Creamy Giant Puffball and White Wine Pasta

A couple of weeks ago, I had an absolutely amazing week, with multiple high points for all of my hobbies. First, my husband and I took a long weekend (Saturday-Monday) to central Texas, doing a lot of rock hounding at the famous Texas Slab in Kingsland, looking for material to keep the tumblers running. Along the way we visited one of our favorite distilleries, Flannigan's, and did some fossil hunting along the highway roadcuts outside of Gatesville. We ended up finding some nice (if incomplete) rudist fossils and blue chert in the Gatesville area and a whopping 61.8 lbs of rocks for tumbling, mostly a mix of cherts, iron-stained quarts, jaspagate (including a spectacular root-beer nodule) and--one of my favorites--hematoid quartz. We also found a few interesting rhyolites, mica-rich rocks, and others I couldn't identify.  

On our way back home we went hunting for Texas llanite, a rare porphyry stone that's only found on one ridge in central TX. The ridge (called the Llano uplift) represents the movements of the tectonic plates over a geothermic hotspot. Llanite is the result of volcanic activity creating rhyolite with bubbles in the stone that would later fill with blue quartz and feldspar--truly gorgeous. Most of the ridge is on private land, but there is just one public access point on TX state highway 16, pretty much exactly 10 miles north of the junction between 16 and 19 in the city of Llano. The rocks are hard, but after a few hours of grueling labor we had about 5lbs of llanite to bring home. All-in-all I achieved all my rock hunting goals, except we didn't find any petrified wood.  

Then on Tuesday, while raiding in World of Warcraft, I finally got the bow off of Prince Malchezaar in Karazhan, giving my hunter the best weapon she can use in this phase.
Then finally, on Thursday the 23, I got lost while trying to pick up Italian during my lunch break and ended up stumbling upon the absolute motherlode of Calvatia craniiformis, aka the skull-shaped giant puffball mushroom. 

When I say the motherlode, I'm talking an enormous fairy ring of the mushrooms with over a dozen full-sized specimens that covered an entire yard. Having received permission to harvest (and after confirming that no fertilizers had been used) I decided to take 4: The very largest, a nicely large one that seemed quite firm, and two youngish and very firm, softball-sized specimens. There we also a myriad of babies (roughly golfball-sized) that I left to grow up so I could harvest them the next week. 

Our First Puffballs in Texas

When my husband and I lived in NJ, puffballs were one of the most common mushrooms we'd encounter, though the giant puffballs (Calvatia genus) were rare. Mostly we would find the small gem-studded puffballs (Lycoperdon perlatum) or pear-shaped puffballs (Apioperdon pyriforme, formerly known as Lycoperdon pyriforme). We would frequently find dozens, nearly 100, in a single place. We found so many we rarely even photographed them, and--to be fair--this was before we owned smartphones. 

With regards to the giant puffballs, we'd only ever found a few. We found a cluster of 6 monstrously-sized Calvatia gigantea along NJ route 21. Since 21 is one of the most famously polluted areas in the Northeast USA, we didn't eat those. I found a fair number of Calvatia cyathiformis (purple-spored puffballs) over the years, but only ever felt a couple were in safe areas and received permission to harvest. 

However, since moving to Texas, puffballs, both small and large, have completely eluded us, though we did find several in while on Vacation in Puerto Rico. We had no way of cooking them or bringing them home and so let them be. 

About the Recipe

This dish is the evolution of one of my favorite meals I would cook while in college. In high school, one of my friends gave me a semi-gag gift, a lore-book called "Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home". The Inn of the Last Home was a tavern in the Dungeons and Dragons world of Krynn. Encompassing trivia, character backgrounds and, strangely, a cookbook section. The cookbook included recipes that--while not exactly world-class in terms of flavor--were generally very easy and quick to make, perfect for someone just starting out on their own. 

The recipe that inspired this dish was called "Shrimp Tarsis". The name was itself a joke, as in the lore of the books, Tarsis had once been a city on the sea, but a cataclysmic event sundered the world and left Tarsis inside a desert. The citizens adapted and converted their famous recipes to utilize fowl and game, rather than fish and shellfish. The original recipe called for turkey breast, but overtime, I adapted my own versions for mushrooms, particularly puffball mushrooms, though the change does make it take a lot longer to prepare. 

Creamy Giant Puffball & White Wine Pasta Recipe

Serves 4 as a main course | Approximately 45 minutes prep + cook time

• 1 lb pasta of your choice
• 6-8 cups of puffball mushrooms, cut or broken into rough shapes, approximately 3/4 of an inch by 1 inch by 1/4 inch
• 2 medium shallots, diced
• 1 cup semi-dry, drinkable white wine
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 tbs flour
• 1 stick butter, 8 tbs/8 pats
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tbs garlic powder
• 1 large lemon, zest and juice
• Salt to taste
• Olive oil

1. Start the pasta according to package directions. When you drain the pasta, reserve 2 cups of the cooking liquid. 
2. Mix the wine, lemon juice and lemon zest and set aside. 
3. Add 4 pats of butter and a glug of olive oil to a large skillet over medium-high heat. 
4. Once the butter and oil are hot, add the mushrooms and increase the heat to high. Continue to sauté the mushrooms, moving constantly, until they have released their liquid and are toasted brown all over, around 20 minutes. Add additional oil if needed but be circumspect. The mushrooms should release liquid making extra butter not needed. 
   
   
   
   
   
5. Once fully browned (see above) remove the mushrooms from the pan and set aside in a large bowl.
6. Add the minced shallot minced garlic and 1 tbs of butter to sauté pan and reduce temp to medium. Sauté until translucent and fragrant, stirring constantly.  
7. Once the aromatics are cooked through, pour the wine/lemon mix over them and deglaze the pan by using your wooden spoon to scrape up all the browned mushroom bits from the bottom of the pan. 
8. Bring the mix to a boil and boil for 1 minute, then remove from heat, and pour the shallot mix over the mushrooms. 
9. Add the remaining 3 tbs of butter to the sauté pan and melt over low heat. 
10. Remove from heat and whisk in the flour, a sprinkle of salt and garlic powder until smooth. Taste for salt and seasoning and adjust as needed. 
11. Pour in the heavy cream and the reserved pasta liquid and return to stove over medium-low heat. Sauté--stirring constantly, and I mean constantly--until you have a perfectly smooth, creamy sauce. 
12. Mix together the pasta, the sauce and the mushroom shallot mix over low heat and heat through. Serve immediately with a sprinkle of parsley (optional). 

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. 

Chanterelle no kneed, dutch oven bread, made with dried foraged wild mushrooms

Making bread never really interested me much. It seemed like it tied you at home in the kitchen, waiting for yeast to fart just so you could periodically punch it back down. My weekends are very precious and loosing hours that could better be spent outside in the woods, swimming, hanging out or even doing chores has never appealed to me, even though homemade bread is crazy delicious. 

So needless to say, I was intrigued when I started hearing about dutch oven breads, which had as little as 15 minutes of prep time, can rise in the refrigerator for hours or days, so you can get to them when you get to them, and who only need about 40 mins in the oven. 

Mushrooms infuse the bread 3 ways:
powdered mushrooms in the flour,  mushroom
reconstitution liquid and mushrooms baked on top

This manner of bread-making produces a small, dense, oval loaf with a crispy crust that becomes more like a sourdough if you leave it for a longer period in the fridge. 

These loaves are often baked simply, perhaps with some poppy seeds, or olive oil and fresh herbs, but I speculated there was no reason not to infuse the bread with other ingredients and flavors, and so I did. Having just come back from another foraging trip, our larder is rich with chanterelles, especially Cantharellus texensis. 

A pepper-tasting Texas red chanterelle

Unlike the fruity classic golden chanterelle, C. cibarius, the Texas chanterelle is mostly peppery in taste, with the fruitiness fading into the background, and I felt like that flavor would work well in a savory, crusty loaf. 

Plus, chanterelles and their closely related cousins, are often famously ground into powders and used as seasonings. Since they are very thin-fleshed, they dehydrate and grind easily, but their strong flavors mean even a small amount go a long way in terms of taste. So I decided to basically make an infused flour with ground cinnabar chanterelles. 

The darker color and speckled texture looks like whole wheat, 
but actually the color comes from specs of ground-up mushrooms 

The flavor of this bread is excellent, very, very umami and a bit peppery, with a hint of fruit-like sweetness on the very tail end of the palette. Traditional yellow chanterelles would probably make a sweeter loaf.

Mushroom bacon with foraged wild oysters. Vegan, keto and oven-fried.

Super short but oh-so-delicious post for you today. 

Oyster. Mushroom. Bacon.

It's salty. It's savory. It's blackened, but not smoked.  It's both crisp and chewy. 

Oven roasting or grilling oyster mushrooms has long been my favorite way to prepare them fresh. They just get so super umami over high heat.

The middle of the caps are the most meaty in terms of texture, and really showcase the best mushroom flavor, but the most delectible bits are always the outer edges. Those edges, thin fleshed and naturally drier, get crispy brown or blackened, almost like deep fried. 

I came upon this decent-sized haul of winter oyster mushrooms yesterday, while hunting for pecans. The caps were enormous, 6 to 12 inches across, and very thick in the middle. In the summer, oysters at this level of maturity would be fully infested with bugs, but because this is the winter they were flawless  inside, very fresh, and exceedingly dense: full of moisture. 

That said, mature oyster mushrooms that have already dropped their spores tend to be a little less flavorful than when they are younger and still have in-rolled edges. 

With that in mind, I was thinking about ways to make the entire mushroom more like the crispy/oven fried bits, with less of the chewy/meatiness. I decided to salt them and let them sit and drain for a while, desiccating the mushrooms somewhat, so that the whole thing would crisp up and get caramelized. This added to the total prep time, but as I had plenty else to do -- and the mushrooms were just kinda sitting around--it worked out great. 

Keto, vegan oyster mushroom bacon

2 lbs oyster mushrooms, caps whole or nearly so
1/2 cup olive oil or high-heat oil of your choice
1 tbs. kosher salt
3 tbs. smoked paprika
2 tbs. garlic powder
1 tbs. freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp. ground celery seed

1. Rinse your mushrooms, cleaning off any debris, and lightly pat dry -- leaving them still slightly damp. 
2. Sprinkle the mushrooms with salt, paprika, garlic powder, celery seed and black pepper and set in a colander or on layers of paper towel to drain. The salt will help draw the moisture out of the mushrooms, encouraging them to really crisp up in the oven. Let sit for 40-60 minutes. 
3. When the mushrooms are ready (they should be about 3/4 the size they were before, with a lot of water having been drawn out of them, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 
4. Arrange the mushroom caps on a foil-coated baking sheet, they shouldn't touch or overlap each other. 
5. Drizzle with olive oil, flip and drizzle the other side as well. Brush both sides to coat. 
6. Bake at 400 for 30-60 mins, depending on the cap thickness. After that, check and see if your caps are crispy fried. If your caps are thick, you will need to flip them and keep them in for another 15-30 minutes. 
7. Enjoy however you would bacon!

These mushrooms are low-carb, low-fat, keto, vegan and vegetarian, and paleo. They can be served as a side dish, snack or main course. The only real thing to watch out for are high amounts of salt. 

Unrelated note, here are some of the things I foraged yesterday: 

Identifying and foraging wild black trumpet mushrooms. Edible, delicious, and easy to ID

 Identification difficulty: Beginner          

This is probably a mushroom I should have introduced in year one. The common name: black trumpet, actually refers to several closely related species: Craterellus fallax (North America), Craterellus cornucopioides (Europe), Craterellus foetidus (Eastern and Mid Western North America), Craterellus caeruleofuscus (North American Great Lakes region), and possibly more. Some of these names are being re-evaluated in the age of DNA testing, and there may prove to be either more or fewer species than we thought. 

In addition to numerous scientific names, these mushrooms also go by a variety of common names,  including: horn of plenty, trumpet of death / trumpet de la mort (in France), devil's trumpet or devil's horn, and black chanterelle. 

From a culinary and foraging standpoint, all of the above appear nearly identical, taste about the same, and can only be distinguished with location, spore prints, microscopic analysis, or small details present in large collections. From here on we will treat them as one in the same. 

This is one of the best tasting wild edible mushrooms you can find. I prefer black trumpets to their more famous cousins, the chanterelles, and to the king bolete/porcini or morels. I compare their flavor positively to truffles, the most expensive of all fungus. However, if you were to simply cook these as you would any other mushroom, they would taste good, but you would be missing out on the best ways to use their flavor. 

Best of all, black trumpets are incredibly easy to ID, with no poisonous look-a-likes, making them perfect for the beginner mushroom hunter. 

Sautéed mushrooms with black trumpets. Keto, gluten-free, low carb, vegetaritan

A few weeks back, my husband made me some truly decadent sautéed mushrooms, using our FAVORITE wild mushroom: the black trumpet.

Black trumpets don't get the fame of chanterelles, porcini, morels or truffles, but there is nothing else on earth quite like their flavor. Black trumpets taste like the essence of the forrest, woodsy, earthy, and super rich. Even their smell is like putting your face down to the earth, and taking a deep inhale: you get a heady aroma of moss, dead leaves, black soil. . .
and just a hint of funk. Kind of like truffles, black trumpet aroma is weird-good, and promises amazing things to come.

The thing about black trumpets is that they are rather small and fragile, very thin-fleshed, so they don't make a very good meal on their own. The good news is their flavor is so intense that you can use these mushrooms almost as a spice, where just a little goes a long way. The secret is to dry them first.

Pickled wood ear mushroom relish and how to use it. From foraged wild mushrooms.

My pickled wood ear mushroom relish on grilled Polish sausage with 2 kinds of mustard, grilled peppers and caramelized onions. It tastes as good as it looks!

Wood ear mushrooms are generally regulated exclusively to Asian cuisine, where they are revered as both food and medicine. A Google search will reveal recipes for hot and sour soup, spicy Sichuan salad and the occasional stir-fry.

All great recipes (I've shared my version of hot and sour and Sichuan salad before), but I had to wonder: is there a way for this easy-to-identify wild mushroom to enter main-stream American cuisine?

Wood ear mushroom (also known as tree ear, jelly ear and Latin name: Auricularia auricula), faces a couple of huge challenges.

First, it looks like this:

Despite their unappetizing appearance, wood ear mushrooms have
no flavor, and absorb the taste of whatever you cook them with. 

And second, it has a weird, gelatinous, crunchy texture.

But taste? It doesn't taste bad, in fact, it doesn't really taste like anything. Which is what gave me the idea to pickle it and create a relish.

After all, a good relish is crunchy (wood ear: check) and absorbs the flavors of the vinegar and spices (wood ear: check). Why a relish over a traditional snack pickle? I'm not sure, except I was bored with just pickling things, and I also felt the thin flesh of the wood ear wouldn't hold up as well as a snack food.

The important thing is that they came out great!

Vegetarian, foraged oyster mushroom chowder

It's important to know the right mushroom for every task.

When you go to buy oyster mushrooms in the store, you will find that the caps are very small (less than 2" across) and still feature "in-rolled" edges. Basically the edges of the caps roll down and under, towards the gills. This is considered the best time to eat oysters, as they have not yet released their spores, and the flesh is at it's most firm and meaty.

They basically look like this:

When the caps are still rolled down towards the gills,
oyster mushrooms have their best firmness. 

It's easy to harvest "optimal" mushrooms when you are farm-raising them. But in the wild, you generally don't have the luxury, unless you know a spot you can visit every day. Most often the oysters you find in the wild will have flat caps, occasionally with rippled and/or cracked edges. They will mostly look like this:

Older oyster mushrooms are less firm, and work best in soups,
gravies, and after being dried and reconstituted.

Older oyster mushrooms, like the ones above, loose some of that firmness, and are less meaty. Some foragers will even bypass these "spongy" specimens, but they still have a lot of flavor, and are perfect in the right application. By pureeing these mushrooms, like in soups or gravies, you avoid the texture issues.

You can also dehydrate older oyster mushrooms. Once reconstituted, they will have a unique texture--not firm and "mushroomy" like the young ones, but more meaty, almost rubbery a bit. Rather like cooked clams, which is what made me want to try this dish.

Being a native New Englander living in Texas, I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with the desire for foods I simply can't get around here. Sometimes it's lobster rolls, but most often it's clam chowder.  I'd heard that oyster mushrooms can make a passible substitute for clam chowder, and I was highly skeptical, but I decided to give it a shot.

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.

Two chicks quesadillas: vegetarian with chickweed, chickpeas, feta and wild mushrooms

Finished chickweed, chickpea, feta and wild mushroom quesadilla

Like pretty much everyone, I'm sure, one of my goals in the new year is to eat better and hopefully loose weight. The second is hard, but the first is relatively easy, if you devote the time and effort into it, and treat it as an investment in yourself.

Of course, that's easier said than done. 

One problem I've always had was being so busy in the work week that I just get some fast lunch, usually something fried. Then I work late, so I don't feel like cooking when I get home. . . Eating out can quickly get out of control.

Enter the meal prep. I've decided to take time when I can, on the weekends, and make healthy, easy to re-heat meals that I can eat at my desk if I absolutely have to. Last week's mushroom pizza was a good one, and so is this week's chickweed, wild mushroom, chickpea and feta quesadilla, high protein, healthy fat and quality carbs, clocking in at under 400 calories. 

This vegetarian meal can easily be made vegan, if you use vegan cheese, or omit the cheese entirely. 

Chickweed, at the perfect stage for harvest

Chickweed, Stellaria media, is a super nutritious wild plant, which is finding it's way back into cultivation. Eat chickweed for a lot of vitamin C, as well as B vitamins and beta carotene. It's also got more minerals than your average plant, boasting high amounts of calcium, magnesium and potassium.

Because of the CHICKweed and CHICKpeas, I'm calling this the Two Chick Quesadilla!

Balsamic soy wild mushroom pizza. Vegetarian foraged honey, oyster and velvet shank recipe.

When my husband and I lived in the Northeast, one of our favorite restaurants was The Continental. They have locations in Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and the surrounding areas. The food is great, the atmosphere is retro, and they do awesome things with mixing and fusion cuisine.

Winter oyster mushrooms

One seasonal dish they make is a balsamic soy flatbread pizza with wild mushrooms. I've seen a lot of balsamic soy mushroom recipes, but something about theirs always stood out. Maybe it's the wild mushrooms or the quality of the aged balsamic, but the dish was really superior. Since then we have played around with a ton of variations, and they've all been good (my favorite is with hen-of-the-wood mushrooms!). This one uses honey, velvet foot, and wild oyster mushrooms - all foraged. 

I hope you like this recipe, it's one you can make with store-bought mushrooms if you like - try cremini, shiitake, or store-bought oysters or hen-of-the-woods.

The rich flavors of wild mushrooms and aged balsamic mean you don't have to go crazy with the cheese to still have a decadent pizza, keeping it low in fat and as healthy as pizza can be. Which isn't very healthy, but still. . . sometimes you just have to have pizza!

Velvet shank or velvet foot mushrooms, another winter species that makes a great pizza topping

Deconstructed vegan sushi bowl with wild mushrooms. Gluten-freewildcrafted food. Foraging recipe.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays. With such an abundance of wild winter mushrooms in the woods this year, I feel like I've already unwrapped tons of presents. I've found nearly 10lbs of one of my favorites: Pleurotus ostreatus, aka the winter oyster mushroom! Oyster mushrooms are found in temperate regions, and even in the tropics, world-wide. They are fairly easy to identify, have medicinal qualities, and frequently fruit in abundance, making them a great wild food. And, of course, you don't have to forage for them, you can get them at almost any market!

Spicy, sour Sichuan wood ear mushroom salad. Vegan, foraged wild mushrooms

We are officially in the middle of December and Texas mushroom hunting is still going strong. . . though it's a little more complicated than it was in November. This week we saw temps in the 50s, with cold rain, then a drop to 34! Finally the week ended with a spell in the low 70s. I've been harvesting winter mushrooms: oysters, velvet foot, and wood ear like crazy. Most has been going into the dehydrator, but I've been enjoying stir fries, mushroom sauces, soups. . .and this amazing salad.

Wood ear mushrooms are a staple of Chinese cuisine, where they are appreciated not just as food, but as natural medicine. Western science has recently validated wood ear as effective against tumors, as an anti-coagulant, hypoglycemic, among others. Wood ear mushrooms are mild in flavor (they absorb whatever they are cooked in), and gelatinous and somewhat chewy in texture. Marinated wood ears are a popular cold appetizer in Sichuan (Schezwan) Chinese cuisine. They are spicy and sour, slightly sweet, and served with cilantro, chilies and bell peppers. The resulting dish is crisp (from the peppers), chewy (from the mushrooms), and refreshing (from the cilantro).

Vegan shaggy mane summer rolls with spicy peanut sauce. Foraged, gluten-free wild mushroom recipe.

With my husband working on Thanksgiving, (he's a nurse), and my family all 6 states away, I decided to spend the whole day in the woods. I explored some new trails, got eaten alive by bugs, experienced the kind of natural beauty which refreshes my soul, and basically expressed thankfulness my own way.

I started to make my way back to my car about an hour before sundown, tired, dirty, and renewed. 

I'd found some more tasty curly dock, and medicinal Ganoderma mushrooms. . . But then I saw this ghost-like shape poking through the leaf litter. A shaggy mane.

Once I saw one I saw another, and another, and another. Having trained my eye, I started to see the little ones, mostly burried in the leaves. I used a stick to brush aside the fallen foliage, and I started to see the tender, flavorful babies.

Sorry no pics in the wild. I always find the most interesting things after my phone has died. 

How to dry turkey tail mushrooms for medicinal teas

    Update: my post on how to identify Turkey Tail mushrooms is live.     

Just a quick post today. Last weekend I came upon a large harvest of turkey tail mushrooms: Trametes versicolor (previously known as Coriolus versicolor). Through generally considered too tough to be edible, turkey tails are one of the most famous medicinal mushrooms.

Turkey tails are prized in Eastern medicine, where they are known as Yun Zhi (cloud fungus) in China, and Kawaratake (mushroom by the riverbank) in Japan.

In Asia, as early as the 50s, doctors and scientists noticed decreases tumor growth, and sometimes tumor shrinkage, in cancer patients who were drinking turkey tail tea. They also noticed improved immune systems and faster recovery from chemotherapy and radiation.

In the US, pre-clinical trials and stage 1 and 2 clinical trials have shown turkey tail to have positive immune-boosting effects for patients with breast, gastrointestinal, and respiratory cancers. In addition, they have isolated a compound which may help inhibit tumor growth. (Medical abstract here)

Quick mushroom fridge pickle recipe, with foraged ringless honey mushrooms. Vegan, gluten-free, paleo,

Sour. Salty. Spicy. Dilly, and garlicky.

Is your mouth watering yet?
These are some of my favorite flavors, and they are loaded into these fast and easy wild mushroom fridge pickles.

What are fridge pickles? Basically, they are a veggie or mushroom soaked in vinegar and spices, in your fridge, till the food soaks up all the flavor (over about 48 hours) and becomes an excellent snack or condiment. Fridge pickles must be refrigerated (they aren't shelf-stable), as they are neither canned nor fermented, nor are they salty enough to salt-cure, and they keep for about 2-3 weeks. Because there is no canning involved, they come together quickly.

I made these will ringless honey mushrooms, Armillaria tabescens, (learn how to ID them here) but you can use other wild mushrooms, or even store-bought. The smaller the mushroom the better, as they will soak up the flavor faster!

Super cheesy, scalloped wild mushrooms with leeks. Vegetation, low carb side dish, gluten-free optional

The best way to keep a massive haul of most kinds of mushrooms is to dry them. Drying is optimal for the boletes, chanterelles and other vase-type mushrooms, morels, lactarius, oysters, jelly fungi, and pretty much any gilled mushroom. I've even had good luck with the small puffballs, though I've never tried it with the large ones. The only group that drying isn't ideal for is the polypores.

And so it was with the mushrooms I used to make this dish. I found a long-lost container of wine-cap mushrooms (Stropharia rugosoannulata) in the back of the pantry. I believe these are from the batch we harvested in spring of 2014, which was from a truly epic flush of mushrooms.

Don't have wild foraged wine-cap 'shrooms? That's ok! Try this dish with store-bought cremini or portobello mushrooms.

Foraged Wild Mushroom & Ramp Strata

And just like that, ramp season is over! 4 weeks, give or take a day or two, and the leaves of all the plants are yellowing, wilting, and dying. We went crazy, harvesting the last of the greenery last weekend. We picked enough for another batch of Spicy Black Bean Fish with Ramps, enough to fill a couple of large freezer bags, and enough for this bread pudding dish.

A strata is like a bread pudding, very rich and dense. This is not a light meal, this is not a healthy meal; with heavy cream, prosciutto, eggs, bread, butter, and cheese, it's just plain decadent. . . But ramp season comes just once a year, and it just seemed fitting to have it go out with a bang!

I reconstituted wine-cap (Stropharia rugosoannulata) mushrooms from that epic haul of a couple weeks ago to make this dish, but you could use fresh cremini or white button mushrooms instead. Tossing a few morels in would probably be pretty great as well, given how well they pair with cream.