Hello, friends! It is with great excitement and heartfelt joy that I bring to you this very special edition of How We Eat. Luck shined its shiny face down on me just the other day, as Meredith (my lovely hiking companion) and I set out on a chilly (and slightly snowy) afternoon jaunt in the Sierras (my backyard). We were just a’stroll-stroll-strollin’ along, when Meredith pointed out an interesting looking mushroom. I cannot even tell you precisely how far I jumped out of my damn boots as I discovered that this was no ordinary wierdo mushroom. Merra was pointing at a fantastic treat, popping right the hell out of the trail. A morel! The best kind of mushroom1!! I was bouncing around like a little kid in a candy store. Where there’s one, there’s bound to be more, I declared. Sure enough, thanks mostly in part to Mer’s keen eye, I collected a total of 15 delicious morels.
Now, to be fair, I would nominate Paul to be King Mushroom Man of the Food Blog. He’s gone so far as to inoculate logs with fungus in the past (P: correct me if I’m wrong), and he’s done at least one mushroom hunt that I know of. I have personally never hunted mushrooms, yet I have been lucky enough to come across a few tasties while working in Alaska, including “chicken of the woods” fungus, which is a bright orange bracket fungus found on dead logs (bloggers: look forward to a special “flashback” edition of chicken-of-the-woods casserole at some point).
Anyways, on my way back down the mountain, I called Paul to get a hot recipe from a fellow food blogger, but he wasn’t taking any calls. Luckily, this wasn’t my first morel encounter, and I knew that these babies needed very little to achieve full-blown gustatorial enjoyment. In fact, they needed precisely one thing, and that thing is butter.
To prepare morels: Lay them out and slice them into halves or quarters along the length of the shroom. A few little bugs will crawl out onto the cutting board. Don’t freak out! This is normal when harvesting any wild (or for that matter cultivated) food. Mushrooms have more bugs than normal, perhaps, and they aren’t all easy to get rid of. Solution: Take the sliced morels and put then in salt water. Put them in the fridge for two hours or so, then remove them to a separate bowl.
To cook morels: Take about a quarter cup of butter (I used salted, but it hardly matters) and sizzle it up in the frying pan. Drop the mushrooms into the pan and fry them to desired doneness. I left a few on too long and they get hard and lose some of their delicious flavour. Try not to overcook them. They don’t need much time. Just keep an eye on them!! Let them cool down for about as long as you can stand it (about three seconds, if you’re me) then eat them.
To store morels: If your lovely hiking companion is Meredith, then you might have leftovers, because Meredith detests mushrooms, even the best kind, which is morels. There are several ways to store morels, and most of these methods are on the Internet2. I happen to have a vacuum sealer from my salmon smoking days in Alaska. To vacuum-seal morels, dust them in a little flour, then place them on a cookie sheet and freeze them for a couple of hours. Take them out, and lay them out flat in a vacuum sealer bag. Seal it up. It’s just that easy. When mushroom-appreciating company comes by, just open the bag and fry them in butter. They are small pieces of mushroom, so it won’t matter that they’re frozen. Once they hit that hot butter, they’ll thaw real fast and fry up like a charm (I am told). I still have half a batch of morels in the freezer. Who wants to come over and try some?
-Sav
1: Actual fact
2: Best morel website on the Internet, I think. Has info on how to properly ID morels as well.
Savastio
P. David Stockhausen
