Chanterelles

Speaking of mushrooms, we've got chanterelles in season here, big golden things. I made a sort of scrambly omelet with them tonight: sauteed the chopped chanterelles in butter and pepper, then cooked them in eggs with sour cream. Real good. I can't wait to get more of these beauties, but I realized that beyond omelets I really don't know what to do with them. I seem to remember trying a couple of things last fall, but I don't remember what worked besides the eggs. With most mushrooms I tend to like just sauteeing them with salt and pepper, but people say chanterelles need a little more work to bring out their best flavor. Any suggestions?

Waldorf salad variations?

We had some apples that were getting old, and some silverberries that we'd gotten at the farmer's market that we wanted to use, so I decided to try a Waldorf salad - sort of a commonplace, but I don't think I've ever made it before. Unfortunately we didn't have all the right ingredients, so I ended up making something that didn't much resemble a real Waldorf salad, but ended up working out pretty well anyway.

Ingredients:
3 apples (I don't remember what kind they were - red, sweet, and very ripe)
1 cup or so silverberries
a couple handfuls of raisins
mayonnaise
lime juice
1/3 cup or so of creamy/crumbly chevre (we had some fig-walnut chevre that was hitting its expiration date, so I threw it in)

1. Peel, core, and cut up the apples into bite-size chunks.

2. Mix them with the berries and raisins.

3. Mix together 6 tablespoons of mayo and 2 tablespoons of lime juice. In a real Waldorf salad this is supposed to be lemon juice, but we were out, and lime juice worked well.

4. Mix the dressing and the fruit.

5. Add the crumbled chevre, mix. (A real Waldorf salad is evidently supposed to have walnuts, and we didn't have any, but that's what gave me the idea to use the cheese.)

6. Chill for a couple of hours. We had some of this right after making it, and it wasn't as good as it was when it had chilled for a while. Warm, the mayo tasted like mayo. Chilled and given time for the flavors to mingle, the mayo taste receded and we had a nice mingling of fruit flavors.

Note: have you ever had/seen/heard of silverberries? I hadn't until we got them at the market, but they're pretty good. They evidently come from this tree, and I can't seem to find much about them on the web, which makes me wonder if they go by another name; anyway, I'd never heard of them. They're quite small, not much bigger than pomegranate seeds, and bright red with kind of a silver spot on them. They have seeds, but the ones we got were edible with the seeds - once in a while you get a berry where the seed's a little chewy, but it's still edible. The berries have a nice tartness, not as strong as huckleberries, and a nice sweet aftertaste.

Anyway: this salad was kind of an accident, but it turned out well. Does anybody else have any recommendable variations on the Waldorf-type fruit salad?

Rosemary Mushroom Risotto

I was determined to get good at risotto, and I'm pretty decent at it now. This is our main recipe:

1 cup mushroom broth
2 cups vegetable broth
3/4 cup water
1/2 tsp crumbled rosemary
1/4 tsp thyme
2 Tbs olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped mushrooms (any kind)
2 Tbs minced shallots (white onion will do fine)
1 cup arborio rice
1/3 cup shredded Parmesan
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/4 tsp salt, to taste
1/8 tsp pepper

1. In a smallish saucepan, heat broth, water, rosemary and thyme until simmering. Keep on med-low to keep it warm throughout cooking time.
2. When broth is ready, heat oil in 3-quart saucepan on medium. Add the mushrooms and shallots and cook, stirring, until mushrooms soften (a couple of minutes). Add rice and cook, stirring, until rice is coated with oil (a minute or so).
3. Add broth to rice mixture 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until rice has absorbed the liquid. (You should make the next addition of liquid when you can draw a clear path on the bottom of the pot as you scrape through the rice.) This process should take about half an hour.
4. Add parsley, pepper and salt with the last bit of broth and stir in well. Serve topped with parmesan.

A couple of notes: I live at high altitude so I have to use more broth/water. Also, the first couple of broth additions should be closer to a cup--adding broth a little fast in the beginning helps the rice cook. Last, if you taste as you go the risotto will taste really bland until it's almost done because the broth/water is still reducing, so don't worry about adding salt unless it still taste bland at the end.

You can use any mushrooms, obviously. I've done this with baby bellas, shiitakes, and chantarelles and they've all turned out great.

using my last tomatoes

The larger of my two tomato plants is reaching its limit in my yard. The fruit is really not ripening any more so I have a great deal of green tomatoes. SO I decided to try to make fried green tomatoes. I sliced a firm green tomato into roughly 1/2" rounds, dipped it in a milk and egg mixture, and dredged them in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. I pan fried them in a shallow puddle of hot canola oil until they were a nice brown and no longer really hard. Then I laid them on a plate with paper towels to soak up some of the oil.

Results: Not that exciting. I really kinda felt cheated by the flavor of these. I just really wanted them to be better. I ate them with some cholula hot sauce and that perked them up but overall, they were kinda disappointing.

Ideas: I also read about dredging them in cornmeal instead of flour. So my idea is maybe using cornmeal and some more spices would jazz them up. I am unwilling to totally give up on fried green tomatoes.

Does anyone else have any uses/ideas for green tomatoes?

Pearl couscous fruit salad

I got this recipe from a colleague of Akiko's. I've only made it once, but I think it's a winner.

Ingredients:
pearl couscous (a.k.a. Israeli couscous)
1 pomegranate
1 can mandarin orange slices
dried currants
vegetable oil

1. Split open the pomegranate and remove the seeds. I found cool directions for this on-line. As you're separating the seeds from the fibers inside the pomegranate shell, drop the seeds into a bowl of water. The fibers will float, while the seeds will sink. Then you can skim the fibers off and drain the water and you'll have mostly fiber-free seeds.

2. Make 1 cup of pearl couscous as per the directions. The stuff I had said: bring 1 and 1/4 cup water to a boil, add 1 cup couscous, simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Optionally, add a little butter when you add the couscous. I didn't add butter, but maybe I should have.

3. When the couscous is done, transfer it to a bowl and stir it until it cools off. The idea here is to keep it from glopping up. The recipe says that when it starts to cool off add a little veggie oil; this is where I think cooking it with butter or oil might have helped, because no matter what I did it still ended up kind of sticky. The good news is, it was still good.

4. Stir in the pomegranate seeds.

5. Open the can of mandarin orange slices, drain, and stir in the slices. (Of course you could use fresh tangerine slices, too, if they're in season.)

6. Stir in a handful of dried currants. (Raisins are a good substitute if you can't find dried currants, but if you can, I think the currants match the pomegranate and mandarin orange a little better.)

7. Voila. You're done.

Apple Cider Vinegar

My Vegetarian Times finally started coming again (there was a crazy address problem after we moved) and it has a tiny article on apple cider vinegar in it. Only one recipe (for salad with vinaigrette) but several general food suggestions. Since Taryn was asking about cooking with cider vinegar, I thought I'd post them.

It says and I quote: Apple cider vinegar's bright, crisp taste and more-than-a-hint-of-tart flavor work well with lentil soups, slaws, baked beans, braised cabbage, and roasted winter squash. Bean salads and cooked whole grains also take well to apple cider vinegar's tang.

Brother Momonjii's Japanese Curry, Variation #2 (Summer, again)

This is very similar to the previous one, but with a few differences.

1. Use S&B Tasty Curry sauce, medium-hot. (Japanese name is Torokeru curry, which means "melt-in-your-mouth." It's a little milder than Java.)

2. Cut up a chicken breast, a couple of yellow summer squash, and some carrots.

3. In your kettle, sautee the chicken in butter with some ground sage and thyme.

4. Add the carrots and sear.

5. Add water.

6. When the carrots are starting to get soft, add the squash and some frozen corn kernels.

7. When everything's soft, add the curry.

8. When the curry is dissolved, while you're simmering it, add lemon pepper to taste. Make sure it's salt-free lemon pepper; additional salt at this point would not be a good idea. (BTW, Spice Hunter brand Lemon Pepper is pretty awesome - like, zowie-strength lemon flavor.)

9. Add unsalted sunflower seeds, and simmer until they begin to get soft.

This one, too, is good with parmesan cheese, or with hard-boiled egg (either shredded or just cut in half).

This is, I'll admit, pretty close to Variation #1, but different enough to be worth repeating, for us at least.

PS: If you like J. curry as much as we do, it's worth making a whole box at once, even if you're only cooking for two, because, as every Japanese cook knows, it's better the second day. Something about the way the flavors seep into the ingredients overnight. In fact I think one reason so many households there have Curry Night once every other week or so is because it means you don't have to cook the next night. Bonus.