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.

Poaching eggs

Oh, oh, oh: here's something I can contribute. Have you seen these? PoachPods. They're a little expensive, but we got some and they're awesome. They're incredibly easy to use, easy to clean, and make perfect poached eggs every time. (This morning, for example, we had poached eggs on toast with cream cheese and a little Pickapeppa Sauce. Mmmmmm.)

Pork chops with applesauce?

So I realize I've been contributing more questions than useful suggestions lately. I'll try to rectify that with an upcoming post. But in the meantime I want to describe what I made last night, and see if anybody has any suggestions.

So at the farmer's market we finally saw some decent corn (wet spring=not a good summer for corn in Lane County, I guess), and so we had corn on the cob and pork chops last night (and caprese salad with fresh basil, but I imagine you all know how to do that). We had some local-made blackberry applesauce in the fridge that we'd bought at the farmer's market a few weeks ago and never did much with, so I decided to make pork chops with applesauce, which I'd never done before. I searched a few recipes and didn't find one that particularly excited me (plus they mostly told you how to make applesauce, when the whole point was to use this yummy applesauce we already had).

So what I ended up doing was this: I browned the pork chops a little bit on each side, then put them in a baking dish and baked them at 350 for about 40 minutes, turning them once (this much all the recipes seemed to agree on). What I did with the applesauce was mix in a little bit of Worcestershire sauce and then just pour the mix onto the chops when I put them in the baking dish. I poured more on when I turned them.

This came out alright. Akiko said she really liked it. But I felt like it could have been improved on. Any suggestions?

I made this!

The Facebook '15 albums' meme made me want a place to make non-food posts and record recommendation-y things I might want to remember later, so I made this: http://walleyslovetheworld.blogspot.com/

Right now it's pretty much me doing what Glynne does except not as smart. And it might just stay that way forever, but if anyone ever wants to post I'll send you an invite. The title mostly says 'Walleys' 'cause I didn't want to think of anything clever and because mostly just family will probably read it and stuff.

Plus, while I'm making such a random post, I'm really glad everyone seems to be liking and using our food blog. I think it's working out really well, so thanks everyone! Someday I'll invite Mom and Dad in, I just haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I'll make it a Christmas thing.