A Meal Fit for a King

The admiral is a dandy but the king is...well, the king. Boletus edulis, the king bolete, the true porcino, is always an exciting find.

The more kings I capture, the more I realize how little I know about this mushroom. Here in the PNW we are graced with kings galore. There are spring kings in the Cascades (probably a different species from Boletus edulis, but the DNA sequencing has yet to be done), summer kings high in the mountains near treeline, and fall kings from below freezing all the way to sea level, from mountains to coast. The fall kings are the most flavorful; their nutty taste permeates whatever ingredients you use.

In my experience, if I find Amanita muscaria in numbers, Boletus edulis is often nearby. Both in the Rockies and Cascades I've stumbled onto huge fruitings of the two species in the same habitat, with individuals sometimes nearly touching cap to cap.

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know I like to eat. To eat well. And especially, to eat well without getting all technical. Here's a rich recipe that's perfect for the tuckered out fungi forager at the end of the day, when you've spent thousands of calories in search of the king and could care less about piling them back on, the sort of pasta dish that's started with a pot of water on the boil and ended when the noodles are al dente—about 10 minutes from start to finish. Yet I guarantee you it will taste like a heavenly creation from the best of Italian retsaurants.

Porcini in Cream Sauce over Pasta

1 knob butter
1-2 shallots, diced
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
1 large king bolete, chopped
dry vermouth
salt and pepper
heavy cream
1 lb. pasta
parmesan for grating
parsley, chopped

1. Get that pot on the boil. Meanwhile, as the water's heating up, finely chop a couple shallots (or an equivalent amount of yellow onion if that's what you have on hand) and saute in butter. Mince a clove or two of garlic and add to the saute. Chop up a large porcino or a few buttons and add to the saute, cooking for 5 minutes or so over medium-high and stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Deglaze with a splash of vermouth, then reduce heat to medium-low and stir in heavy cream to taste. The pasta should be nearly done. Drain pasta and serve. Pour porcini cream sauce over pasta, then sprinkle generously with grated parmesan cheese and a pinch of chopped parsley.

Not only is this an ideal meal for the weary mushroom hunter, it's also a fine lazy day repast to go with the Sunday papers and all the wonderful news in the world.


Here are a few other king bolete recipes from previous posts:

• Poultry Stewed with Ceps
  
• Roasted Porcini Buttons
  
• Fettucini with Porcini, Garlic & Parmesan
  
• Pasta with Porcini in Sage Butter
  
• Grilled Porcini
  
• Beef Burgundy with Porcini and Chanterelles
  

What would you do with 48 oysters?

To commemorate the onset of another oyster season, Marx Foods is offering four dozen of the sublime bivalves to the winner of its latest contest. All you need to do is leave a comment on their contest page saying what you'd do with 48 oysters. The winner will be voted by readers. The contest runs through October 19; polling will be from the 21st to 24th at noon, and a winner will be announced on October 27th.

The Admiral

The admirable bolete, aka "Admiral" (Boletus mirabilis), is one of my favorites, for its beauty, its lively flavor, and its fleeting collectabilty. Rarely do I find one before the bugs.

Unlike the king bolete (Boletus edulis), which can be used in all manner of culinary ways, the admiral is probably best by itself, sliced and sauteed, an amuse bouche for the table. The taste of lemon is distinctive and usually requires something to balance it such as butter or soy sauce. That said, I'm told the lemony flavor is produced by a compound in the velvety "skin" of the mushroom's pileus, or cap. Presumably one could peel this off and then use the admiral in any standard porcini recipe.

The admiral is a mushroom of damp Pacific Northwest forests. I generally find it in older hemlock stands with spongy moss carpets where it likes to fruit off nurse logs, and though it can get quite large, with a cap approaching the size of a salad plate, edible specimens are usually smaller.

Matsutake Sukiyaki

This is the mushroom that kick-started a fungal gold rush in the early 90s, introducing hundreds of hopeful new commercial pickers to the "mushroom trail" and changing the non-wood forest products economy probably forever. It's the matsutake, or pine mushroom (matsu for pine, take for mushroom). The Japanese species is Tricholoma matsutake, while the closely related North American species is named Tricholoma magnivelare.

Here's what happened. The Japanese love their matsutake, and having depleted their own resource in the red pine forests of Japan, they turned to the export market. Commercial pickers in the Pacific Northwest, where the mushroom is found in abundance, cashed in for a few years, getting absurd prices like $50 or even $100 per pound, and then the market collapsed. Turns out matsutake are fairly common in many other temperate conifer forests around the world, including those in China, Korea, and even other parts of North America. It was a simple case of supply outstripping demand. Right now pickers are getting around $6-8 per pound. What galls them most, though, is that Japanese consumers at the other end of the supply chain are still paying top yen for their beloved matsutake, if not the ridiculous prices of a decade ago. Even in this country prime matsutake buttons command an exorbitant price; in Seattle's Uijimaya market the other day they were going for $49.99 a pound.

During the go-go years, huge mushroom camps popped up outside of places like Terrace, B.C. (the "Zoo," as it's still called) and Crescent Lake, Oregon. The camps grew into little cities where open-air soup kitchens and even brothels catered to the pickers. Meanwhile these same pickers laid claim to productive patches and legend has it there was the occasional gunfight in the woods. When prices fell back to earth many of the pickers stayed in the game, expanding their expertise to other mushrooms or non-wood products such as salal and berries.

There's this lingering rumor that you can still make some money picking mushrooms, so the woods remain full of commercial pickers. The good is that wild mushrooms are now a staple of the best restaurants around the country; the bad is that recreational pickers such as myself must look a little harder for a patch that hasn't already been picked; and the ugly is that some commercial pickers continue to see the patches, even those on public land, as their own private stashes and will use threats, intimidation, and sometimes even violence to protect "their" crop. Mind you, I've never personally encountered such miscreant behavior, but I've heard stories and been threatened in an online forum.

Emotions tend to run high when it comes to matsutake. If commercial pickers or buyers get ahold of this post, don't be surprised to see angry comments or corrections. To get an idea of the current picking imbroglio, check out this YouTube video made by a buyer in B.C. who's sympathetic with the plight of pickers (there are several installments).

On to culinary matters. The matsutake, when young and fresh, is known for its pungent smell, what David Arora, author of Mushrooms Demystified, calls "a provocative compromise between 'red hots' and dirty socks." The aroma is unforgettable, and so is the taste. It only takes a small amount of the mushroom to put its stamp on a dish, and a bunch of them can quickly fill a room with their smell.

As with other cultural icons in the East, many westerners wonder what all the fuss is about. The matsutake is an odd bird, with a flavor that is frankly too intense or unusual for many. It doesn't work well in traditional western cuisines such as French or Italian. Don't try cooking it with cream or butter. But when matched with ingredients from the Far East it can be exquisite. There's a reason why it's a delicacy in Japan. Try lightly grilling it and eating with a dipping sauce. In stir-fry dishes its meaty texture can be a substitute for animal flesh, as the porcino is in Italy.

Matsutake Sukiyaki

This is a traditional dish made by matsutake hunters while in the woods. A cast iron pot is perfect for cooking it, whether indoors or out. I adapted the recipe from one in Hsiao-Ching Chou's informative article on matsutake from the October 13, 2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, with a few minor modifications. If not using a single pot in the field, take the time to cook your noodles separately. I use both Napa cabbage and bok choy, and mirin adds sweetness to the broth. Despite the long list of ingredients, this is a nearly fool-proof dish and fast.

4 cups beef stock
3/4 cup sake
1/4 cup mirin
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 bunch green onions
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 small yellow onion, cut into 1/2-inch wedges
1 cup Napa cabbage, shredded
1 cup bok choy, shredded
8 ounces matsutake mushrooms, brushed clean, trimmed, and thinly sliced
8 ounces bean thread or cellophane noodles, cooked
1 package (about 14 ounces) firm tofu, cubed (optional)
1 pound thinly sliced beef
1 tablespoon sugar (optional)

1. Combine the stock, sake, mirin, and soy sauce in a pot or kettle and warm over medium heat. Thinly slice enough of the green onion tops to make 1/4 cup; set aside for garnish. Cut the remaining green onions in half.

2. Heat peanut oil in wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the green onions (minus the garnish), yellow onion, cabbage, bok choy, and matsutakes and stir-fry until they begin to soften, 3-5 minutes. Transfer the vegetables and fungi to the broth along with optional tofu cubes, and keep warm over low heat.

3. Cook the beef quickly in batches, just until nicely browned, 30-60 seconds on each side, drizzling about 2 tablespoons of the warm broth and 1 teaspoon of the sugar over when you turn the meat. Bunch these pieces to one side of the wok/skillet and continue with the remaining meat.

4. Cook noodles separately, then add to bowl and ladle over hot broth, mushrooms, tofu, and vegetables. Top with beef slices and drizzle some of the cooking liquids. Sprinkle with a garnish of green onion.

For more on the matsutake trade and the mushroom trail, check out this article from The Atlantic by Lawrence Millman, and this one from Whole Earth by David Arora.

The Bear's Head

Check out this crazy looking fungus. From a distance it looks like a frozen waterfall. Close up you can see that all those little icicle-like projections are attached to arms, like the tentacles of an undersea creature. This is Hericium abietis, better known as the bear's head mushroom. Other mushrooms in the Hericium genus include the lion's mane (Hericium erinaceus) and the bear's head tooth fungus (Hericium americanum). I usually find the bear's head in old-growth forests, where it colonizes conifer stumps and logs and can be found fruiting in the same spot for several years. To harvest it, you slice off the appendages with a knife, careful to leave the attached stalk so it will fruit again.

I found this one while hiking in an ancient, moss-draped forest near Mt. Rainier with my friend Cora. On a day filled with edible mushrooms of various species, this one was the most spectacular. To give some perspective, the fungus in the photo above is about 18" X 18". Amazingly, we found it right in the middle of a trail where an old log had been cut to open a passage. How many hundreds of hikers and bikers had already brushed past this incredible mushroom without knowing they were rubbing elbows with a true delicacy of the forest? How many didn't even stop to admire its ornate, even outlandish form? We left some for those who do notice such things.

The bear's head is best simply sauteed in butter. Cook it longer and more gently (i.e. lower heat) than other mushrooms or it will be chewy. The taste is nutty and complex. Cora sauteed this one with both shallots and garlic and served it with a grilled halibut fillet topped with cherry tomato salsa.

Fungus Among Us

Fall mushroom season is in full swing in FOTL's stomping grounds, which explains my absence of late. Been on a 'shroom odyssey and will be reporting my finds in the coming days, along with a bunch of recipes to get you out in the woods—unless you want to pay market prices...a tough bet in this economy.

Speaking of wild mushrooms, you can read my article on porcini in the current issue of Seattle Metropolitan magazine.

Crustaceans of the Land

On Orcas Island this past weekend for a father-son campout, we played the traditional "Life and Death in the Woods." My boy lives for this game. It's carnivores vs. omnivores vs. herbivores, and you can bet that most of the kids wanted to be either meat-eaters or generalists; all the dads were left with the green flags that marked them as humble plant-eaters. Or, as it turned out, fungivores. Painting the forest floor with fluorescent flashes of orange and red were lobster mushrooms, dozens of of them just emerging from the duff. While the kids ran around devouring their parents, I slipped out of bounds to pick several pounds of the lobsters.

The lobster mushroom (Hypomyces lactifluorum) is actually a combination of two fungi, with one parasitizing the other. The host mushroom is usually of the Russula or Lactarius genera. In the PNW, a favorite host is the short-stemmed russula (Russula brevipes), a normally unappetizing and rather unexceptional 'shroom. When parasitized by the lobster, however, it becomes the stuff of culinary dreams: a day-glo orange or red (or even purple) delight of fungiphiles, with firm white flesh and a slightly marine scent and taste. The lobster attacks while the host is still developing underground, sometimes twisting it into tortured shapes and covering the gills until they are nearly undefined, as you can see in the image above.

There are a couple of potential downsides to lobsters. First, depending on where they're fruiting, they usually require lots of cleaning. The rough, parasitized surface collects duff and dirt like a magnet, and the strange shapes can sometimes trap soil deep in contorted clefts and cavities. Second, bugs like the mushrooms as much as we do. Slice open a lobster and you might be confronted with a maggot-riddled interior. Luckily, mine were almost entirely bug-free.

I like making the classic French dish duxelles with lobsters. The contrast of the outer orange and inner white looks almost like lump crab meat, and the taste of the lobsters is perfect for this dish. Duxelles was reputedly created by famous French chef François Pierre La Varenne (1615–1678), author of Le cuisinier françois and one of the first to codify French cuisine, in honor of his boss, Nicolas Chalon du Blé, marquis d'Uxelles.

Duxelles

1 lb lobster mushrooms, cleaned and finely diced
1-2 shallots, finely diced
1/2 cup or more heavy cream
parsley, chopped
fresh herbs, chopped
cognac
butter
salt and pepper

Saute diced shallot in butter until translucent. Add lobsters and cook on medium-high until the mushrooms have expelled all their water, 5 to 7 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Deglaze with a splash of cognac. Slowly stir in cream along with whatever herbs you like and simmer until desired thickness. Garnish with chopped parsley.

Serve duxelles over thinly sliced baguette or mash into a paste for Beef Wellington and other recipes.



Duxelles Sauce

The above recipe can also be modified to serve over meat dishes. Simply add chicken or beef stock and more cream to make saucier.

Huckleberry Jelly

It was supposed to be a jam, but I skimped on the pectin and my parsimoniousness was rewarded with a slightly thinner batch with bounce to it. No matter. The huckleberry flavor is outstanding. Next time I might try adding some lemon rind.

4 cups berries
3 cups sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 package of pectin (whole for jam)
1/2 tsp butter

Mash the berries by the cupful into a sauce pan. Stir in lemon juice and pectin and bring to a boil. Stir in sugar and butter and bring to a boil once more, stirring constantly. Boil for a full minute, then ladle into sterilized jars. Place lidded jars in a boiling water bath for at least five minutes. Yields 5 half-pints of jelly.

The Huckleberry Hour

While scouting mushrooms in the mountains yesterday, I was reminded of a comment from a professional forager I interviewed this spring. "I always pay for my gas," he said, the point being that foraging is a multi-disciplinary avocation and a good forager is knowledgeable on a wide variety of wild edibles—or, to traffic in cliche, when the gods give you lemons, make lemonade.

The mushroom hunting was certainly a lemon yesterday. After such a good start with all that rain in August, September has been bone-dry. My chanterelle patch is a withered husk of its former self. We need rain badly. Yes, I'm sure there are mushroomers who are finding goodies in wetter micro-climates. That's why I went for elevation yesterday—I figured there might be a little extra precip up there, at least some drip lines from early morning mist.

Not likely. The roads are dusty and the duff is crunchy. Here and there I found the desiccated remains of old fruiting bodies, but otherwise the ground was bare. This was terra incognita for me, mostly a scouting run. I was on the Pacific Crest Trail and saw a total of four other hikers. Crossed paths with two backpackers and asked them how many nights. They looked a little embarrassed. "Five months," one of them finally answered. Right on! I plan to do the through-hike one of these years. Passed an elderly couple out for a stroll. We talked about the poor huckleberry crop this year. The man said it was 10 percent of normal. If that's true, expect to see newspaper stories about bears coming into town and raiding garbage cans. All around us the berry bushes were bare. Then, about two miles into my walk I started seeing them, big beautiful huckleberries like those we found in Indian Heaven earlier this summer.

Forget mushrooms; I screwed on my huckleberry snout.

Poor crop or not, it's prime time for mountain huckleberries in the Pacific Northwest. Get 'em while you can. I love how the sun-exposed bushes turn fire-engine red this time of year.

Tips for Huckleberrying

1. Scout first. Look for patches producing the biggest, sweetest fruit. This will make the picking faster and easier. During my hike I covered about 7 miles and noted all the good patches so I could hit them on my return, at which point I was able to concentrate on chest-high bushes with lots of fruit that didn't require any bending over. I saved my back the trouble and picked faster to boot.

2. Look for open slopes where fire or logging has removed much of the canopy. There is much debate among huckleberry hounds about the conditions that promote the best fruitings. Some evangelize full sun, while others pronounce the filtered light of open old-growth forests to be best. My own findings suggest that it isn't so much the amount of sun or shade but the make-up of the bush. Spindly bushes will often have huge, sweet berries, with all their energy put into the fruit rather than the growth of leaves and stems. Be your own judge.

3. Know your huckleberries. Two of the most common in my neck of the woods are the thin-leaf huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum) and the oval-leaf huckleberry (Vaccinium ovalifolium), also known as the Alaskan blueberry. The former, with its large size and sweetness, is the most commonly harvested huckleberry in the PNW, while the latter is more sour and suitable for jams. Another less common species is the Cascade bilberry (Vaccinium deliciosum). There are more than a dozen species altogether in Washington and Oregon.

4. Two hands are better than one. Wear a jug around your neck. I didn't have one on this trip, thinking I was mushrooming, but I improvised a plastic grocery bag that had contained my lunch, stretching one of the handles until I could fit it over my head and around my neck.

5. Pay attention. Mr. Bear has a stake in the berry brakes too!

Huckleberry Sauce

This sauce is so easy it's criminal—and yet how nicely it tarts up (yeah, rockin' the double-entendres) a grilled fillet of fish or a cut of meat. Really, you can make it however you like, but here's what I did:

Simmered 4 cups of huckleberries with a cup of chicken stock, a cup of sugar, and 3 tablespoons of cider vinegar (several of the huckleberry sauces I checked online call for raspberry vinegar), then poured in a splash of tawny port a couple times, amounting in total to less than a half cup. I mashed half the berries and left the remainder whole. You might try crushed cloves, or white wine instead of port, or lemon zest, really whatever you want to jazz it up. A dab of butter to finish it gives the sauce a glisteny quality. I went for a fairly simple presentation and let the berries speak for themselves.

The sauce turned a fairly innocuous dish of grilled rockfish into something a little more special. The fish I rubbed with curry powder and a few other spices, then grilled. Topped with huckleberry sauce, the sparring between the curry and the berries made for, in Marty's words, an "awesome dinner!" Meanwhile, I've got a couple cups of sauce left in the freezer.

The Great Frozen Porcini Test, Part 3

Friends, the verdict is in. But first some suspense. As you'll recall, in recent weeks I've been putting a batch of frozen spring porcini through the paces in an effort to understand: a.) whether there's a preferred way to defrost the porcini; b.) whether there's a preferred way to cook with thawed porcini; and c.) if it's worth freezing porcini in the first place.

My first attempt, Test 1, was to remove the frozen porcini from its vacuum-sealed bag and let it thaw for several hours on the kitchen counter. You can read the results here.

The second test was to cook with the frozen porcini right out of the freezer. Read the results here.

My final test was to keep the porcini in its vacuum-sealed bag overnight in the refrigerator. Mushrooms are basically sponges. They're mostly water, which is why you try to cook the water out even with fresh specimens. I'm not sure exactly why, but when frozen mushrooms thaw out, unlike meats, they lose a lot of their water in the process (probably because there's cellular damage from the freezing and the mushroom simply can't contain all its moisture in the aftermath).

After thawing for 24 hours, my porcini were swimming in a small pool of liquid at the bottom of the bag—but they were still firm. Yes, they were wet and slippery on the outside and you would never want to shave raw defrosted porcini over a salad the way you might with fresh, but they were also firm, like canned button mushrooms. I preferred the texture of the thawed porcini in Test 3 to Test 1; something about not exposing the defrosting mushrooms to air is a good thing.

I tried Test 3 on two occasions, making Stroganoff one night (pictured at left) and making Jane Grigson's Poultry Stewed with Ceps another night. Let me tell you, dear readers, the Grigson recipe is a keeper, and the frozen porcini, left to thaw overnight in the refrigerator in their vacuum-sealed bag, passed with flying colors.

Poultry Stewed with Ceps

1 chicken, cut into pieces (2 breasts, 2 thighs, 2 legs)
seasoned flour for dredging
1/2 cup olive oil
4 tbsp butter
1/4 cup brandy
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large carrot, chopped
fresh herbs, chopped
2 cups stock (or less)
1 lb porcini (ceps), caps sliced, stalks chopped
parsley, chopped

Flour chicken and brown in half the oil and all the butter. Flame with brandy, turning chicken. Add the onion, garlic, and carrot and stir in pan juices. Lower heat and cook, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes. Add fresh herbs and 1 cup of stock. Cover partly. Meanwhile in a separate pan saute the porcini in remaining oil, then add to chicken. Pour in more stock if necessary. Serve over brown rice. Serves 4-6.

Whew! Now it's time to get into the woods and find some fresh porcini!