California Part Two

Have you ever put your arms over your head and kind of pushed your ears forward with your upper arms so that they are almost nestled in your armpits.  While listening to music on your laptop which is right in front of you?  It's easier to do if you have a chair back to hold on to.  Don't try it.  My ears hurt.

Anyway here's some more food from the California trip.

Second Night:

This might not look that appetizing, but it was delicious.  Raw kibbeh.

And cooked lamb too.

A Cheese Board sour dough foccaccia recipe.

Roasted eggplant with a pomegranate and walnut vinaigrette kind of thing.

And another pie.

Third Night (Gualala):

In the morning we made a stock from the lobster carcasses we had for dinner the first night.  Red bell pepper, leek tops from the garden, lots of lobster, some other stuff.

Beautiful coast, beautiful abalone, beautiful man.

You need a permit to take abalone.  They also need to be 7" long and you can only take three at a time.  Our host has a permit, but at this private beach people only take two at a time.  That may be why it only took him a few minutes to pick them out of the tidal pools.  People dive for abalone, but on this beach, MG and I spotted one sitting up on a rock, high and dry.

Here they are, safe at home, but that's just the beginning of the fun.

After prying them out with that tool, you need to remove their iridescent blue gut sack penis thing.

Yum.

Trim the tough outer parts.

Abalone cutlets, if you will.

Lightly pan fried in butter with parsley and garlic.  Some lemon over the top.  The mild flavor, buttery tenderness, appearance and preparation almost reminded me of really good veal scallopine.  No really powerful flavors, but very tasty and extremely decadent.

But not quite as decadent as the lobster and wild mushroom risotto we made from that stock.

Mushroom varieties were: chanterelle, matsutake, slippery jacks I picked on the property (my first slippery jack), lobster, and a couple mushrooms I'm not too sure about that I think were from the farmer's market.  Maybe some kind of beech mushroom or something.

And finally, some fresh california artichokes, simply prepared.

And the feast:

Napa Round One

We were greeted on arrival with homemade head cheese (not pictured).  It escalated from there.

To pique the taste buds and prepare for the decadence to come, we started with mangalitsa prosciutto bocadillos.  Crusty toasted bread drizzled with olive oil, rubbed with garlic and tomato and topped off with fatty, hammy, woolly pig.

Our mushroom selection included matsutake, top, lobster mushroom, bottom right, and chanterelles, in the bin at left.  Not pictured are oyster mushrooms and an Oregon black truffle.

The shrooms were destined for a series of pizzas baked in the oven below.

Here they are, par-sauteed and ready to top. 

Also prepped for the oven are some razor clams, fresh from the east coast, courtesy of Virgin Atlantic.

That sucker was up near 1,000 degrees.  A bit out of control, in fact.

Lotta fire.

First pizza is ready to go in.  Melted leeks and mozzarella form the base for truffle shavings to come.

The wax paper lit right up.  Eventually part of the crust did too.

Oh well, still dank.

Razor clams provencale.  Or something like that.  Real simple, oil, garlic, parsley, lemon.

Here's the chanterelle pizza.  Pretty even charring here.  You can imagine what the matsutake and lobster pizzas looked like - they each topped their own pie. 

And a final pie: fresh figs from the yard on a bed of melted leeks.

Finished off with apple pie with apples from the yard and a healthy dollop of creme fraiche.

This pictorial doesn't even include the 2.5 lb lobsters that were the main course.  You'll see their remains in the lobster stock that went into a risotto in dinner number three.

I think our jaded appetites are due for another renewal (from 1900)

Biscotti

Biscotti are easy to make, delicious and keep for a long time.  Being somewhat exotic and usually expensive, people think they are impressive.  I recommend making biscotti at home.

I used an Alice Waters recipe, which keeps things very simple.  These are the ingredients:

2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour, described below)
1 1/2 cups whole almonds
1 cup sugar
3 Eggs at room temperature
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp anise, fennel or coriander
1/4 tsp lemon zest

-Preheat the oven to 350.
-Toast the almonds in the oven for 5 minutes or until they start to get fragrant.
-Combine the flour, spice and baking powder in a bowl.
-Roughly chop the almonds.
-Beat the sugar, lemon zest and eggs together until the mixture thickens and forms ribbons when drizzled.
-Fold the flour mixture into the egg mixture until just combined.  Gently fold in the chopped almonds.
-Form the dough into two 3-inch wide loaves.  Smooth the loaves with wet hands.
-Bake for 25-30 minutes at 350.
-Allow to cool for ~10 minutes, then slice the loaves about 1/2 inch thick.
-Put the slices back in the oven for 10 minutes on each side, until slightly browned and crisp.


The flour I used was given to me by Sarah Kavage, who did an artistic project focused on "nourishment, food systems, and the City of Chicago" called Industrial Harvest.  The culmination of the project was purchasing 1,000 bushels of soft red winter wheat, milling it into 20 tons of flour and giving it away to various organizations and people around Chicago.

This is the bag it came in:

It is good-looking flour:

Soon to be biscotti...

After the initial bake:

And the final product:

Laetiporus and elk

I went out for maitakes again last week, but unfortunately had some trouble locating oak trees, where they tend to grow, and came back empty-handed with respect to Grifola frondosa.  Luckily the excursion was not a total failure, as I found the prettiest, juiciest chicken mushroom that I've ever seen.  I think the window to get them in this condition must be no more than 24 hours.  The color was bright, the flesh was tender.  Beautiful.  It's hard to tell without something for scale but that is a big tree, and that is a big chicken mushroom.  It was about eight pounds total, all prime.

I still had hen of the woods that needed to get used, and I didn't think I would have the time to prep it all, so I only kept about a pound.  I traded the rest to the Bristol.  I'm looking forward to checking the place out.

Here's some of the chicken on the cutting board.  It got the same treatment as the elk - marinated in soy sauce, oil and ginger, and grilled.

 Here's the elk, after a brief marinade.

Here's the maitake from last week.  Sauteed with shallots and later, some brandy.

Some veggies boiling - artichokes and parsnips.  Some artichokes were blanched then grilled, some were just boiled.  The parsnips went into a parsnip mash which I won't claim was my finest moment.

Here's the grilled elk.  It was really fantastic.  The meat has no marbling; it's extremely lean.  Yet it was tender and full of flavor, with just a hint of gaminess.  It's closer to beef than to venison, and all delicious.  You can also see some grilled chicken mushroom to the left.  That also came out great.  I was afraid it would dry out and turn to cardboard, but the texture held up and it stayed juicy.

You can see more grilled Laetiporus here, nestled among grilled artichokes.  I love artichokes, even though these were past their prime and really needed to get used.

And the whole spread, with mushrooms and melted butter for good measure.

Oh yeah, there was roasted butternut squash and mashed parsnips too.

Summer mushrooms

Fall mushrooms are great, but here in Illinois, the summer may be the better season for fungus.  Here is a delayed post celebrating chanterelles, lobster mushrooms, milky caps, parasols and more.

First, the American Parasol Mushroom, or Leucoagaricus americanus.  There was a huge patch of these growing in mulch under hedges on the perimeter of a parking lot that covers about half a square block.  They fruited pretty much constantly for almost a month.  In all, I bet there were nearly 100 pounds of mushroom in that period, of which I picked something like 30 pounds.  The flavor is kind of interesting with a sort of sharp, almost off taste.  Can't say I love them, but a very pretty mushroom.  I had a lot more pictures but these are lost with my old computer.

 This specimen is particularly pretty, I think.  I dried it, so it's still around.  The fat stem is hollow and those openings go all the way through, so the head rests on bowed columns.  No cooking pics.  I actually sold most of what I picked, but I did make a cream sauce and fried some alone.

 The most prolific hunt of the year came in early August.  Together with the chef of Bonsoiree and Chicago's only (to my knowledge) professional forager I picked almost 30 pounds.  About half of the haul was chanterelles with the balance split evenly between lobster mushrooms and lactarius hygrophroides. There were also tons of boletes out, including huge specimens, but unfortunately they were pretty much all a bitter bolete species.  There were literally more chanterelles than we could pick, not in a small number of discrete patches, but scattered widely throughout the woods.  There were also tons of russulas - some of which acted as the hosts for the lobsters and quite a few amanitas.  There were literally mushrooms anywhere we looked.  It rivaled, but did not quite match, my first mushroom hunt in Santa Fe last summer.

Here's the group shot.

Here's a lobster and a milky cap on the cutting board.

Some chanterelles in the pan.

Here's a wild salmon dinner featuring wild mushrooms.  On top of the salmon is a failed beurre blanc cum fried shallots (will use my copper pot next time).  To the left is a medley of wild mushrooms with chanterelles, milky caps and lobsters.  Salad with some goat cheese from Capriole.  And roasted potatoes of varying kinds from the farmers market with garlic and shallots.

The next day - with tons of mushrooms still in the fridge, I made a mushroom sauce with cream, brandy and dried cherries.  Same varieties of mushrooms.

This was served over some broiled lamb and plated with a wild mushroom and potato casserole with some delicious cheese which I unfortunately can't remember any details about.

In an effort to use all the mushrooms I also made a couple quiches and some casseroles with leftover filling.  Here is one, topped with heirloom tomatoes.  I had better pictures and I think the other quiche had a better crust, but oh well.  It was delicious.