Creamy mushroom sauce (pancake day fail)

This is a basic white sauce made with vegan ingredients and intensified with mushroom powder. Then mixed with sauteed mushrooms, walnuts (and optional artichokes). The sauce comes out nice and thick and creamy, and the mushroom powder makes up for any flavour lost due to not using real milk or butter. My intention was to wrap pancakes around it (we attempted pancake day yesterday, one day late as I had no time on the day), but my pancakes completely failed and I don't understand why - they just kept sticking to the pan. I've used both pans and batter recipe many times before, am stumped. So anyway, we gave up and ate the sauce with noodles instead, which worked just as well - I guess pancake day this year was not meant to be.

For the sauce:
5/8 cup fake milk (used almond, soy might be better), heated
1 tbsp fake butter
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp mushroom powder
salt and pepper

For mushroom fry:
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
~5 medium-large mushrooms
1-2 tbsp chopped walnuts
1-2 tbsp chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Heat the milk. In a separate, small pan melt the butter. Add the flour to the butter and stir / let bubble for a few minutes (do not colour). Add the hot milk and mix well for a few minutes, until smooth and starting to thicken. Keep stirring and heating gently for a minute or two more, then add mushroom powder, salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

In a medium frying pan, heat the olive oil, then add the garlic and sizzle for a minute or so before adding the mushrooms and walnuts. Cook for a few more minutes, until the mushrooms are lightly browned. Finally add the parsley, stir for a minute or so more, add salt and pepper to taste and turn off heat.

Mix the mushroom fry into the sauce, toss and then serve, either as a pancake filling or mixed through pasta.

Avenotto aka savoury porridge

Is it the Scottish childhood? Who knows, but ever since I was the only one out of three sisters who ate porridge along with mama and papa bear and chattered about Goldilocks while pouring on the golden syrup... I have been a lover of oats.

I've never used them like this before - like a risotto, but with oats instead of rice as the grain - avenotto (? - I made that up). Seemed like you can't go wrong with oats.

1-2 tbsp sunflower seeds
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 tiny onion, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
4 mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 cup oats
1 cup veg stock
1 cup boiling water mixed with 1 tsp mushroom powder
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
1-2 leaves kale, washed and chopped
1-2 tbsp chopped parsley
salt, pepper, vinegar

Heat a medium saucepan and toast the sunflower seeds until golden and fragrant. Tip into a bowl. In the same pan, heat the oil. Add the onion and garlic and cook until almost soft. Add the mushrooms and saute until starting to crisp around the edges. Tip the onion, garlic and mushrooms into the bowl with the sunflower seeds. Put the oats in the pan and toast until slightly coloured and fragrant. Add the stock and boiling water-mushroom powder mix. Bring to a boil and add the dried herbs. Simmer until the oats are almost tender and the mixture has thickened (as for regular porridge). Add the kale and then cook until kale and oats are done. Add back in the sunflower seeds and onion-mushroom mixture, along with the parsley. Mix together, add salt and pepper and a splash of vinegar if you like, taste and add more if it needs it. Eat straight away.


Quick and good and digestible. Ha, so far today I had muesli (mostly unadulterated oats mixed with almond milk) for breakfast, this for lunch, and oat yoghurt for after lunch. What was I saying about oat love?

Mushrooms and sesame tofu

We tried sesame tofu for the first time at Journeyman (our new favourite fancy Greater Boston restaurant). I am not sure if their sesame tofu is quite the same stuff, but I found three different types of gomadofu (Japanese sesame 'tofu') at Ebisuya. The Japanese sesame tofu turns out to be tofu in name and consistency only: it is not made by coagulation of 'milk'; rather by making sesame paste set into a tofu-like block using kudzu starch. So it is basically jellified tahini. I really like it: it has that earthy, tahini taste in a smooth, refreshing, tofu-like texture. We tried black and beige versions.

First we ate some simply: in small cubes with a smear of wasabi on top / in a puddle of good-quality soy sauce, as a side with sushi. And it was good.

Last night I was making spätzle (with the last two wonderful eggs from S's chickens in Roslindale), and decided it would go well with mushrooms and sesame tofu. It did, it went great.

(serves two, in combination with one quantity of spätzle)

1 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
~12 mushrooms, cleaned and chopped into ~7mm dice
1 tbsp chanterelle powder
1 tsp mediterranean herb mix (mostly thyme+oregano)
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp mushroom soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin
salt+pepper
1 small block of beige sesame tofu, coarsely grated
toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add garlic and fry for a few minutes until softened. Add the diced mushrooms, chanterelle powder, nutmeg and herb mix and fry until the mushrooms have released their liquid and then reabsorbed most of it. Add the soy sauce and mirin and fry for a minute or so longer until everything melds. Taste for seasoning and add salt+pepper to taste. To serve, put some spätzle into an individual bowl, add mushrooms, and then sprinkle with grated sesame tofu and sesame seeds (if using).


This would also work with fresh pasta or gnocchi (although I do like the egginess of spätzle with the mushrooms and sesame tofu).

Mushroom and walnut ravioli

S made me a nice Saturday lunch, so I decided to make him a nice dinner. His favourite food is pasta. I made a fresh, eggless pasta a few weeks ago, and wondered if the same dough would work as ravioli. Which, I just realised, is a merger of two of S's favourite food things: pasta, and little packages. I had been thinking about what would be good as a filling, and mushroom and walnut was a forerunner. So when we got home with mushrooms among our grocery shopping I decided to go for it and give ravioli a shot.

(made 12 fairly large ravioli = a good quantity for two people, with some dough left over that made a portion or two of fettucine to dry out)

For the pasta:
1 cup pasta flour
1 cup plain flour
1 tbsp gram flour
1 tsp salt
water

For the filling:
olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
~8 medium sized mushrooms, cleaned and finely diced
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tbsp chanterelle mushroom powder
1 tsp white vermouth
1/2 tbsp chickpea and barley three-year (dark) miso
~10 walnut halves, half ground / half chopped
salt+pepper

First, make the pasta. Mix the flours and salt in a heap on a clean work surface. Make a well in the middle and add water, mixing with your fingers until it comes together into a dough. Knead for a few minutes, until the dough is pliable. Wrap in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for ~30 min.

While the dough is chilling, prepare the filling. Heat ~1 tbsp of olive oil in a medium frying pan. Add the garlic and fry until softened and starting to go light brown. Add the mushrooms, mushroom powder and thyme and cook, stirring occasionally, so the mushrooms soften, go dark and release their liquid. Continue cooking until the liquid is reabsorbed / evaporated. Add the vermouth and cook until it too is evaporated. Add the miso, walnuts and seasoning to taste.

The pasta dough should have had sufficient time in the fridge by now. Take one third and roll out on a floured surface until thin. Cut out circular pieces using a Coke glass or other circular cutter. Pair them up. Place a teaspoon full of the mushroom filling mixture in the centre of one of each pair of circles. Lightly wet the edge of the circle around the mushroom pile, then place the other circle of the pair on top and squish the two circles together all around their circumference with your fingers. Try not to let any air get sealed in the middle. You can press around the edge with a fork as well if you want to be sure of the seal.

As each one is completed, transfer it to a baking sheet lined with coarse cornmeal or semolina. Refrigerate them on the baking sheet until you are ready to cook them. Roll out the next third of dough (and then the next third) and shape more ravioli, continuing to add the completed shapes to the collection on the baking sheet until you are out of filling. If there is any remaining dough you can just roll it out and shape it into fettucine or another shape, and dry it out if you don't feel like eating it all straight away.

To cook the pasta, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Put the ravioli in. Cook for about 5 minutes - they will float, then you will need to cook them for a minute or two longer. The exact cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of the pasta. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil (or truffle oil?) and some salt and pepper, or with whatever kind of sauce takes your fancy.


These turned out good: S loved them and said they were one of the best things I ever cooked. The pasta was a little thick - it is hard to roll it out really thin manually, and since these involve a double layer of dough all around the perimeter any slight too-thick-ness is magnified. We both quite enjoyed the thickish pasta anyway, although I don't know if it would have passed inspection on Masterchef... None of them burst while cooking - think using water to help the seal was a good tip. Not sure if the gram flour made any difference (might be an idea to try varying the quantities of the different types of flour in the dough more though?). The filling was really successful - incredibly flavourful and savoury, and a great texture. The next filling I'd like to try is butternut squash, sage and hazelnut or pecan.

Chanterelles and hedgehog mushrooms

We went to the woods at the weekend, and found so so many mushrooms. Starting with some slimy boletes as soon as we left the car park, and moving on to add chanterelle after chanterelle as soon as we left the path, followed by what we think were two varieties of hedgehog mushroom (wish I had a better picture of these).

By the time we got back to the car we had a weighty bag of hedgehogs, plus two bulging bags of delicate chanterelles. D had collected and eaten both from the same spot before, so we had little doubt about their identification and awesomeness. This haul outstrips any other mushroom hunting trip I ever made, many times over.

We mainly consulted this book, which is wonderful. The author is incredibly knowledgeable and it's bursting with personality and tips about every aspect of mushroom hunting, preparation, growing and eating. All the recommended mushroom varieties are given scores at the back for how good they are when prepared to eat in different ways. Hedgehogs scored highly for tempura, so we decided to burden K with the responsibility of her heritage and put her in charge of hedgehog tempura, while D+S concentrated on cleaning mushrooms with a paintbrush and I sauteed some chanterelles (they scored high in the saute category). We also set up the dehydrator to dry out some of both kinds of mushrooms for future use.


Sauteed chanterelles

1 tbsp olive oil
4 large handfuls fresh chanterelles, larger ones torn in two
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp thyme leaves
1 tbsp finely chopped curly parsley
knob of butter
slug of (German) white wine
salt+pepper

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and add the garlic. Cook until starting to brown then add in the cleaned chanterelles. Saute over a medium heat until they release their liquid, then continue to saute until they absorb it again. Add the herbs and cook for a few more minutes. Finally, add the butter and white wine and cook until melted / evaporated, and taste for seasoning.

We ate them with gnocchi, they were yummy - quite delicate and fragrant (almost fruity?).  These chanterelles are beautiful mushrooms, and really held their shape and texture despite looking so frail.

For second batch (yes, we had that many), I sauteed an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic in olive oil until well softened and golden brown, then added a mixture of hedgehogs and chanterelles, cooked until the liquid reabsorbed, then added some chopped chives and seasoning, and a knob of butter to deglaze the pan. And ate it with spaetzle (which go wonderfully well with sauteed mushrooms).  I think I liked this latter version better.


Powdered dried chanterelles / hedgehog mushrooms

The book recommended powdering both kinds of mushroom when dry as they apparently do not reconstitute well (I'd imagine they just go a bit floppy and slimy).

Fill the dehydrator with cleaned mushrooms and set to 110-125C. Leave overnight or for approx 4 hours, until the mushrooms are completely dried. The chanterelles dried out quite easily and evenly as they are quite thin and delicate all over; the hedgehogs are thicker and did not dry quite as quickly / evenly. For powdering, I think it is important that the mushrooms are very thoroughly dried. When completely dry, transfer the mushrooms to a clean spice/coffee grinder and whizz to a powder. Try not to inhale it when you take the lid off. The full dehydrator (5 trays) of chanterelles made 250ml of powder.

The smell of the powder is incredible - intense essence of mushroom - and both chanterelle and hedgehog powder smelled quite similar.  But I haven't figured out the best way to store or cook with it yet... Edit: see here for recipes so far.


Note: I think the chanterelles were mostly Craterellus tubaeformis, the winter chanterelle (fits with being late in the season), although I think we also found some Cantharellus ignicolor (flame-coloured chanterelle; think the ones in the photo above are these) and Cantharellus cinnabarinus (bright red ones). The hedgehog mushrooms were Hydnum repandum and/or Hydnum umbilicatum.