Wild mushroom chicken marsala with foraged oyster mushrooms

So much for my plan to post new content every week.

This happens to me every so often, I get overwhelmed with life and have to withdraw from online socialization for a while.

Then to make matters worse, I developed plantar fasciitis, and have been struggling with it for months. Finally, with the help of new sneakers (I've spent a small fortune trying different pairs), and a lot of reflexology, I'm feeling good enough to forage again. However, I can only go on the weekends, as I have to get a foot massage afterwards, to keep things from tensing up again. I've only been feeling this good for a couple of weeks, so hopefully it keeps up.

Of course, the past few weeks have had incredibly unseasonable cold here in the DFW area, so I wouldn't have been out anyway. And a lot of the plants and mushrooms I enjoy in December were killed off by the low temps. Still, this weekend reached the upper 60s, and I was able to get out into the woods, where the mild temps and moisture created an oyster mushroom fungal bloom!

This is my take on your classic chicken marsala recipe. It’s pretty standard except for the use of wild mushrooms (in this case oysters) and the addition of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and aged balsamic.

I’m going to soapbox for a bit about oyster mushrooms, and human/forest interaction. If you just want the recipe, please feel free to skip down to where you see the recipe subhead.

Soapboxing here:

There’s a park in McKinney that’s produces more pounds of oyster mushrooms every year than I would have thought possible. You see, to set up their disc golf course, they downed a lot of trees, leaving numerous stumps and giant logs.

At this point, I have identified 3 felled trees and 8 stumps which produce oyster mushrooms, as well as 17 stumps and underground root system clusters which grow honey mushrooms, and 4 dead trees fully covered in wood ear mushrooms. This is not a healthy forest environment, it’s what you usually see after a hurricane.

From a financial standpoint, it always annoys me when a park (essentially a non-profit, government entity) does something like this, because wood – especially hardwood -- is extremely valuable and could be sold to help maintain the park, or to pay for improvements.

The sad thing is that the decision to leave the wood to decay is often done from a misplaced sense that its more natural and healthy for the forest to do so. But unfortunately, it simply doesn’t work like that. When a tree falls in nature, it’s largely a result of disease, age or damage (like a lighting strike). Generally, only 1 or maybe 2 fall at a time. When humans make the decision to cut down numerous trees at once, we are altering nature, and nothing we can do will truly compensate for that.

By felling so many young, healthy trees, and just leaving them to rot, you temporarily overwhelm nature’s decay mechanism, which is fungus, and create a surge in fungal growth. Which is great for me, the forager, but frequently bad for the forest.

You see, oysters are some of the most voracious mushrooms there are. This is both a good and bad thing, but it can be bad in that when they are soooo over-present in an environment, they can attack living trees as well.

Of course, oyster mycelium can try to attack living trees even when not surrounded by decaying wood, but it’s more likely when the air is simply FULL of fungal spores, which is the case in this park in McKinney.

Healthy trees can generally fight the growth of mushrooms, but if a tree’s immune system is compromised (storm damage, insects, etc), then a fungal infection can be just the thing that pushes if over the edge of health.

Am I saying that people shouldn’t fell trees to put in playgrounds, or disc golf courses, or hiking trails? No, I’m not saying that. But sometimes, when the decision has been made to disrupt nature, the best course of action is not to try and have nature self-heal. And, though it might be counter-intuitive, it might have been better to remove the felled trees.

Anyway, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When you pull 15+ lbs of mushrooms from the forest every couple of weeks, you make chicken marsala!

(end soapbox)

This is a very mushroom-heavy dish. I definitely recommend fresh mushrooms here, not dried and reconstituted.

When using oyster mushrooms, look for young, firm specimens, with good color. These will generally be a bit smaller, no wider than about 3 - 3 1/2 inches. They should still have in-rolled caps (caps that roll down--not flat or wavy at the edges). The ones shown above are perfect for this!

If you need some tips on how to identify winter oyster mushrooms, please check out my post here. 

Chicken marsala with Oyster mushrooms, soy & balsamic

Serves 4 very generously.
Really I like to think of this as serving 4 where everyone gets leftovers for lunch.

Prep time: 30 mins   Cook time: 45 mins

4 large chicken breasts (about 4 lbs total)

1 ½ - 2lbs oyster mushrooms, cut into bite-size pieces (about 8 cups)

1 ½ cups of marsala wine (ideally not cooking wine)

2 large shallots, minced

6 cloves of garlic, minced

½ cup dry sherry

¼ cup soy sauce

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

1 stick of butter

1 tbs. aged balsamic

1 tsp. dried parsley

Pinch of dried thyme

Kosher or sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Olive oil

Pasta, noodles, rice or risotto, for serving

Note: I used a 5qt. sauté pan for this dish, and it was a snug fit.
If you only have a 3qt sauté, you might have to do step 7 in batches. 

1. Heat olive oil over medium high heat.

2. Pound your chicken breasts thin, you are looking for about ½ inch thickness. Season each side with salt and pepper. Dust or dredge each with flour. And, working in batches, brown each side in the olive oil. Set aside on paper towels.

3. Add a 1/4 stick of butter to the pan with the oil. Reduce heat to medium. Add in your oyster mushrooms and lightly sprinkle with salt. (Avoid the salt if you are using cooking marsala or cooking sherry). Cook, stirring occasionally, until your mushrooms release their liquid and reabsorb it. This will take about 20 minutes. If the pan ever seems dry, add more oil or butter.

4. When your mushrooms have reabsorbed their liquid and started to brown, add in your garlic, shallots, thyme and parsley, and cook until the shallots are translucent – about 2 minutes.

5. Add in your marsala, sherry, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and aged balsamic. Taste, and season with pepper. Increase heat to medium-high -- or a lively simmer -- and cook until reduced by about 1/3.

6. Decrease temp to medium. Stir in your remaining butter, in pats, and stir continuously till butter melts.

7. Return your chicken to the pan and cover with the sauce. Cover the pan and cook until chicken is cooked though, flipping once. It should only be 3-4 minutes per side.

8. Remove from heat and serve with rice, noodles, pasta, etc.

What I like about this dish: in most chicken marsala, the mushrooms are treated like a condiment. Generally, it’s one package (8-10oz) of button mushrooms split over 4lbs of meat. Here, though, you are getting a full half pound of veggies with every portion, and the mushrooms become a delicious side dish on their own. I’ve increased the amount of liquid (wine, soy, balsamic) to compensate and make enough sauce for everything. If you want another veggie to serve on the side, I recommend broccolini or broccoli rabe. This meal goes excellently with a semi-dry chardonnay.