Organic A-Z: Mushroom

You know what I think?  I think mushrooms are the bomb.  They're incredibly mysterious, delicious, and if you're into wild ones, they are dangerous too!  So exciting. 

On the show I stick to more of your "run of the mill" shrooms. I did that 'coz I figured anyone, anywhere can find white buttons, crimini, portobellos and shitakes. They're all good, but when you expand your horizons and stretch your wallet a little you are in for a good time! Matsutake, porcini, hedgehog, chanterelles, morels, black trumpets...the list goes on and on and on.

The tastes go on and on too; you'd be amazed at the variety of textures and flavors that come out of the more exotic culinary mushrooms. I've had some that were like maple-syrup candy and others that were like lobster...and some, simply indescribable. Too much fun!

Find your own and try something new!

Get online and google the name of your closest big city and "mycological society." You are bound to find a local group of obsessive mushroom folks. These are good people to know, as they love to forage for wild mushrooms and love to eat their exotic catch! I got into this when I was living in northern California and was totally blown away by the characters I met, the fun I had and the mushrooms I ate. Finding a group of experts is also the safest entry into what is a deadly dangerous recreational activity. DO NOT EVER GO MUSHROOM HUNTING WITHOUT AN EXPERT GUIDE. No one likes liver failure or instant death, right? Right.

Safe-to-eat mushrooms are really good for you! Vitamins, minerals, probiotic immune strengthening properties. Heaps of 'em are used in eastern medicine and it seems like nearly every shroom on Earth is being studied for its health properties!

I'll be honest, I was a latecomer to the world of mushrooms.  When I met my wife, one of the first things she told me was that she loved mushrooms.  Being a good monkey, I went to my local farmer's market (in Gainesville, Florida) and talked to the shroom guy.  He had home grown shitakes and I worked on new recipes with those--the best one was soba noodles with a white wine reduction sauce of clarified butter, lemon and ginger.  Then he got me into different types of oyster mushrooms and before long I had a giant plastic bag filled with hay sitting in my pantry!  He'd inoculated the hay with oyster mushroom spores and the babies grew, literally popping right through the plastic bag in the dark pantry!   Growing culinary mushrooms is not that hard to do.  You can buy kits and spores online.  Dried mushrooms are another great avenue--porcinis, shitake and morels dry beautifully and are relatively inexpensive (a little goes a long way), and when you reconstitute them you can save that water for your sauce!         

I love fresh mushrooms most of all and in many ways, I like them plain. I think shrooms perform best when simply saut

Try some of the above ideas; try out my stuffed shroom recipe (works with any deep-capped mushroom); try some of the pricier and more exotic shrooms out there and expand your palate!