wineries should be like them! They had a Sauvignon blanc that was like nothing I’d ever tried before, and of course, I had to buy it :) It was so delightful and flavorful and smelled like flowers and fruit and was just super unique.

I feel pretty accomplished hitting up 4 wineries in a single day, but there are countless more that were recommended to me. I especially hear that Healdsburg and Dry Creek Valley Road are good. Who wants to plan a trip with me :) ?

fungi foodie

The world is your oyster mushroom!