Sunday, January 16, 2011

A Fungus Among Us

If you met my dad today you'd never imagine him as a hunter-gatherer. Well maybe a gatherer. But the hunter part you'd have a hard time believing.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of the day a large box arrived and was placed in the middle of our living room. Our dad opened the box and out came a bear skin rug. The rug had been a bear that my father had hunted in Michigan and it was the scariest thing I'd ever seen. With big, shiny white teeth and snarling expression frozen on its face, I was sure it was going to get us all! My dad thought it was hilarious to roar every time my brother or I came anywhere close to the beast. Then he chased us around the house, up and down the stairs, through the kitchen and back into the living room until my mom finally put a stop to the shenanigans. As a small child when my friends feared the Boogie Man at night I'd image that the bear, hanging on the wall, had come back to life and was just outside my bedroom door waiting to eat me!

Fortunately the rug is no longer part of the family. After a long stint in my dad's closet it was given to the son of one of my dad's good friends and put where it belongs, hanging on a wall in a cabin in the woods.


The memory of my dad, the gatherer, is much less scary, for the most part. I recall walking through the forest with him, picking mushrooms and taking them back to the car to be properly identified. I don't remember us ever eating anything he picked but rather dissecting them, looking from mushroom to book and back trying to get a positive ID.


20 years ago he gave me a copy of David Aurora's Mushrooms Demystified. Mike and I started hiking the hills in search of chanterelles. Easily identified, delicious, safe to eat and this year they are being harvested by local gatherers in abundance. If you are familiar with the book you'll remember the photo of David Aurora coming out of a field with a big box of shrooms and a face painted green. That's how I started to feel after consuming a box of freshly harvested chanterelles. Freezing some before you get to that point is a great idea.


I lightly dry saute mine, then put them into small ziploc bags once they've cooled and pop them into the freezer for use during the leaner shrooming times of the year.After making chanterelle enchiladas, and about 10 different types of pasta with chanterelles and whatever else I happen to have on hand, I've landed on my favorite use for the golden fungi - Wild Mushroom Risotto. Part of the reason I'm partial to this recipe is that it allows me to use up some of the home dried porcini mushrooms a fellow forager recently sent out way.


Wild Mushroom Risotto


1 to 1 1/2 cups chopped wild mushrooms (reconstituted if using dry)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, diced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
3 +/- cups liquid - I use a mixture of chicken stock and the reconstituting water.
1 tablespoon fresh thyme or 1/2 tablespoon fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon fresh parsley
3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan



Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a medium sized pot. Add diced onion and cook until translucent. Add chopped mushrooms and saute until soft. Add rice, when slightly translucent around the edges add the wine. Start adding liquid a ladle full at a time all the while stirring the risotto. As the liquid is absorbed add more until the risotto is al dente. Add herbs, butter and cheese and let rest for 5 minutes. Serve with a green salad and a glass of the rest of that bottle of wine you opened for the risotto.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Life's Simple Pleasures

After both growing up with the same turkey with sage stuffing, sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping and green bean casserole every year, my sister-in-law Nancy and I made a pact that our Thanksgiving tradition would be to never make the same recipe twice. As a result, come mid-October, we compulsively check our mailboxes until finally the November issue of Bon Appetit arrives. Together we pour over the lists of menus and recipes. Our husbands are consulted and we pull together what we hope will be a fabulous menu. Shopping lists are made, shopping dates arranged and long loving hours are spent concocting a beautiful meal that takes on average 20 minutes to consume. I love the entire process and wouldn't dream of giving it up in a million years. However, by the Saturday after Thanksgiving I'm done with turkey for the year and I'm also ready to enjoy some time outside the kitchen.

This is when I turn to the simple things in life.

A few weeks earlier we'd been to a local restaurant and had a simple and delicious salad of bresaola with arugula. I was on the hunt to recreate it. Hmmm, where am I going to find bresaola in SLO County? One of the great benefits of living on the Central Coast is the availability of fresh ingredients. The downside is the scarcity of exotic or international ingredients. Things like empanada skins and guanciale are non-existent in the county.
An email to Devon netted me a sarcastic "Bresaola in SLO? Yeah, right!". This resigned me to postpone my re-creation until I could make it up to San Francisco. I added it to my shopping list along with the empananda skins and guanciale. Then the call came - Devon had happened upon a local restaurant that sells bresaola! In a foiled attempt to purchase the bresaola from Devon's source I actually found a second source in SLO!

Bresaola in hand I set about recreating this delicious, simple salad. Now, if I can just locate a local source for the empananda skins and guanicale...

Bresaola Salad
Fortunately thinly sliced bresaola goes a long way as you can expect to pay upwards of $20 a pound for it. A quarter of a pound should be plenty for about 6 salads.

1/4 lb bresaola (Muzio's or Luna Red in SLO)
baby arugula
good quality olive oil
Parmesan cheese
lemon wedges




Place 4 or 5 slices of bresaola directly onto a salad plate and add a big handful of arugula on top of the meat. Drizzle with good quality olive oil and shave some parmesan on to the arugula. Serve with a lemon wedge to be squeezed over the top just prior to eating.



Personally I think the pepper of the arugula and saltiness of the meat and cheese is seasoning enough, but you may want to add a bit of one or both to suit your taste.


Sit down, relax and enjoy!