Foraging recipe: Oyster and honeycomb mushroom Sisig

Don't want to hear me go on and on about foraging? Click here to jump to the recipe. 

I find myself foraging the same foods (my favorites) year after year, rather than focusing on trying new things for variety. So this year I set out with clear goals in mind:

1.  I was going to try and find honeycomb fungus (Favolus brasiliensis), an early-season polypore superfood that can only be found in this part of Texas in unusually rainy springs. 
2. I was going to pick lots of early-season giant ragweed, Ambrosia trifida, and experiment with it in the kitchen. 

Ultimately, I was successful in the first, but unsuccessful in the second. 

The flooding blocked off many familiar trails, and made others too dangerous to attempt

Here's what happened. I arrived at the park where I know lots of giant ragweed grows only to find that it was closed for safety considerations due to flooding. Several bridges were out, including the one I would have needed to use to get to the giant ragweed field. So that was a no-go. 

Instead, I decided to check out the nature preserve that butts up against the park in question. This preserve is on the other side of a large creek/small river from the park, but shares a lot of ecological features. Unfortunately, both entrances to the preserve were flooded out as well. 

Something compelled me to keep walking past the main entrances, uphill, to see if there was another way into the preserve. Eventually, I found a small desire path/trail, perhaps made by mountain bikers, that seemed to be clear, and I made my way inside.   

Even though I had been in this preserve many times before, I found myself in a part of it that was completely unfamiliar. Fortunately, more flooding and downed trees blocked most of the meandering and crossing trails, offering me only one way forward. Occasionally it would appear that there were alternate trails that were clear, but always I would find them blocked at some point, leading to a lot of climbing over downed trees, going off-trail to bypass bogs and a ton of backtracking. 

Eventually I did find one branch of the desire path I was on that connected to the main trails of the preserve, but ultimately those trails ended up completely impassable, leading me back to the desire paths made by mountain bikers and fishermen. 

After an hour and a half of that, I decided to give up on trying to find a field of giant ragweed and simply harvest the abundance that was all around me. Within 30 minutes my bags were bulging with favorites like curly dock, greenbrier, wood ear mushrooms and wild garlic scapes. And then I finally found some of the honeycomb fungus I've been looking for years! 

It took me another hour to get out of the preserve. I was absolutely drenched, covered in mud, and feeling amazing!

Once home, I had my first usable batch of honeycomb fungus, or Favolus brasiliensis, or possibly the related Favolus teniculus. Both are edible, grow in my area, and look very similar as far as I can tell. 

My history with this mushroom goes back 10 years now, to when I first moved to Texas and found the honeycomb fungus in a nature preserve during the early fall. 

I was disappointed at the time, since from a distance I had thought they might be oyster mushrooms, and I shared my disappointment on my Instagram. In all of my mushroom hunting books Favolus brasiliensis is listed as non-poisonous but also non-edible. To my surprise, one of my fellow foragers--a much better mycologist than myself--told me that the honeycomb fungus is not only edible, it's considered a superfood that's cultivated in Brazil, where it's known as the chicken breast mushroom. 

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Mind blown. 

I immediately began to research and found so much information on this mushroom, it's both amazing and sad that it remains so unknown in the US. 

Having finally found a nice amount to experiment with, I didn't want to waste them by preparing them incorrectly, so I decided to do some research on how other people prepared them. Unfortunately, as they are pretty much unknown outside of the Brazilian Rainforest, there wasn't a whole lot of information about how to properly prepare them. I only found 2 posts, one from the Central Texas Mycological Society and one from a blog called Retratos da Serra, which chronicles one couple's adventures in nature, living in the area. It's a fascinating blog, tbh. 

Anyway, in both posts the mushrooms were fried into a chip, which sounds interesting, but I didn't want to do that again, since it had been done. Forage.atx with the Central TX Myco society said that, once boiled, the mushroom has a texture similar to chicharrones or pig's ears. I like both of those things, pig's ears more so, and so I decided to try a classic Filipino dish that is traditionally made with them: Sisig. 

So, Sisig is a dish I've never made before and a cursory inspection of recipes online ranged from very simple to exceedingly complex, with some involving Asian mayonnaise and/or coconut milk. The simple preparations seemed to serve as the "core" of the more elaborate dishes, as well as standing as a dish on their own. 

Despite finding a fair number of mushrooms,
this is what was left after cleaning

You know me, so simple is what I was going for, especially since I had a relatively small haul. So, I focused on what all the recipes had in common, starting with what defined a "Sisig" in the first place. 

The term apparently means "to make sour," and while the original includes pigs' ears and/or cheeks and/or liver, the real key ingredient seems to be calamansi fruit or juice to make the sour. The calamansi, also known as Filipino lemon, Filipino lime, or calamondin, is a hybrid citrus fruit made by crossing a kumquat with an orange. I don't have access to the calamansi here, and I couldn't easily get my hands on any of the juice that wasn't in a "juice mix," since I am boycotting the country's largest internet retailer. So, I just used limes instead.

A fair number of Sisig recipes I've found omit the calamansi and replace with limes or even vinegar, so I'm not sure how much my version is a compromise. 

The dish officially calls for Thai birds' eye chillis. I used the first few ripening chilis from my Thai pepper plants, though I don't know exactly what they are. I exchanged some foraged mushrooms with a Thai neighbor for the seedling plants and she just told me they were Thai peppers. 

Recipe: Honeycomb fungus and oyster mushroom "Sisig"

• 
  2-3 cups dried oyster mushrooms
• 2-3 cups frozen honeycomb fungus
• 1 large jalapeño pepper, cut into matchsticks or coins
• 3-4 Thai hot peppers, minced (or to taste)
• 2 limes, juiced and zested
• 1 large shallot or half a red onion, sliced thinly
• 6 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2" of ginger, 1" grated & 1" sliced
• 1 bunch of scallions/green onions
• 3/4 cup light/regular soy sauce, divided into 1 portion of 1/4 cup and 1 portion of 1/2 cup
• 2 tbs dark soy sauce
• 2 star anise
• 2 tsps Asian 5-spice powder
• 2 tps lemongrass powder (optional)
• Salt
• 2 pats of butter (optional, omit for vegan)
• Avocado oil 
• Rice or rice vermicelli to serve

1. 
   To 5 cups of water, add in a spice bag that contains the sliced ginger, the soft, dark green tops of the green onions, the skin of the shallot or red onion, 2 star anise and 1/4 cup of soy sauce. Bring to a boil. 
2. Add in the frozen honeycomb fungus and dried oyster mushrooms. Simmer for 20-30 minutes until oyster mushrooms are fully reconstituted. I used this time to slice all of my vegetables. 
3. Drain your mushrooms, reserving liquid (optional). Dispose of spice bag. 
4. Squeeze as much moisture as you can from the mushrooms.
5. Reconstitute your rice or rice vermicelli in the reserved, seasoned liquid.  
6. Mix together the 1/2 cup of light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, lemongrass powder (optional), 5 spice powder and the juice and zest of 2 limes. Divide in half and set aside.
7. 
   In a large sauté pan, (I used a 5 qt.), melt 1 pat of butter (optional) and heat a glug of avocado oil over medium heat. 
   
8. Sauté your mushrooms in the pan. You don't need to add more oil or butter. Let them get mostly dry, then sprinkle with salt to help bring out more moisture. Reduce temperature to medium and continue to sauté for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms develop a nice, tawny caramelization. 
9. Add the shallot or onion, grated ginger, scallions, peppers, and garlic to the pan. Sauté, stirring constantly. Add in the other pat of butter, if using, and another glug of avocado oil. Sauté until onion starts to become translucent. 
10. Pour in half the soy sauce mixture and stir through. Continue to cook until onions and peppers are fully cooked and the liquid is absorbed. 
11. Reduce heat to low. Mix in your rice or rice vermicelli and the rest of the soy sauce mix. Toss everything to combine, coat everything and heat through. 

The honeycomb fungus absorbs flavors more than any other mushroom I've found, but it still remains rather unpleasantly chewy, even after freezing and lots of cooking. 

Curly dock rollatini | Vegetarian cusine with foraged ingredients

This foraged take on Italian American rollatini comes together much quicker and easier than any eggplant dish could ever dream of. It's quite tasty too! 

Rollatini is an Americanization of the word involtini, which is apparently Italian for "small bundles," an accurate description of the dish. 

Regardless of what you call them, when you swap the eggplant for curly dock you don't have to bread or pre-fry the rolls, cutting calories from breadcrumbs and oil. More important to me, it cuts over 20 minutes (more like 30) off the cook time! 

But this dish comes together FAST. Almost too fast, to be honest, as it can be easy to over-cook the curly dock leaves. They are no less delicious overcooked, but the texture is more pleasing when it's just a little bit toothsome. 

For this reason, the recipe works best if your curly dock leaves are largely the same size, thickness/toughness, and maturity, so they all cook together the same amount. 

Wild garlic

Curly dock rollatini with wild garlic & horseweed

Serves 4 as a main course

8 large, mature, curly dock leaves *

15 oz. ricotta cheese 

1 cup shredded mozzarella, divided

3 cups tomato sauce, homemade or store bought 

~ 10 wild garlic stalks with bulbed heads, minced *

6 - 8 horseweed leaves, minced *

5 fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced

1 tsp. garlic powder

1 egg

Salt to taste

Olive oil, optional

1. For around 1 minute, lightly cook the minced garlic in a drizzle olive oil over medium heat, stirring constantly to keep from burning. Use the same pan you will cook the meal in. This step is optional. 
2. In a medium or large bowl, mix the ricotta, half the mozzarella, wild garlic, basil, egg, garlic powder, a pinch of salt, and horseweed.
3. Rinse your curly dock leaves carefully. Don't trim the petioles (leaf stems). Spread the curly dock leaves out and coat thinly (1/4 inch) with the ricotta mixture. 
   
   
   
   
   
4. Starting with the narrow end, roll your leaf up on itself till you have a little bundle. Wrap the petiole loosely around the bundle.
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Place your bundles in the pan, petiole side down. Generously pour tomato sauce over and around the bundles. Cover the pan and simmer over medium-low for 10-15 minutes, or until petioles are tender. 
   
   
   
   
   
6. In the last 2 minutes of cooking, uncover and sprinkle the remaining mozzarella cheese. (Though, of course, I forgot to do this.)
7. Remove from heat and serve immediately.  Also makes good leftovers!

You can use skim or part-skim for the ricotta and mozzarella. 

* You can substitute 4 cloves of regular garlic for the wild garlic, and oregano for the tarragon. Unfortunately, there is no substitute for the curly dock. For this recipe, I recommend leaves that are 10-14" long and at least 3" wide at the widest part. 

When it comes to portion size, it's important to remember that these rollatini have a larger cheese to vegetable ratio than traditional eggplant rollatini, as the leaves are thinner. 2 rollatini should be a portion size, and pair nicely with a side salad. 

Cheesy foraged shaggy mane mushroom stuffing

I love shaggy mane mushrooms. A lot of foragers love shaggy mane mushrooms, but they generally don't love them when and how I love them. 

When young and fresh and pure white, shaggy mane mushrooms are mild and mellow in flavor. While mellow, the flavor they have is softly sweet, creamy, a bit nutty and there's another, ephemeral flavor that's otherwise hard to place. They also don't have a meaty texture, they are rather soft and stringy. 

Fresh young shaggy mane mushrooms

The most common critique of this mushroom is that, since it deliquesces quickly after maturing and/or being picked, it can be difficult to work with. And I 100% understand with that critique. If you're not familiar with deliquescence, it's the process by which the mushroom turns to goo to release its spores. And while that's both very cool and the mycelium (the actual organism that grows the mushroom), it means the forager has a very limited window to 1) pick the mushroom, 2) get the mushroom home, 3) cook the mushroom, before it turns into black goo. 

To complicate things further, refrigerating these mushrooms doesn't slow the process down much. The only way to stop these mushrooms from dissolving is to either cook them or freeze them. Which is generally fine when you find while intentionally foraging, but is a real pain when you find them accidentally. And I find a LOT accidentally. 

While I have a couple of spots I can rely on to provide me a good number of mushrooms most every year (including my front lawn), they also pop up when I'm not actively looking for them, in places like 1) my job, 2) one of the many the trails I walk at lunch sometimes, 3) local parks, 4) various greenspaces around town, 5) the lawns of my neighbors. And when I find these mushrooms, I just can't help myself, I have to pick them as long as I can reasonably determine that they haven't been sprayed with something. Which is a problem, because I generally am not set up to cook while at work or walking a trail on lunch break, or running errands. And I can't refrigerate them, because they will deliquesce. So, I end up tossing them in a container and then putting them in the freezer. I bring them home and add them to a bigger bag in the freezer. 

But then, what do with the frozen shaggy manes? I can't defrost them because they will, once again, turn to goo. Without defrosting, I can't make popular dishes like breaded and fried shaggy manes. And slowly but surely, that bag in my freezer gets fuller and fuller. I had to make a recipe that cooked the mushrooms at the same time as they defrosted. My first thought was a soup or a stew, but with Thanksgiving right around the corner, my husband suggested stuffing. 

Because here's the thing about deliquescence--it totally changes the shaggy mane's flavor! And that's why I say that I like shaggy manes when MOST foragers DON'T like them: I like them even when they turn to goo! You see, as they deliquesce they become a lot more mushroomy. The flavor goes from smooth and mellow to in-your-face and intense. So if you like a strong mushroom flavor, give deliquescing shaggy manes a shot!

This recipe uses the mushroom's natural deliquescence as a flavor-enhancer.

For this recipe, I used my standard turkey stock to make this stuffing (recipe below), but you could use vegetable stock or bullion instead, for a vegetarian option. 

Cheesy shaggy mane mushroom stuffing

Serves 6-9 as a side

• 3/4 loaf of Italian bread, cut into approximately 3/4in cubes
• 1 quart-sized bag of frozen shaggy mane mushrooms
• 8 oz shredded havarti or other soft, smooth, mild, melty cheese
• 1 jumbo white onion, diced
• 2-3 stalks of celery, cut into 1/3in wide slices
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3 cups of turkey, chicken or vegetarian stock or broth
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• cooked minced turkey organ meat, optional
• olive oil 
• butter
• salt & pepper 

1. Preheat your oven to the broil setting. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil on a baking pan and lightly spread it with a piece of Italian bread. Spread the cubed bread over the baking pan. Broil for 2-3 minutes, watching that they toast but don't burn. Remove from the oven, allow to cool and add to a large mixing bowl. 
2. Turn your oven to bake and set to 350 degrees. 
3. Heat olive oil and a pat of butter in a large 5qt. sauté pan over medium heat. Add in the diced white onion and the minced garlic. Sauté, stirring constantly, until onion translucent and soft. Remove the aromatics from the pan and add them to the mixing bowl with the toasted bread. 
4. Add more oil and butter to the sauté pan and reduce heat to low. Add your mushrooms, still frozen, to the sauté pan. 
5. Heat the mushrooms through over medium-high heat, allowing the mushrooms to defrost while cooking. They will deliquesce. As they defrost slowly break them apart in the pan and season lightly with salt and pepper. Let them continue to cook, absorbing the liquid that comes off them, until that liquid is reduced by half. 
6. As the mushrooms become fully cooked, break them apart into bite-sized pieces or smaller.  Remove the mushrooms from the pan and mix them and any remaining mushroom liquid in with the bread, onions and garlic. Mix in the celery and 2/3 of the shredded cheese. If you're using cooked organ meat, mix it in as well. Do not use raw meat. 
7. Coat the bottom of a 13x9 casserole dish with butter or olive oil. Spread the stuffing mix out over the dish. 
8. Pour the stock evenly over the stuffing and sprinkle the remaining 1/3 cheese over the top.
9. Bake in the 350 oven for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until an inserted butter knife comes out clean. 

Turkey organ stock

Makes 5 cups

• turkey organs: heart, neck, liver, gizzards and tail
• 8 cups of water
• 3 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 small yellow onion, cut into chunks
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tbs. salt
• 1 tbs. freshly ground black pepper
• dried tarragon and basil to taste
• olive oil and/or butter

1. Brown the organ meat in olive oil in a large stockpot over medium-high heat. When browned, but not cooked through, remove the meat from the pan and add more oil or butter, if needed. 
2. Add the onion and garlic to the pan and sauté until translucent. Increase the heat to high and lightly brown everything. 
3. Pour the water into the stockpot over the vegetables. Add the meat back in along with the bay leaves, salt, pepper and dried herbs. 
4. Simmer for 2-3 hours, skimming the foam as needed. Strain out solids. 

Elderberry clafoutis pie

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans! To our neighbors in the great white north, Happy Thanksgiving, 6 weeks late, and to our southern neighbors, feliz Día de la Revolución! Wherever you're from, I hope you're celebrating the harvest season with a sweet treat. 

Thanksgiving is one of the few occasions where I will attempt to bake. As a rule, I personally hate baking. It's more science than art--get something wrong and it generally won't work out at all, unlike cooking where almost any mistake can be mitigated, one way or another. Baking also generally involves a lot of steps, a lot of bowls, a lot of prep work, and significantly more time than cooking--all of these are things I hate. So, in our household, my husband generally does most of the baking, including all the Christmas baking of cookies, cherry coconut bars, and fudge. 

But my husband is a nurse and it's rare for him to get the entirety of Thanksgiving off.  And while Christmas baking can sort of be worked in in and around and throughout the holiday season, Thanksgiving dessert needs to be prepared on Thanksgiving Day, meaning it generally falls to me to make. I usually make a fruit cobbler or a fruit crisp, as they are easy, basically foolproof, and require some of the least prep work in the baking world. 

But for the past year, recipes for clafoutis have been popping up practically non-stop in my Pinterest feed, piquing my curiosity. 

Like a cobbler, a clafoutis involves basically 5 steps: grease a baking pan, layer in fruit, mix a bunch of things, spread on top, and bake. 

And, despite the town of McKinney clearing away much of the elderberry bushes in a part I frequent--why did they do this? They didn't replace it with anything--I still had several containers of the fruit in the freezer. So, I decided to try my hand at an elderberry clafoutis for this year's Thanksgiving. 

This recipe requires some special equipment:

• Blender
• Deep pie pan; my pan was around 1.5" deep and was barely enough. A 2" pan would be much better. 

Elderberry Clafoutis Pie 

• 2 cups fresh or frozen elderberries | If frozen, defrost and reserve the liquid
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup plain white flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar, divided into 3/4 and 1/4 portions* 
• 2/3 cup heavy cream or whole milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Butter to grease the pan

1. Preheat the oven to 325
2. Grease a deep pie pan with butter.
3. Spread your elderberries out in the greased pan. 
4. Add any reserved elderberry liquid, the eggs, the flour, the 3/4 cup of sugar, the cream or milk, vanilla, almond and salt to the blender and liquify. 
5. Pour the mixture over the top of the elderberries--slowly, if you can. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar over everything evenly.
6. Put the pan in the oven and bake for around 45 minutes until it puffs up and turns golden brown on top.

* This makes a lightly sweet clafoutis. Next time I would probably increase the sugar a little to offset the tartness of the elderberries more. I would also sprinkle the elderberries themselves with sugar in the pan. 

Right out of the oven

The result and what I would do differently next time

Elderberries float, which doesn't provide the intended 
layer effect

The elderberry clafoutis was tasty, but it did have the regular issues that any elderberry dish has, primarily being the crunchy elderberry seeds. There's no real way to work around these, unless you have a juicer and want to juice the berries first, so just be aware, your topping is going to be textural. 

The bigger issue is that I don't think that elderberries are right for a clafoutis because they are too small and too light. This means they float when you pour the liquid mixture over them. 

A clafoutis is supposed to come out as layers: crust on top, moist cake in the middle, and fruit on the bottom. But because of the floating, the finished product didn't have that layer effect. Instead, my fruit rose to the top (see pic) and became part of the crust. Still tasty, but not the intended result. 

Other than that, a great, lightly sweet dessert made with the kind of wild ingredients that would have been eaten by both the Native Americans and the early European settlers, though they likely would have been dried to make it into November.