Wok-fried Shrooms

I went a-pickin' this week. It's been a disastrous fall mushroom season in the Pacific Northwest, depending on your point of view. Hot temps the last two weeks of August followed by drought in September burned the primordia where it emerged from the duff, resulting in major crop failure for Cascade Mountain porcini, matsutake, and lobster mushrooms. Chanterelle patches burned and then partially recovered, owing to their long growth cycle, but some patches never produced while others are substantially reduced.

The most experienced commercial pickers and buyers, on the other hand, are making bank from the poor conditions. Prices are high and those who know where to go are lining their wallets. I joined a commercial picker friend earlier this week and loaded up on both golden and white chanterelles, porcini, hedgehogs, and a few matsutake, which are just starting to fruit in the coastal patches of Washington.

It's rained a lot in the past week and chanterelle pickers are advised to get 'em quick. Patches that were in good shape a week ago are now maybe 50-50, with big soggy flowers becoming the majority. (Sounds like the U.S. Congress.) Check out this picture below. There are maybe four dozen prime curled-cap goldens in the frame, perfect for the table. If you're into giant water-logged blooms, be my guest. We left them all behind.

And here's a very cool fairy ring of white chanterelles that I found near the goldens. These were in perfect condition despite their large size and probably weighed a few pounds all by themselves.

Back home I had a geoduck on hand from my shellfish farmer friend John Adams at Sound Fresh Clams & Oysters, so I made a quick Kung Pao with snap peas. The shrooms I decided to cook separately as a side dish. You know how at Chinese restaurants you get mushrooms in a silky smooth sauce? It's no secret—just corn starch. I used porcini, hedgehogs, chanterelles, shiitake, and enoki mushrooms, the latter two varieties purchased at my handy Mekong Market down the street.

This recipe is based on one by Fuchsia Dunlop. My changes included the use of duck fat and soy sauce.

1 lb mixed mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp peanut oil
3 tbsp duck fat
1 heaping tbsp garlic, minced
1/3 cup chicken stock
1 tsp corn starch combined with
2 tsp soy sauce
salt, to taste

1. Heat peanut oil and duck fat wok over high flame until nearly smoking. Stir in garlic and cook until almost golden. Don't burn! Add mushrooms (if using enoki, put aside until later) and stir well. Cook a few minutes, then add enoki and cook another minute or so.

2. Add chicken stock. Bring to boil. Stir in mixture of corn starch and soy sauce. Continue to cook, stirring, until sauce thickens. Season to taste.

The final dish is a tender umami bomb—the ideal accompaniment to a spicy meat dish.

Veal Shank with Saffron Cream & Chanterelles

The fall mushroom season here in Washington looked promising back in July and early August. We had a wet spring, there was good snowpack in the mountains, and another "marine layer" summer seemed likely. All that changed by mid-August. The weather turned hot and dry. Chanterelle pinheads—those baby mushrooms barely visible in the moss—either dried up or went dormant. Lobsters called it quits. And porcini never got out of the gate.

We finally got a significant rain the other day, but it may be too little too late. We'll see. In the meantime, there are chanterelles if you hunt in the likeliest microclimates. I got a bucketful at a go-to patch in the Cascade foothills last week, and this week I brought a class, along with Andrew MacMillen of the Kitsap Peninsula Mycological Society, to a patch that had just started cranking out both goldens and white chanterelles. Andrew scouted the patch last week and covered plenty of ground before locating this microclimate in a north-facing gully that was cool and wet enough to produce chanterelles while the rest of the area was bone-dry.

This is what I love about mushroom hunting. It's a game of skill and you need to know how to play all the cards in your hand. In this case, the main cards were meteorology, topography, and tree composition. Tree composition is the easiest and best card to play with Northwest chanterelles: young second-growth Douglas fir. The meteorology card was a little more difficult: we knew we had to take our Bainbridge Island class due-west to the southern Kitsap Peninsula where there was more precipitation. The topography card: shady pockets within north-facing slopes.

Using our knowledge gained from years of chanterelle hunting while wearing the prognosticator's hat led us to this one small ravine where two different species of chanterelle were flushing in profusion. What a treat to watch the students experience the thrill of the hunt. Shouts of "I've got one!" rang out through the woods, and everyone filled their baskets. Back at the kitchen facility we made Chanterelle Duxelles.

The first chanterelles of the season are always my favorite. They're firm and flavorful, without the large, tattered caps that are typical later in the season after multiple rain soakings. I like to save my smallest chanties for meals like the one I made last night: Veal Shank with Saffron Cream & Chanterelles. The recipe came from an excellent new cookbook by Jennifer McLagan, Odd Bits: How To Cook the Rest of the Animal, just out this month.

As you know by now, I'm a fan of nose-to-tail cookery, not just because it makes economic and conservation sense but also because the odd bits often taste best. Shank, though less adventuresome than organs, is one of those bits that's loaded with flavor—and in the case of veal, marrow. It's a rich cut, no doubt, which is why the chanterelles made such a perfect pairing, with their light fruitiness that lifted the dish from its heavy underpinnings of braised meat and cream sauce.

The author recommends a whole shank for this dish; I was only able to purchase a pre-cut section of shank normally used for Osso Buco, but this turned out to be just right for two. Otherwise I used almost the same amounts with a few minor exceptions.

1 veal shank section, about 1 1/2 lbs
salt and pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter, divided
1/2 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp saffron threads
1 heaping tsp tomato paste
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup veal stock
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 lb chanterelle buttons, halved
parsley for garnish

1. Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees. Pat dry shank and season with salt and pepper. In a large, heavy casserole or dutch oven, brown the shank in 1 tbsp olive oil and half the butter over medium-high heat.

2. Remove shank and add remaining 1 tbsp olive oil along with onion, carrot, and celery. Cook until softened over medium heat, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic, thyme, saffron, and tomato paste, stir, and cook for a couple minutes.

3. De-glaze with white wine. Add the stock (I used Demi-Glace Gold from a package). Return the veal shank to pan with any juices, cover, and cook in oven for 1 hour. Turn shank, cover, and cook for another hour. Uncover and cook for final 30 minutes or so, until meat is tender and almost falling off the bone. Add water to braising liquid if necessary at any point while it's cooking in the oven. When done, transfer shank to a plate and cover loosely with aluminum foil.

4. Strain braising liquid through a sieve, making sure to press vegetables to extract juice. Reduce liquid in a saucepan to 3/4 cup. Stir in cream and check seasoning.

5. Meanwhile, saute chanterelles in remaining butter over medium-high heat.

I plated the veal shank over home-made gnocchi, scattered the chanterelles around the plate, and finished it with a generous pour of sauce and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

The Barter System

Tonight's dinner was the result of ways old and new: the barter system and social networking. Last fall a friend of mine on Twitter, Corky Luster, back-channeled me with a request: might I have some wild mushrooms to trade? As a matter of fact, I did. I set aside vacuum-sealed freezer bags of porcini and chanterelles. In return, he would give me a package of wild duck breast fillets.

Corky, besides being a duck hunter, is also a bee keeper and the proprietor of Ballard Bee Company. In the small-world-that-is-Seattle, his bee's wax was an ingredient in a medicinal balm made from cottonwood bud that my friend Melissa Poe gave to me in exchange for a jar of my Oregon grape preserves. For his part, Corky got some of the cottonwood bud in addition to the mushrooms.

And so it goes. We're physically connected by our diverse appreciation and use of nature's  bounty, and those connections spread out through society and loop back to us with the help of technological connections and associations. Is that too much for some believers in the American mythology of go-it-alone rugged individualism?

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Dylan was thinking about close-mindedness and the social change of the sixties when he wrote those lines to "Ballad of a Thin Man," but we might as well flash-forward to today and consider all the Joneses who scoff at any idea that doesn't fit into their narrow box. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, unknown and unheralded, there are committed folks trying to make their own small repairs to broken institutions such as our food system (corn subsidies, anyone?).

As the world continues to spin off into increased turmoil, I believe it's instructive to examine old ways and make them new again. The barter economy is just one example—and if such a seeming anachronism is nudged back into vogue with a little help from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other gizmos of the New New Age, so be it.

Back to those wild duck fillets. They got lost in the freezer for a while, but I found them the other day while inventorying my stash of frozen razor clams and immediately thawed them out. I took Corky's advice and did a quick grilling over high heat. First, I made a teriyaki marinade and sauce.

Teriyaki Marinade

1/3 cup aji-mirin
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp hot oil
1 tsp black vinegar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tbsp garlic, minced
1 tbsp ginger, minced

Bring aji-mirin to boil, then reduce heat to low simmer for 5 minutes. Add soy sauce, sesame oil, hot oil, vinegar, sugar, garlic, and ginger. Simmer for another 5 minutes.

I used about half the teriyaki to marinate the duck fillets, along with 2 chopped scallions and heaping teaspoons of minced garlic and ginger. Next I added a couple teaspoons of corn starch to the remaining teriyaki to thicken it into sauce. This got poured over the grilled duck fillets along with a quick sauté of chopped scallions, chanterelles, and more garlic and ginger.

It was nice to see my boy, with his inherited trait of thalassemia beta minor, devour his iron-rich duck and ask for more. His world will hopefully do a better job of reconciling new ways with old.

Winter Pick

A month doesn't go by on the mushroom trail without some variety of fungi getting picked, packed, and sent to market. Between Alaska and California, you can harvest wild mushrooms virtually any day of the year. Itinerant circuit pickers, though a far cry from snowbird retirees in white shoes, operate on a similar premise: they move south in the coldest months, calling Northern California's mild climate home for a spell. Their work is known as the winter pick.

The trifecta of winter pick includes yellowfoot (Craterellus tubaeformis, pictured at right; like steelhead, the word is singular even when it's plural), hedgehogs (Hydnum repandum and H. umbilicatum), and black trumpets (Craterellus cornucopioides). The latter are simply called blacks by the pickers and they're the backbone of the winter harvest. Blacks are members of the chanterelle family and they have that same beguiling mix of fruit and earthiness that make their relative the golden chanterelle so popular in the kitchen. But the blacks, for my money, are even more flavorful.

Unfortunately, my home state of Washington is not a hot spot for black trumpets. In the western U.S. these mushrooms thrive in coastal hills with a tree composition of mixed hardwoods (especially tanoak and madrone) and a smattering of conifers. Northern California is the bulls-eye. Though not mycorrhizal with redwoods, blacks seem to prefer having a few of them around.

Looking for this cryptically colored mushroom in dense tanoak leaf-litter is a challenge. Much of its long, fluted stem grows beneath the duff, making it look like nothing so much as a little hole in the ground. Occasionally, toward the end of the season, large clumps will form, some of them seven or more inches tall and easier to spot. A friend of mine calls these California clusters.

This year my timing was off. The season started with promise—and then in January Norcal was hit with a month-long drought, high temperatures, and warm winds that exasperated the situation. The blacks fried where they stood. Gakked was how my picker friends described it, as in "Winter pick is over. The blacks are gakked." You get the picture.

Yellowfoot and hedgehogs took a beating as well, though not as thoroughly. But I was headed to the Bay Area anyway, so I investigated a few patches along the way to pick dryers. Doug, the circuit picker of past posts, was with me. He knew he couldn't sell any fresh mushrooms of this quality, so he focused on stinging nettles and watercress instead, with detours to mushroom patches for my dehydrator.

After leaving Doug off at a nettle patch where he planned to pick and camp, I continued on to Santa Cruz. The mushrooms down there fruit later than their brethren to the north, so they had largely escaped the killing heat of January. A sharp-eyed member of the Fungus Federation named Nate showed me a few of his patches near town and I was able to load up on fresh blacks to take home. Nate also introduced me to my first mudpuppy—the newly named Cantharellus californicus, the largest chanterelle in the world (see below right).

I could get used to an annual pilgrimage south for winter pick. The scenery along the California coast is as spectacular as advertised, and the redwood and hardwood forests are enticingly different from my own stomping grounds. Best of all, a trip to California in winter means a chance to hunt mushrooms while my own patches lay dormant.

Cooking black trumpets is as easy as throwing a handful in the saute pan with a pat of butter. They go great over a steak, or you can infuse a sauce with their intense flavor. All three of the main winter mushrooms are often used together. One of the best mushroom dishes I ever had was a single spoonful intermezzo of hedgehog and yellowfoot with mascarpone and a single small black trumpet on top.

Winter Risotto with Butternut Squash & Black Trumpets

Black trumpets are the perfect garnish for this hearty yet slightly sweet winter risotto, along with fresh cold-weather ingredients such as butternut squash, arugula, and sage. The peppery arugula tempers the sweetness of the squash and the black trumpets add an extra dimension of earthy flavor that you won't find in your typical recipe for Butternut Squash Risotto.

1 2-lb butternut squash, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
4 tbsp butter
1 large shallot, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
6-8 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1/3 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, grated
2 tbsp fresh sage, chopped
1 packed cup fresh arugula
1/4 lb black trumpet and/or yellowfoot mushrooms, rinsed

1. To peel and cut squash without losing a finger, see Simply Recipes.

2. Warm stock in a pot.

3. Saute squash in 2 tablespoons of butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, covered, for 5 minutes over medium-high heat. Stir occasionally. Remove lid and cook a few more minutes to lightly brown squash.

4. Add shallot and garlic. Cook together with squash for a few minutes before deglazing pan with wine. Immediately add rice and stir thoroughly to coat. Reduce heat to medium.

5. Stir in a ladle or two of stock, repeating as the liquid is absorbed until rice is al dente.

6. While risotto is cooking, saute mushrooms in a tablespoon of butter. Set aside.

7. Finish risotto off-heat by stirring in sage, arugula, cheese, and last tablespoon of butter. Season with salt to taste. Garnish with sauteed mushrooms.

Serves 6

Last Ditch Chanterelle Soup

Chanterelle season is coming to a close here in Washington State. Though we have yet to see a killing frost in Seattle, fall rains are transforming the chanties into big floppy, waterlogged monstrosities.  The other day I found some twice the size of my fist.

This time of year it pays to locate microclimates free of frost where chanterelles have enough cover to keep relatively dry. Even so, moisture from ground-soaking rains will be absorbed into the fruiting bodies and they'll balloon into what the commercial pickers call flowers, with tattered edges and deep vase-like caps (see photo at right). Many a neophyte mushroom picker has been overjoyed to find such huge specimens in the woods only to wrinkle a nose at the way they cook up slimy in the pan.

Here's what you do with soggy chanterelles.

First, choose your equipment wisely. Use a bucket or basket in the woods. A lidded bucket is best. If you're concerned about spreading spores, drill holes in the bottom of the bucket. The point is to have a solid receptacle and keep forest litter out. A soft-bodied receptacle such as a canvas bag allows for too much jostling, and a moisture-trapping plastic bag is just plain bone-headed. 

Second, brush off the mushrooms carefully after picking and make sure you have a clean cut stem. This time of year I only high-grade when I'm picking chanterelles, which means I pick the very best and leave the rest. I look for smaller and firmer ones. Most of the flowers I ignore unless I find a dry one. A few overly wet mushrooms can infect your whole batch.

Third, if you have a long drive, take care of your mushrooms en route. Empty them into a  newspaper-lined basket or box. When you get home, immediately spread the chanterelles over newspaper so they have a chance to breathe. Change the newspapers if necessary. It may take a few days to allow excess moisture to evaporate. I'm not talking about dehydrating them, just getting them into decent cooking shape.

One problem with drying your chanterelles over a couple days is that I suspect some of the flavor leaches out. With this in  mind, another option for soggy chanterelles is to cook them right away—but be warned, they will cook up slimy. On the other hand, I have an excellent recipe to neutralize the slime factor and make the most of the intense flavor that develops in large, mature chanterelles.

Cream of Chanterelle Soup

This is nearly identical to an earlier recipe I posted, with one major exception: the immersion blender, one of the great deals in kitchen gadgets. By blending the soup you get rid of any unpalatable chunks of slimy mushroom. The dried porcini is not absolutely necessary, but it's the secret weapon in any good mushroom soup.

6 tbsp butter, divided

1 med onion, diced


1 lb fresh chanterelles, diced


3 oz. dried porcini, rehydrated in 2 cups warm water


1/4 cup flour


4 cups beef stock


1/4 tsp white pepper


1/8 tsp ground nutmeg


salt to taste


1 cup or more heavy cream



1. Melt half the butter in a large pot. Add onions and cook over medium heat until caramelized.

2. Meanwhile pulverize porcini into dust with food processor and rehydrate in a bowl with warm water.

3. When onions are nicely caramelized add chanterelles and remaining butter, raise heat to high, and cook 5 minutes or so, stirring, until mushrooms have expelled their moisture. Cook off some of the liquid. The time required for this step will vary depending on how moist the mushrooms are. They should be slightly soupy before continuing to the next step.

4. Lower heat to medium and blend in flour with sauteed mushrooms and onions. Pour in beef stock slowly, stirring. Add porcini stock.

5. Bring to boil, then reduce to a low simmer. Add spices. Use an immersion blender to puree soup or blend in a food processor. The soup should be smooth and creamy.

6. Lower heat and add cream before serving.

Optional but highly recommended: In a separate pan, saute black trumpet mushrooms, chanterelles, or other wild mushrooms in butter for garnish and added texture. If you can get your hands on black trumpets, by all means do so. They taste a lot like chanterelles on steroids and add exceptional flavor to the soup.

Serves 4 - 6

I've seen plenty of Chanty Soup recipes out there on the Interwebs that use exotic ingredients and techniques. This recipe is quick, easy, and delicious—and it highlights the main event, the mushrooms! You can make a complicated soup if you'd like. Then try this one.

The Delivery

In my ongoing effort to be a commercial mushroom gadfly—or maybe just a fly in the ointment—I hung out with the fellas at Foraged and Found Edibles the other day while they packed up a couple dozen restaurant shipments and made deliveries.

It was a relatively quiet day. When I arrived at the warehouse (the owner's basement), Jonathan and Shane were busy sorting and cleaning mushrooms. Order by order, they packed chanterelles, porcini, and other mushrooms into cardboard flats and weighed them. A fan in the corner dried porcini and watercress soaked in a washbasin.

An hour later the packing was done and it was time to make deliveries. Jeremy, owner of Foraged and Found (pictured with a stack of baskets) owns a fleet of three Astro vans for the purpose, all of them used and cheap. He beats these vans like rented mules on the logging roads of the Pacific Northwest, but not before squeezing a couple hundred thousand miles out of each one, averaging more than a 100,000 miles a year.

Jonathan would cover east side restaurants for this delivery; Shane had the city. I hopped in with Jonathan, a CIA (NYC) graduate and former sous chef. Our first stop was his old employer, the Herbfarm in Woodinville, Washington, one of the Northwest's most celebrated restaurants. I had the good fortune of eating there last spring with my food blog pals Hank Shaw, Holly Heyser, and Matt Wright. The Herbfarm doesn't serve lunch, so the atmosphere was relaxed. Owner Ron Zimmerman came out to greet us (pictured taking possession of his beloved fungi at top of post). Right now he's doing his popular annual Mycologist's Dream menu and his order was both the biggest and most diverse, including chanterelles, yellowfoots, matsutake, both #1 and #2 porcini, a cauliflower mushroom, saffron milkcaps, hawkswings, and man-on-horseback mushrooms. Ron picked through the mushrooms with a knowing hand. We made some friendly chitchat and then headed off.

Next was Cafe Juanita, a perennial favorite on the north shore of Lake Washington in Kirkland. Chef-owner Holly Smith won a James Beard Award in 2008 and just seeing her face light up at the sight of a 10-pound bag of wild watercress was worth the trip. She teased out a strand and munched it approvingly.

Our last stop of the day put these first two deliveries in stark relief. The cook looked stressed out and annoyed at our presence for some reason that was never articulated. "How's it going?" Jonathan said, trying to be friendly. "Busy!" the cook snapped. I have two children under 11, so I know "acting out" when I see it. It's not a pretty sight in an adult. The cook slapped his dishrag on the table and grabbed Jonathan's receipt book, which he slammed against the wall before signing for the goods, then handed it back without a word. He kicked his new box of watercress to one side and had someone take away the mushrooms.

So much for fresh local ingredients. Some people are in the wrong line of work. Jonathan told me one of the hardest parts of his job is trying to educate clients who don't get the grading system. Even well known and long-standing restaurants don't always understand that #1 porcini and matsutake buttons will be varying sizes, not always cute and petit. "It's not as if mushrooms are grown like tomatoes in a mold," he said. "They're wild."

That's the point, but sometimes people want their wild ingredients to behave like conventional supermarket produce, domesticated and submissive. For years now a variety of cranks and schemers have tried to figure out the secrets of ectomycorrhizal fungi in order to grow them like a crop. Let's hope they fail.

Game Hen with Chanterelles & Madeira over Parsnip Puree

I had dinner at Tilth the other night in Seattle, owned by award-winning chef Maria Hines. One of the standouts of the evening was a small plate of pan-fried poussin. The chef de cuisine, Larkin Young, came out and told us just how he liked to cook the bird (finishing it with a nob of sizzling butter was key, he explained), and then, as we got to talking about mushroom hunting, it occurred to me that this same dish might go really well with just a handful of small chanterelles, which I'd been saving from my trip with a commercial mushroom picker the other day. To make it more of a meal I added the parsnip puree.

1 game hen
2 tbsp butter
1 shallot, chopped
1/4 lb chanterelle buttons
splash Madeira
2 tbsp mascarpone
2 medium parsnips, peeled
heavy cream
salt and pepper
basil, chopped for garnish

1. Remove both legs (including thighs) of game hen, reserving rest of bird for another purpose. Pat dry, season, and saute over medium-high heat in half the butter, browning each side so the skin is dark and crispy and the meat tender. Add second tablespoon of butter to finish before removing legs to a plate and placing in 350 degree oven to keep warm.

2. While meat is cooking, cut parsnips into pieces, cover with water in small pot, and boil 15 minutes. Remove parsnips to food processor, add a spoonful of cooking water plus a little heavy cream, and puree.

3. Add chopped shallot to same pan and saute in pan juices until soft, a minute or two. Add mushrooms and stir. Cook another couple minutes before deglazing pan with a splash of Madeira wine. As wine and pan juices bubble and reduce, stir in a couple spoonfuls of mascarpone to thicken.

4. Remove meat from oven and pour any accumulated juices into mushroom sauce. Plate game hen leg over parsnip puree and top with chanterelles. Garnish with chopped fresh basil. Serves 2.

The fresh basil might seem a quixotic choice. It's such a strong flavor, you rarely see it used as a garnish the way you see, say, parsley. But in this case it did a really good job of balancing the sweetness of the parsnip and brightening the overall dish. Basil peaked in or garden recently and we're using it as much as possible; combined with the high season of chanterelles, the pairing seemed like a good idea—and indeed I plan to find other ways to bring these two ingredients together, idiosyncratic or not.

Farro with Porcini, Chanterelles & Mascarpone

What the heck is farro, you ask? It's an ancient form of hulled wheat that's low-yielding and similar to barley or wheat-berries in texture, and despite being in vogue of late, farro is actually among the oldest of agricultural products. It was first domesticated nearly 10,000 years ago in the Near East, most likely in present-day Turkey. Today it is eaten more in Itlay than anywhere else, and in the mountainous regions of The Boot there are no fewer than three closely related relict grains commonly referred to as farro: emmer, spelt, and einkorn. Apparently these hard-scrabble grains make a good crop for highlands and poor soils.

My first taste of farro was at Lark restaurant in Seattle several years ago. Lark uses a local variety grown and packaged by Bluebird Grain Farms in the Methow Valley of Eastern Washington, a Shangri-La on the dry side of the Cascade Mountains known for its excellent backpacking, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing. Bluebird's farro of choice is emmer (Triticum dicoccum).

They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, which means the kitchen is a place of nearly constant praise. Most home cooks I know, myself included, spend the majority of their time either trying to perfect recipes out of a book or web site, or trying to recreate memorable meals they've enjoyed at restaurants. We leave the truly creative work to the pros and hope to capture a little of their light from time to time—such as the other night, when I finally got around to imitating John Sundstrom's creamy farro dish that I've ordered countless times at Lark. It's a simple dish. Farro is combined with sauteed wild mushrooms and a healthy dollop of mascarpone to give it the creamy unctuousness that has you coming back for more. Yet within that simplicity there is a wide range of skill required to properly cook both the grain and the fungi.

I often hear would-be mycophagists complaining about their chanterelles turning slimy with cooking. This is a rookie mistake and can be solved with one easy reminder (provided the chanties aren't water-logged): never crowd chanterelles in the pan. For most recipes you want to cook the water out of the mushrooms. A good saute pan heated with a little butter or oil is up to the task—just don't try to cook too many at once. When they've expelled their water, the mushrooms can continue to brown in the pan provided there's enough surface area for the water to evaporate. This also helps concentrate their flavor.

These particular chanterelles, both white and golden, came from a recent trip to the Rogue River Canyon in southwestern Oregon. Other wild mushrooms work just as well. At Lark I've had the dish with hedgehogs, yellowfoots, and black trumpets. Sometimes John adds a vegetable to it such as green beans for a dash of color and added texture. Word on the commercial street is that it was a poor chanterelle harvest this year. Maybe so, but it's also been a long harvest. Normally by Thanksgiving week Seattle would have had several hard frosts and the chanterelles—except for those in the most favorable of microclimates—would be returning to the earth. Instead they keep fruiting across much of their usual low-elevation habitat. I'm not opposed.

As for the farro, I only have this one episode under my belt so I'm hardly qualified to instruct, but it would seem that one has a wide range of mouth feel to work with when cooking this whole grain, not to mention ample time. Add more water and cooking time if you prefer a softer, more yielding bite. You can also soak the grain overnight.

1 cup farro
3 cups warm water
1-2 oz dried porcini, pulverized (optional)
4 oz mascarpone
1/2 lb chanterelles, chopped
2 tbsp butter
1 clove garlic, minced
salt & pepper

I don't know whether John uses porcini dust in his version but my feeling is that the essence of edulis improves just about any hearty dish in the dark months.

1. Reconstitute the porcini in 3 cups of warm water. Set aside for 10 minutes.
2. Pour porcini water in pot, salt the water, and bring to boil. Add farro, lower heat to simmer and cook until water is gone, about 40 minutes. Farro should be al dente yet tender. You can add more or less water and cook until desired softness. There's a lot of leeway and personal preference with farro.
3. Saute chanterelles for several minutes in butter in a large skillet, or in batches. Avoid slimy chanterelles by not crowding. You want the mushrooms to be lightly browned and firm.
4. Stir mascarpone into farro, then stir in most of chanterelles, reserving some as garnish. Season and garnish with chopped chives or parsley.

We served the farro with sauteed kale from the garden and sliced Steak au Poivre. The steak was organic and grass-fed, with a single 8-ounce New York strip plenty enough to feed two of us along with the other sides. A bottle of cabernet completed the meal.

Chanties Chanties Everywhere

The chanterelle. Despite its romantic twirl off the tongue, you'd think it was practically domesticated—an off-the-shelf French floozy Halloween costume. Is there an A-list wild mushroom that gets less respect, after all, than the chanty? Like an over-exposed model, it has the faint whiff of "been there done that." Well, I for one wouldn't kick a golden chanterelle out of bed for eating Cheez-Its!

Their fruity nose of apricots is unique in the fungal kingdom, and that fruitiness carries over into taste. Though earthy like other wild mushrooms, the chanterelle's flavor is reminiscent of orchards and vineyards and other more civilized habitats. In my neck of the woods they're without a doubt the most common of the wild mushrooms, gracing even the shelves of the local Safeway.

But don't be fooled. Though common, chanterelles are not always an easy find, and their singular flavor and aroma can transform many a dish from pedestrian to sublime, in particular any dish with bacon in it. Something about the union of fruity chanterelle with the essence of pig is a marriage made in culinary heaven.

How do you find chanterelles, you ask? I can't speak for other parts of the country, but in the Pacific Northwest young stands of Douglas fir are your best bet. This means a trip to logging country, where you'll pass miles of unsightly clearcuts before finding that perfect stand of 10 to 40-year-old tree farm Doug-firs where chanties thrive. This is not my favorite sort of mushroom hunting. The forest is dense, damp, and dark—and usually a boring monoculture. But if you can manage to find a patch of woods that hasn't been visited by a commercial forager you'll find the green moss carpeted with golden fungal goblets. These are the classic Pacific golden chanterelles, Cantharellus formosus. There are other varieties.

A strikingly hued species associated with spruce—Sitka on the coast and Engelmann in the inland West—goes by the name Cantharellus cibarius var. roseocanus. I find these chanterelles, known to commercial pickers as "peach chants" or "fluorescent chants," in the high huckleberry meadows of the Cascades, where they hug the ground in a most unchanterelle-like demureness, their dullish yellow caps with a surprisingly flat topography peeking out of the duff. But slice one off at the ankles and turn it over and you'll see the most blazing hue of neon orange underneath the cap.

And let's not forget the humble white chanterelle (Cantharellus subalbidus), which is often less expensive at the market than its golden cousin yet is my favorite for its meatiness and strong flavor. White chanties hide beneath the duff, often requiring an eagle eye and careful excavation. The result is a chanterelle that is dirtier than its golden counterparts but worth the effort to root out and clean up.

Fig & Chanterelle Crostini

For this post I tried to stay away from heavy cream, an effort of Dr. Strangelove proportions. The photo at top is my favorite new canape, a simple dollop of chopped chanterelles sauteed with shallots and fresh sage in butter topped with a thin slice of fig and a sprinkle of parsley. Admittedly, I wasn't too keen on the fig when a few of us first concocted this simple crostini; I thought the addition of fresh fig would take the fruitiness factor too far, but in fact it merely drives home the fact that chanterelles are a woodsy treat.

The photo at bottom shows a chanterelle succotash of sorts: Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin over Chanterelles, Corn & Apple. I'd say this is still a work in progress. I sauteed the chanties in bacon fat (with the diced bacon left in) along with chopped shallots, then added corn scraped off the cob, a diced Granny Smith apple, and a handful of baby arugula. The sweet and tart flavors still need some balancing, so I won't bother with the full recipe.

The other dinner shot is a recipe taken from Suzanne Goin's Sunday Suppers at Lucques, Scallops with Chanterelles, Sherry, and Parsley Breadcrumbs. This was a meal that encouraged third helpings and I can't recommend Goin's book enough.

Chanties offer endless possibilities for brightening a meal with fall color and the tastes and smells of the harvest season. To borrow from Bull Durham, when you speak of the chanterelle, speak well.

Dynamite Ham

So Martha and I were all dressed up and ready to hit the town. We had celebrating to do. The babysitter was here. I made a quick call to one of our friends to verify the bar where we were all meeting. "Great, we'll see you tomorrow," Cora said.

Tomorrow?

Oops. Wrong night. It's been a little hectic around here lately, what with Marty learning just the other day that one of her poems published last year has been selected for the new Best American Poetry anthology. Our phone was ringing off the hook, the news spreading virally among our Facebook friends. Even cheerleaders who snubbed Marty in high school were coming out of the woodwork: "Catch me up on your life," one said. "I always knew you were the creative type." So I guess we jumped the gun on date night. We were so ready.

But here we were in a celebratin' mood. We had a bottle of Pinot Noir on hand and a bag of chanterelles defrosting in the fridge. Chanties. They're nice to have for situations like this. While I cooked the pasta Marty ran around the corner to the last chance Hollywood Video, the movie ghetto for those nights when Netflix doesn't come through. "Woody Allen?" the clerk said. "You can look it up in that computer over there." Annie Hall was my idea. It was the movie that kicked off our mutual admiration Woody Fest many years ago, when we rented pretty much the entire oeuvre one rainy weekend—and now I could imagine my Marty having her own Alvy Singer moment: "Hey, it's Marty Silano. She's on the Johnny Carson. Hey everyone, it's Marty Silano!"

The kids burst into tears because we sent home their favorite babysitter. Next we exchanged our on-the-town duds for pajamas and scuffies. But the wine tasted good and the pasta was even better.

Dynamite Ham Chanterelle Pasta

It beats a plate of mashed yeast. You don't need ham, really. Pancetta, bacon, whatever fatty pork products you've got lying around. Dice a q-p of the pig and saute in a dollop of butter until starting to crisp. Meanwhile put a pot on the boil and throw in whatever pasta you feel like. We used little radiators because they're such good fat-catchers. Next add a chopped shallot or two to soak up all that porcine goodness in the pan. Put a couple tablespoons of butter in a large oven-proof mixing bowl and top with a couple ounces of heavy cream; shove in the oven at 300 degrees. When the shallots are soft add a pound of chopped chanterelles to the saute. If the chanties are fresh, cook out the water. Slowly, over medium-low heat, add a cup of heavy cream. Add a half cup or more of frozen peas to the sauce. Toss the finished pasta in the heated bowl with the butter and cream along with a third of a cup or more of grated parm. Pour the sauce over the pasta and mix some more.

Serve with red wine to insure full French Paradox mode and then repair to food coma couches for cinema and port.





Dinner dates and flowers
Just like old times
Staying up for hours
Making dreams come true
Doing things we used to do

Seems like old times
Being here with you...

Freezer Foraging

I've been a couch potato lately. When Mama Nature puts down 15 inches of rain on Snoqualmie Pass in a single shout, effectively melting three feet of base, and submerges a 20-mile stretch of I-5 south of Seattle, I heed the warning: Stay home! We've got some biblical shite going down in these parts and you don't have to live in Carnation to see the writing on the wall, or the ring around the living room walls, as the case may be.

Which is all a way of saying I haven't been foraging much lately. A trip to the coast for the latest razor clam opener seemed like a dicey proposition—just ask the truckers who have been stranded on dry islands of highway for a few days—and river fishing is certainly out of the question. Too bad the squid jigging has been so poor this year, because that would be an attractive option right now. Next week I hope to get a shot at some blackmouth.

No, the freezer is my go-to foraging ground right now. I think I can safely say it's the best investment of zero dollars I've ever made. For the price of hauling it away, a colleague of mine gave me a stand-up freezer several years ago and I've kept it full of salmon, shad, crabs, shrimp, razor clams, mushrooms, nettles, berries, tubs of stock, and a bunch of other wild foods ever since. The real test will come if I get into hunting and start laying in hunks of meat.

It's a joy to walk downstairs to the basement to find a wild food du jour. Lately mushrooms have been feeding the jones: porcini with rabbit, chanterelles for Christmas dinner, lobster duxelles for our holiday party. Last night I hit the chanties again, of which I've got poundage, so I could bring a treat to Jani and Kathy's place for Pizza Night. I also brought over enough red wine to make Kathy give up the recipe behind the dough that makes her Napoli-style pizza so delicious...

Kathy's Pizza

Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to reveal it here on the Interwebs. But: much more goes into a pizza party at Jani and Kathy's that can be passed along for your own enjoyment and emulation. Rule #1 is to hand your guests a special drink the moment they walk through the door. Usually this means a whiskey sour, though during the coldest months it might also be a rum sour, as it was last night.

Next is the pizza making: It's a family affair, all hands on deck. A big pot of red sauce is already on the stovetop, thanks to Jani, but many other tasks are up for grabs, making the final 'za a team effort. The kitchen is stocked. Jani and Kathy own no fewer than three pizza stones and three wooden pallets. Various cheeses and toppings are scattered helter-skelter. The point is to roll up your sleeves and experiment.

Here is my contribution, with ample help from Kathy:

Wild Mushroom Pizza

1 lb butter
4 tbsp butter
2 tbsp fresh thyme
1/2 cup dry sherry
2 cups Gruyere cheese, shredded
1 cup smoked mozzarella, shredded
dough for one large pizza
olive oil
salt and pepper
garnish of fresh thyme sprigs and pink pepperberries (optional)


1. Saute chanterelles in butter for a few minutes over medium-high heat. Add sherry and thyme; season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook until liquid has evaporated, then blot dry and set aside.

2. Stretch and shape pizza dough into desired shape. Brush with olive oil, then top with cheese mixture. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake at 500 degrees until crust is lightly browned, about 6 minutes.

3. Remove pizza from oven and quickly top with mushrooms. Return to oven and bake until crust is golden, another 4 minutes or so.

4. Allow pizza to cool a couple minutes. Garnish with pepperberries and thyme.

The smoked mozzarella and chanterelles combine to make a very powerful woodsy flavor, which is accented by the thyme and pepperberries. This is not a frivolous pizza. I should also note that previously sauteed and frozen chanterelles will make it somewhat chewier than fresh chanties, though not in a way that is displeasing. Be prepared to wash it down with plenty of red wine.