Mushroom rice (a.k.a. kinoko gohan)

Ingredients (makes enough for 4 people):
rice, 3 cups
dashi liquid, 540 ml
mirin, 2 tbsp
cooking sake, 3 tbsp
soy sauce 3 tbsp
mushrooms of your choice (this evening I used shiitake, maitake, lion's mane; if you can find matsutake that's the best; fresh mushrooms are better than dried, but if you use dried reconstitute them first), however much you like (I used maybe 3 handfuls tonight)
vegetable oil
green onions

1. Make the dashi: this is the bonito-based soup stock. You can find shiitake-based dashi sometimes now, which would probably be really good with this. Anyway, make 540 ml of it.

2. Wash the rice and put it in your rice cooker, then instead of filling it with water up to the 3-cup mark, use the dashi liquid. Let it sit (don't turn it on yet) while you do the next couple of steps.

3. Mix the mirin, cooking sake, and soy sauce together and put aside. If you don't cook with alcohol, you can skip the sake and buy non-alcoholic mirin.

4. Cut your mushrooms into bite-size pieces (with shiitake and other large-cap mushrooms it works best to cut them into strips, like you see with dried shiitake).

5. Sautee the mushrooms in the oil until they get tender.

6. Add the mirin/sake/soy sauce to the rice and dashi and stir.

7. Put sauteed mushrooms on top of the rice. Make sure they're submerged in the liquid, but don't mix into the rice.

8. Turn on your rice cooker and cook normally.

9. When it's done, mix the mushrooms into the rice.

10. Serve with chopped green onions to taste.

Cry for Mushroom Suggestions

Our local Harmon's sells a wide variety of fancy fresh mushrooms and I really want to try them. When I cook with mushrooms I usually use cremini/baby bellas or shiitake, but the store often has enoki, blue foot, maitake, or oyster mushrooms (as well as various fancy dried types). Has anyone used these? What are they good in? I know enoki mushrooms are used in Japanese stuff but I don't know how. I usually use mushrooms in risotto or soup, or as burrito filler (sounds crazy but it really works), but I'd like to branch out. Ideas? Experiences?

Cry for suggestions more than help

Hey everyone! I was wondering...does anyone have any awesome recipes using cider vinegar? I like cider vinegar a lot but am at a loss for really good hot dishes using it. I think cider vinegar really says fall and I was thinking it might be nice to start thinking about fall recipes. Anyways, lemme know :)

new food?

so, taryn discovered this and i thought i would share... i'm not normally a huge candy person, but these are amazing.

http://www.wonka.com/Sugar.aspx (sorry, you'll have to cut and paste the link...for some reason it's not working)

so far i've tried the clementine fruit marvels, the red apple fruit jellies and the goji berry fruit jellies. the clementine marvels are AMAZING. they also make pomegranate and white grape flavor marvels, but i haven't seen them yet. and i haven't tried the grapefruit jellies. you can, and should, go get these at walmart or target.