Morels Stuffed with Ramps, Three Ways

Morels (Morchella americana, in this case) are not terribly common or abundant in our area of southeastern Connecticut, we often end up driving a few hours west to the Berkshires to find some. Once in a while, we find a handful in one of our wild asparagus patch just a few miles away, this year that number was only eight. I figured that if I sliced the morels in half, that would give me 16 hollow caps to stuff, enough for a hearty meal. We had a small bundle of ramps greens (Allium tricoccum) in the fridge, so I used their funky-garlicky flavor as a seasoning in three different stuffings.

Risotto: For the broth, I used a vegetable broth base and added some dehydrated morels from past years, then removed the re-hydrated morels, finely chopped them, and added them to the risotto. Instead of onions or garlic, I removed the purplish stems from the ramps leaves and finely chopped them--they are quite flavorful and succulent. The risotto was also cooked with a touch of dry white wine and had Parmesan cheese stirred in. At the end of cooking when the risotto was just barely done and still a touch soupy, I added another bunch of the chopped, purple stems of ramps for an additional color and flavor boost.

Polenta: To make the polenta, I used some more of the morel-accented broth and finely diced, re-hydrated morels. A generous portion of tangy goat cheese and some butter were whipped into the polenta as it finished cooking, making it light and creamy, and I added some freshly chopped ramps greens at the end, with a few grinds of fresh black pepper from the pepper mill.

Potato: I used some starchy russets as this base, boiled and then pressed through the ricer for fluffiness, then enhanced with a few pats of butter and several spoonfuls of pureed ramps greens. When we collect just the leaves of ramps, we will puree a good amount of them in the Vitamix with some olive oil and salt, making a dark green, pungent paste that freezes exceptionally well. We like to keep at least a dozen 4 oz. containers of this puree in the freezer to use all year, swirled into soups, breads, rice dishes, or anything that needs a rampy kick. The mashed potato stuffing also had some grated sharp white cheddar cheese and an egg for richness and firmness once baked.

After a pan sear, the stuffed morels were baked in a hot oven

Once the three fillings were made, I sliced each morel in half from top to bottom. A mounded portion of stuffing went into the hollow cavities, and I placed them in the fridge overnight to firm up the stuffings. At lunchtime, the chilled, stuffed morels got pan fired on the stovetop in a heavy cast iron pan, then baked in a hot oven for 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the mushroom was mostly hidden under the stuffing, but Robert turned them upside down to see the deeply caramelized, crispy morel that once held the stuffing had become more like a small pie crust for the savory fillings. We let the morels cool a bit, then popped them in our mouths after they were dipped into some morel-Marsala gravy.

 

Morel and Wild Asparagus Risotto for dinner

You can find patches of wild asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) in nearly the entire United States, if you know where and when to spot them. In our area, they are found in old fields, perhaps left over from farmland gardens, or planted when birds consumed the red berries in the autumn. It's easiest to spot them in late summer, though, after they have shot up to 4 feet tall and formed their feathery branches and sparse berries--which are not edible. The foliage has a greenish-blue hue, so it stands out in a field of mostly green grass or maturing hay. Then the trick is to remember all of the places you saw the asparagus growing and come back in the spring to collect them when they are shoots, which is the stage we all recognize from the grocery store.

Morels (Morchella americana) are out at the same time, and these two spring foods combine well for a tender and flavorful risotto. As a matter of fact, it was a few years ago that we were collecting some wild asparagus in a field surrounded by old ash trees, when Robert noticed there were actually morels growing in the grass, 149 of them! While the asparagus patch still produces a few dozen spears each year, we haven't found the bounty of morels again, this year only finding 8 of them in the woods nearby.

The risotto was made with vegetable broth that had a few dried morels added for flavor, white wine, sauteed morels, steamed asparagus, and some fresh chopped ramps greens.

Morel Marsala Gravy over Savory Ramps and Cornmeal Waffles

Spring for foragers in the northeast includes ramps (Allium tricoccum) and if you are very lucky and persistent, morels (Morchella americana in this case). They taste great together in assorted pilaf recipes, sauteed with some pasta, and last year we made some savory cornmeal waffles with ramps greens, and topped it with a morel-Marsala gravy. Sadly, we don't find a lot of morels to make this often enough to test a real recipe, this was a bit of an experiment for dinner that worked out nicely.

This is considered a very good haul in the Northeast

Ramps and some native Trillium

Wood Ear Recipe - Wood Ear Salad

Two of the great perks of our mushroom club membership with the Connecticut Valley Mycological Society are our fantastic potlucks and our annual March Mushroom Madness meeting. March is certainly not mushroom hunting season in Connecticut, but many of us are already fatigued by our New England winter/spring weather and looking forward to mushroom season to start. The MMM meeting is held indoors at the Sessions Woods Wildlife Management Area in Burlington, and we get a speaker as well as serve a continental breakfast. This year we had Noah Seigel present "A Season of Fun(gi)" for a large group of members and the general public.

Our potluck contribution was a wood ear salad, made from wood ear fungus we purchased in the Boston Chinatown the week before. A benefit of belonging to other clubs in our region is that we can attend their special off-season functions, and we had joined the Boston Mycological Club for a Chinatown fungus shopping excursion with a private mushroom-themed banquet afterwards at a Chinese restaurant. We sampled nine courses at the restaurant, all featuring mushrooms. One of my favorites was the wood ear salad, which we attempted to re-create here.

The wood ears (Auricularia auricula) were purchased dried, and simply rehydrated in water. I also picked up something labeled as "snow fungus", a white jelly (Tremella fusciformis) and added it to the salad as well for a color contrast. Jelly fungi dehydrate into nearly nothing, and will absorb tons of water to return to their fresh, jelly-like consistency. Some fresh veggies and a vinaigrette dressing are added right before service. The overall salad is crunchy, squishy, tangy, and smoky from the toasted sesame oil.


Wood Ear Salad    serves 12-16

Dressing:
1/2 c. rice vinegar
1/2 c. water
6 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp chili-garlic paste

Salad:
1 c. dried wood ear mushrooms
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and thinly sliced
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 c. washed and de-stemmed cilantro leaves
1/2 c. garlic mustard micro-greens or bean sprouts(optional)

1. For the dressing, add all of the ingredients to a small saucepan and heat until the sugar has dissolved. Allow the dressing to cool.
2. Place the dried wood ears in room temperature water and allow them to soak it up for about 30 minutes. They will expand dramatically!
3. While the mushrooms are re-hydrating, prepare the veggies: peel, seed, and chop the cucumbers, wash and de-stem the cilantro, thinly slice the  red onion. Cover and chill the fresh veggies until service.
4. Clean the wood ears: You may notice a thicker area on the ears where they were attached to the wood, remove it with a sharp knife as it sometimes has some grit trapped in the mushroom flesh. Keep the pieces about the size of a quarter, so you may have to cut some pieces in half so they are not too large. Bring a pot of water to boil, and boil the cleaned wood ears for 5 minutes, then drain them and give them a rinse in cool water. Pour the cooled dressing over the wood ear mushrooms and cover, keeping at room temperature for about an hour until service. If you are not serving the salad immediately, refrigerate the wood ears.
5. Right before service, toss the dressing, wood ears, and fresh veggies together in a large bowl. Spoon into a serving bowl and garnish with the optional garlic mustard micro greens or bean sprouts.

Chestnut Recipe- Chestnutella

We have many sources for our local harvest of Chinese chestnuts (Castanea molissima). This has been a mediocre mast year, but we have found plenty to boil for a fresh snack or for a recipe or two, plus have a few pounds in our freezer from last year. Commercial cocoa-hazelnut spread is an inherently unhealthy product filled with modified palm oil and massive amounts of sugar. In this recipe we tried working with natural starchiness and thickening properties of cooked chestnut to make a thick spread that provides a deep chocolate flavor from cocoa powder with a hint of sweet nuttiness. The recipe calls for milk, but in our house we use nut-based or soy-based "milks" for dietary reasons; keep all tree nut milks in mind for allergy reasons. We use a Vitamix blender for an absolutely smooth spread, but a food processor can be used for a grainier spread, or a mortar and pestle can be used as well.

Chestnutella   makes about 4c.

1 c. milk (or almond milk, or soy milk), or 225 g
1 c. plus 1 Tbsp sugar, or 235 g
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 c. boiled, shelled chestnut meat, or about 400 g
1/2 c. cocoa powder, or 56 g

1. In a saucepan, heat the milk and sugar together and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
2. Pour the hot milk and sugar mix into the carafe of a blender, add the vanilla. Add the boiled, shelled chestnut meats about 1/2 cup at a time, blending well between each addition.
3. Sift the cocoa powder into the blender carafe and blend until homogenized. The spread will thicken as it cools, so consider adding a bit more milk to thin it further.
4. Keep chestnutella spread in the fridge. Spread liberally on toast, fill crepes, swirl into ice cream, and use to flavor desserts like brownies, tartlets, and sweet wontons.

 

The spiny husk, leathery chestnut in the shell, boiled and shelled chestnut, and chestnut meat with the papery skin removed

Cooking with Hen of the Woods

Hens roasted with a white miso glaze, served over forbidden and white rice cooked in hen broth

Autumn came a bit early this August and September with very cool nights and comfortable days, stimulating the fruiting of a favorite fall fungi, the hen of the woods, maitake, or Grifola frondosa. Some weekends we are so busy with lectures and walks that we don't have much time to forage for our own pantry, but hen season can get us out in the woods all week long. For about two weeks, we brought home dozens of beautiful hens; then the weather got hot again, making it uncomfortable being out in the woods hauling many pounds of mushrooms. Autumn conditions have returned, so we hope for another hen flush out in the woods of southern New England.

The pores of a hen on the underside of a frond

white spore print

Hens are one of the polypores, meaning if you look on the underside of one of the many fronds, you will see many holes from which this fungus drops its white spores. They don't have a true cap-and-stem appearance, rather they have many branched stems from a main core that are topped with fan-shaped fronds. Hens are saprobic and a mild parasite on hardwood trees as well, causing a white butt rot. They are sometimes referred to as perennial, as they will continue to fruit at the same location until they have exhausted their food supply. A hen of the woods can be collected by cutting them off at their base, and are good edibles as long as they are firm with white pores. They should be left behind if they are getting a yellow-orange mold on their base, have obvious signs of consumption by wild animals, are growing with poison ivy, or have obvious signs of a fungus fly maggot infestation or a serious case of springtails. Respect your wild food and only collect prime specimens!

Hen burgers made from the ground bits

Combined with their abundance, their texture and flavor make hen of the woods one of our  favorite wild mushrooms to find. They are full of umami, a savory taste that can be described as brothy or meaty. It can be substituted for chicken in any familiar dishes, as its flavor is excellent and the texture of hens is substantial. We like to use hens in many regional cuisines, roasted with an Asian white miso sauce, made into an Italian panelle patty, ground and cooked into American burgers (recipe here) or "meat"loaf, a Mexican tomatillo, hominy, and hen stew, or a French-style tapenade (recipe here).

Lots and lots of dehydrated hen jerky, vacuum packed for the year

Hens can vary in size, growth configuration, and color, most likely based on age and growing conditions. Hens can be large and frondy, or smaller and more compact with smaller fronds. Their growth determines their best use in culinary applications: the larger fronds make the best jerky (recipe here), while the more compact specimens slice up nicely into "steaks" for roasting. When cleaning hens for jerky, we try to keep the core as solid as possible, and then slice it up for larger pieces.

Vegan hen sausages with a potato pancake and pickled ramps

The bits leftover after culling the biggest fronds for jerky get ground up for burgers or a loaf. We also dehydrate a lot of the smaller pieces to use all year in gravy and soups, or saute and then freeze the small bits for use all year. The smaller bits also work very well in our vegan sausage recipe (recipe here). Overall, hens are an easy and delicious fall fungi forage!

Hen tapenade

Tomatillo, hominy, and hen stew

Duchesse mashed potatoes filled with cooked hen bits, baked until firm

Wild rice and hen soup

Baked ravioli filled with hen and goat cheese

Summer Classes, Walks, and Lectures for 2017

The 3 Foragers have several educational presentations and walks coming up this spring in the Connecticut and Rhode Island area. We are available for seasonal edible plant programs, fungi ID classes, invasive plant talks, and guided walks throughout the year. We work with libraries, nature centers, summer camps, land trusts, and garden clubs to educate the public about conservation and responsible harvest of wild foods. Please check back to find classes as we add to this growing list of classes and walks. Contact us at  kraczewski@comcast.net.

Seashore foraging: wild mustard seed pods, beach peas, sea beans, mustard flowers, beach plums, rose hips, bay leaves

Edible Wild Plants of Summer Lecture June 24, 11:00 am-12:30 pm, Mary Loontjens Memorial Library, Narragansett, RI 02882 (401) 789-9507


The summer months are a bounty of ripe berries, nectar-laden edible flowers, amazing edible plants along the seashore, and edible mushrooms that can carpet the forest floor after warm, rainy days. Learn how to identify, sustainably harvest, and prepare the wild foods of summer, from beach plums to invasive wineberries, including some of the choice summer fungi like chanterelles and the myriad of pored Boletes. Explore the edible wild plants that grow along the seashores as well! Join The 3 Foragers as they teach the edible plants and fungi of summer with their original photos and recipe ideas featured in an educational slideshow. Free admission, registration appreciated.

Edible Wild Plants of Summer Lecture June 29, 7:00 pm-8:15 pm, Scranton Memorial Library, Madison, CT 06443 (860) 245-7365

Hot eats in the summertime! Berries ripen for sweet desserts, fresh greens can be added to your summer salads, and the mushroom hunting is in full swing. Learn how to identify, sustainably harvest, and prepare the wild foods of summer, from beach plums to invasive wineberries, including some of the choice summer fungi like chanterelles and the myriad of pored Boletes. Join The 3 Foragers as they teach the edible plants and fungi of summer with their original photos and recipe ideas featured in an educational slideshow. Free admission, registration appreciated.

Edible Wild Plants of Summer Lecture and Walk July 8, 10:00 am-12:30 pm, James L Goodwin State Forest Education Center, 23 Potter Rd, Hampton, CT 06247 (860) 455-9534

We return to Goodwin Forest for the seasonal summer edible plants program, featuring fresh berries, seaside foraging, wild greens, edible flowers, and gourmet summer mushrooms. Learn how to identify, sustainably harvest, and prepare the wild foods of summer, from beach plums to invasive wineberries, including some of the choice summer fungi like chanterelles and the myriad of pored Boletes. Join The 3 Foragers as they teach the edible plants and fungi of summer with their original photos and recipe ideas featured in an educational slideshow. Please call Goodwin 860-455-9534 to register, space is limited. Cost: $5.00 for the public, free for Friends of Goodwin and CFPA members

Edible Wild Plants of Summer Lecture and Walk, July 15, 1:00pm-3:30pm, Bushy Hill Nature Center, 253 Bushy Hill Rd, Deep River CT 06417 (860) 767-2148 x 604

Please see program descriptions above. Fee: $5.00 suggested donation per adult, registration appreciated

Mushroom ID for Beginners Class and Walk August 5, 10:00 am-12:30 pm, James L Goodwin State Forest Education Center, 23 Potter Rd, Hampton, CT 06247 (860) 455-9534

Does it have gills, pores, or teeth? Is it growing on wood or the ground? And most importantly, Can I Eat It?? The 3 Foragers present a program on Mushroom ID for Beginners, where they will explain the steps to take and the terms to know when trying to identify mushrooms. After the slideshow and talk, we'll head outside to explore a small part of Goodwin and try to put the newly learned skills to the test.

Please call Goodwin 860-455-9534 to register, space is limited, there will be NO walk-ins allowed. Cost: $5.00 for the public, free for Friends of Goodwin and CFPA members


Mushroom ID for Beginners Class and Walk August 12, 10:00am-12:30pm, Ansonia Nature and Recreation Center, 10 Deerfield Lane, Ansonia CT 06401 (203) 736-1053


Does it have gills, pores, or teeth? Is it growing on wood or the ground? And most importantly, Can I Eat It?? The 3 Foragers present a program on Mushroom ID for Beginners, where they will explain the steps to take and the terms to know when trying to identify mushrooms. After the slideshow and talk, we'll head outside to explore a small part of Ansonia Nature Center and try to put the newly learned skills to the test.

Fee: $5.00 per adult, registration required, class size is limited

#mushroomprogramCT