Coprinus

Today was a beautiful day in Chicago.  I wanted to get out of the city and do some foraging while the weather allowed, but there was business to attend to.

Just as I began to despair, I spotted a cluster of mushrooms next to a tree on the sidewalk.  Their size and my excitement led me to misidentify them as shaggy manes, which they unfortunately were not.

If I had realized that other Coprinus species could be this big and cylindrical, I would have taken more note of the lack of shagginess and beige-y color.  Here is the genuine article:

 

Although disappointed that I hadn't spotted the shaggy manes I've been watching for for the last few weeks, I made the most of these guys, preparing them the same way that is often recommended for their more highly prized cousin.  Breaded and pan-fried in olive oil.

The mushrooms had a pretty subtle flavor, and although the texture, particularly for the mushrooms that hadn't begun to deliquesce (the ones with closed caps and pure white gills), was very nice, the bread crumbs were a little overwhelming.  A few of these were just dusted with flour before frying which allowed a little more of the mushroom flavor through.  Overall, a nice little snack.  I'll be checking the spot in the next couple days for further fruiting.

King Boletus

Pumpkins and Squash

Pumpkins
 


...and squash.
 

I really like butternut squash soup.

To make this, I cooked two onions, a carrot and two sticks of celery in butter, until the onion was clear.  Then I added one large butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into chunks, with 32 oz of chicken broth.  I also added a medium-sized boiled potato.  After the squash was soft, about 25 minutes later, I blended everything in a food processor.  For seasoning, I used a generous amount of black pepper, some new mexico red chile powder and indian chile powder and a decent amount of nutmeg.  I also added a swirl of maple syrup, as you can see below.

Delicious.



I actually added some water after this, because it was so thick.

Great soup.  Very easy too, except that breaking down the squash takes a little while.

Sourdough

For the last four weeks I have been cultivating a symbiotic colony of lactobacillus bacteria and yeast, otherwise known as sourdough.  I started with one cup each of warm water and flour, with a little active dry yeast to get things started.  Depending on who you ask, adding commercial yeast is cheating, and I may try a starter sometime with only naturally occurring yeast, but so far I have been very happy with the results.  Supposedly different yeast strains can coexist, so wild yeasts from the air and flour will establish themselves overtime anyway.

Feeding the starter daily by removing half or more of the culture and replacing it with a fresh combination of water and flour is very important at the beginning.  Because the mixture contained some yeast from the start, I used the removed portion to bake bread from the first day, instead of discarding it.  The improvement in the quality and flavor of the bread over the first 4-5 days was remarkable.

Here is a picture of the four-week old starter (it has been more bubbly in the past, probably because it was less acidic):

Even after the colony has established itself, most sources recommend feeding it everyday when left at room temperature.  In the refrigerator feedings can be reduced to once every week or two.  I had mine in the refrigerator for about a week, and it came out pretty acidic, probably because it hadn't been fed for almost 2 days before being put in.  The bacteria, which essentially eats the yeast's waste just took over.  I was a little worried about the starter, because it smelled like vinegar, but that has subsided somewhat, and I think it was just overactivity from the bacteria.

Aside from the acidity issue, I think it took a couple of days out of the refrigerator for the starter to recover.

Here is a loaf made a day or two after the starter came out of the refrigerator, before going in the oven.

And the finished product:

 

Not the best crumb, as you can see:

 

This was definitely a step backwards from the loaves I was baking before taking the week off.  It probably needed to be in the oven longer, and I forgot to add salt, which certainly didn't help.

Luckily, this was only a temporary setback.

I had only been baking smallish loaves until yesterday, but although I haven't perfected my loaf baking technique, I decided to move on to other sourdough vehicles, with happy, happy results.

Check out the crumb.  This is right before toasting and making a pb&j sandwich

I will eventually have another crack at a perfect loaf (there really is nothing quite like buttered sourdough toast) but baguettes and buns have some serious advantages, not least of which is that they are easy.  And this.

Meat and potatoes

This dinner is from a while ago.  The potatoes are fried in butter and held together by their own starch.  Next time I would use higher heat and more butter, but they were pretty good, especially with the homemade red chile mayonnaise.  The meat is ribeye.

Feed your head

Lobstah

Everybody knows lobsters are delicious. The mighty Chesapeake may be a repository for all things blue crab and old bay drenched, but its got nothing on the fertile thermocline that is Maine's Atlantic coast. A lobster bake is the ultimate realization of lobster consumption. Although we did not actually dig a pit, fill it with seaweed, corn, potatoes, and various bivalaves, my house, aka the hacienda, had the good fortune of coming into a large stock of lobsters. To bring these lobsters to their steamy end, my roommate gave up his luggage space on his flight back from Main just so he could carry-on the 15 lobsters he picked up there. Dropped into boiling water and savored with melted butter, these babies brought tears to me eyes.

I would've loved to enjoy a second in lobster roll form but unfortunately people came with their appetites. Oh well.

(What's The Story) Morning Glory

Often times in Asia, a man eats what a man gets. This is true, first off, because often times in Asia and elsewhere, a man is hungry. But a man also comes to realize that most of the time in Asia, whatever the fuck it is he's eating is delicious, despite being comprised of ingredients that would ordinarily make him retch. The fact is that poverty and necessity have conspired to make the chefs of the Asia world particularly skilled at making very little go a long, long way.

But this is not the case for Ipomoea aquatica, or morning glory, as it is known through the continent. Banned in the United States under the USDA's noxious weed regulations due to its invasive tendencies, morning glory is one of the few items I encountered on my trip that made me wonder why the hell people haven't figured out how to get some here.

It took me a while to figure out exactly what it was that I was eating. Every few meals, I would puzzle over a plate of greens that resembled, at various times, spinach, kale, broccoli rabe, and even garlic scapes. When cooked, the long stem of the morning glory curls like a scape, but it still retains its thin, withered leaf on top, making it look like one of the more common cooked greens listed above. Ipomoea aquatica is indeed a member of the family Convolvulaceae, which includes all other plants that are commonly known as "morning glory," e.g. those that produce flower and the hallucinogenic seeds (sadly, the culinary variety does not possess this latter trait). The taste is equally confusing: it starts with a bitter bite, like rabe, which quickly subsides into a pleasant sweetness that I had never really encountered before. It took the help of a friendly Chinese man to help me solve the riddle of what I had been eating for the past few weeks.

This particularly plate of morning glory (from Laos) deviates slightly from the norm in that it contains tofu. But it still abides by the most important rules: usually, the plant is fried in oil, garlic, and oyster sauce, and often garnished with tiny fried onions (similar to the French's variety you can buy in the supermarket). The result is a rich and sumptuous plate, nutritious and delightful, and one that cannot be missed on your next trip to SE Asia (literally cannot be missed, because they serve it at more or less every fucking meal).