fall

Baked Kuri Squash and Apple Maple Pudding (shh...it's even vegan)

maki — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:33:06 +0100

You know how certain diehard carnivores react to words like ‘vegan’ ‘no dairy’ and, gasp, ‘tofu in a sweet dish’. There’s no reason to tell them that all of these phrases are applicable to this smooth, creamy baked squash pudding, until they’ve actually eaten and enjoyed. It even is devoid of white sugar, though it is sweetened with maple syrup. The simple combination of creamy squash pudding, flavored and sweetened with real maple syrup with the pure sweetness of the squash shining through, and sweet-sourness of the apples works perfectly together. (The tofu merely adds the creamy texture; you don’t taste it at all.) It’s rich, but rests very lightly on your stomach - not a bad thing after a heavy main course.

This recipe is adapted quite heavily from one in a Japanese cookbook, Saisai Sweets (Vegetable Sweets), by the wonderful Yumiko Kano, who I have mentioned previously. The original recipe called for soy milk, but I’ve used silken tofu instead for a richer, thicker consistency. I’ve omitted other things like rum-soaked raisins, and upped the maple syrup for more sweetness.

Vegan Baked Kuri Squash and Apple Maple Pudding (or crustless pie)

This will make a pudding or a crustless pie that is about 10 inches / 28cm or so in diameter, enough for 6 to 8 servings (though I’ve seen one disappear in one person recently).

I’ve given weight measurements rather than cup measurements, because the proportion of squash to tofu is what’s the most important thing here. Scale up or down according to your needs.

About 1 lb (450-500g) of cooked red kuri squash flesh, skin on (see below for how to cook the squash)
1 block (300g or about 11 oz) silken tofu, well drained
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
A few gratings of nutmeg (about 1/4 tsp.)
2 Tbs. neutral tasting vegetable oil
1/2 tsp. salt
6 Tbs. real maple syrup (not ‘pancake syrup’ or ‘imitation maple syrup’), plus extra for drizzling on top
2 medium sweet eating apples
A little lemon juice

Equipment needed: food processor, a pie or quiche or tart dish

To cook the squash, either: cut in half and scoop out the seeds and fluffy bits in the middle. Poke several holes in the skin side with the point of your knife. Lay cut side down in a baking dish filled with about 1/2 inch / 1 cm of water. Bake at 350° F / 180° C until soft - a skewer poked through the skin side should go through easily. Drain away any left over water.

Alternate method in a pan: de-seed, de-fluffy bit and cut up the squash into about 1 inch / 2cm chunks. Put in a very heavy pan (such as a cast iron enamel one) with enough water to come up to about 1/2 of the squash chunks. Simmer, lid on, until the chunks are tender; drain away any excess water.

Cool the squash after cooking to about room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 350°F / 180°C (if it’s not already on of course.)

Put the cooked squash (skin and all - see notes), tofu, oil, salt and maple syrup into the bowl of a food processor with the steel chopping blade. Process until totally smooth - you may need to scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times. Taste at this point, and see if you want to add more maple syrup.

In the meantime, peel and core two medium eating apples. (I used Cox’s Orange. You want a sweet, eating apple, not a hard, sour cooking apple here. Golden Delicious is a universally available type that will work fine here.) Slice into thin wedges, and toss into some acidulated water (water with a little lemon juice in it) to stop the slices from turning brown. Drain well and pat dry with a clean kitchen towel.

Fill the tart or pie dish with the pumpkin cream. Arrange the apples in a nice pattern on the cream, pushing down each slice a bit (they will sink a little, but this is a very dense cream.) Optionally drizzle the top with more maple syrup, or even better maple sugar, if you have it.

Bake for about 30 minutes, until the top is lightly browned.

This pudding, or crustless pie, is great warm, at room temperature or chilled.

Notes

If you don’t have real maple syrup, try a flavorful clear runny honey instead.
If you can’t get a hold of kuri squash: you can subtitute another squash, preferably a kabocha type, that is denser and sweeter than most other types. Try butternut or the rouge d’Etampes pumpkin too if you have them. You can try ‘regular’ pumpkin too, but I think the texture will not be as good.
The orange skin of the kuri squash cooks up quite soft, and the orange adds to the vibrant color of the pudding. However if you use a green-skinned squash or a tough-skinned squash instead, just use the flesh, or your pudding will look rather odd (or be filled with hard woody bits, which is not too nice).
If you don’t care about keeping it all vegan, use butter instead of the oil. Dot the top with more butter.
Try ripe pears instead of the apples!

Japanese-style vegan mushroom rice: Kinoko no takikomi gohan revisited

maki — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:27:00 +0100

The very first full recipe I posted on Just Hungry almost 4 years ago was Mushroom Rice (kinoko no takikomi gohan), and it still gets a lot of visits and comments, even though there’s no photo to whet the reader’s appetite or anything.

The original recipe called for traditional dashi stock made from bonito (fish) flakes, and suggested adding chicken and other things. This version is a lot simpler to assemble and it’s all vegan, but it’s just as tasty. And it comes with a photo! (My early photos on the site are pretty awful. I like to think I’ve learned a little since then.) I am using this in an upcoming bento, but it’s good for regular dinner too, so it’s posted here. It’s actually the best when it’s freshly made - the aroma of the mushrooms fills the kitchen, quite irresistible if you love mushrooms as I do. It is a very autumn (fall) kind of dish.

I think that this dish reflects my changing tastes and eating habits too, not to mention how I approach writing for Just Hungry, too. 4 years ago, I wasn’t that worried about health issues or anything of that nature in regards to food. Now, I am rather proud that I have a tasty dish that is sugar-free, gluten-free (if you use a gluten-free soy sauce), and vegan! I feel a bit trendy.

(The original recipe is not that unhealthy or anything, but it does have a bit of meat, sugar, and so on.)

Vegan mushroom rice (kinoko no takikomi gohan)

2 large dried shiitake mushrooms
1 piece kombu seaweed (optional), left whole (6 inches / 15 cm or so)
2 cups white Japonica rice (sushi rice)
1 piece (about 2 cm / 1 inch long) of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 cup sliced or shredded mixed mushrooms - fresh shiitake, morels, chantarelles, chestnut mushrooms, or whatever is around
1-2 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. sake

Equipment suggested: a rice cooker

Soak the dried shiitake mushrooms in plenty of water, with the piece of kombu seaweed. You can soak more than the two you’ll use in this recipe and use the others in other dishes - they will keep in the water, in the refrigerator, well covered, for a few days.

Take out the two shiitake from the soaking liquid, squeezing out the excess. Cut off the hard stem and slice up the caps. Mix together with the chopped ginger and fresh mushrooms, and sprinkle on the soy sauce and sake. Squeeze the mushrooms with your hands until the fresh ones wilt. Leave for a bit.

In the meantime, wash the rice.

Put the rice in the rice cooker bowl, and add the mushroom mix. Add enough of the mushroom soaking liquid to come up to the 2-cup level. Let the rice soak for at least an hour - set the rice cooker timer accordingly.

When the rice is done fluff up with a rice paddle. Serve right away or in bento. It freezes well too.

This makes about 5-6 cups of mixed rice (depending on how much mushrooms you put in, and what kind - maitake or chantarelles would shrink a lot more than, say, eringi (pleurotus)), enough for 2 bento rounds for two plus for dinner.

Notes

I normally use white rice for mixed rice (takikomi gohan) like this, because I think the flavors permeate the rice better than with brown rice. I don’t worry about the lack of fiber content in the rice itself, because the added ingredients usually have lots of fiber anyway.

Hoku hoku is fall (and some Japanese words for food)

maki — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:06:14 +0200

My general ‘simple is better’ attitude to food has continued into the fall. At the moment I’m not cooking much per se, but I am enjoying the foods that are so good at this time of the year. A lot of these foods share a similar quality, for which I can’t think of an appropriate word in English to describe. There’s a perfect word in Japanese though - hoku hoku. Hoku hoku is the word that is used for a starchy, dense, sweet flavor and texture. Think of roasted sweet chestnuts, winter squash, and sweet potatoes. Baked white potatoes can be hoku hoku too.

My favorite hoku hoku food is sweet potato - though I do mean the kind we get in Japan (called satsuma-imo), not the kind that’s most commonly seen in the U.S. (and here in Europe too). The U.S. kind of sweet potato has an orange skin and bright orange-yellow flesh, but the Japanese kind that I grew up with has a pale cream-white flesh and pink-purple skin. It’s less fibrous and sweeter than the orange-flesh kind, which I feel needs added sweeteners most of the time (which is why it’s so great in sweet potato pie and the like).

When I was growing up, we lived for a year in the Mita section of Minato-ku in Tokyo, in a mansion (mansion means a high-rise apartment building in Japan) opposite the Italian embassy. There was a polite yet simmering feud going on between the residents of the apartment building and the embassy, because they didn’t like the typically Japanese things the residents did, such as hanging their futon out on their balconies to air out in the sun, not to mention the laundry. Apparently to Italian sensibilities the laundry and futons looked terrible. They complained so much that the building management sent out a notice to the residents asking them to not put out the futon on the balconies facing the embassy. (My always rebellious mother put them out anyway, braving the constant battles with the management. Maybe it was a good thing we moved out fairly soon.)

Another thing the Italians did not like was the ishi yakiimo (stone roasted sweet potato) cart. On cool evenings the cart would come and park in front of the apartment building, and the vendor would pull out his loud speaker and start chanting,

yaki-imo
ishi yaki-imo
hokka hoka dayo…

Hoka hoka is another descriptive word used for food - it means steamy-hot.

That was guaranteed to lure several residents out for their newspaper-wrapped packet of hot (hoka hoka) roasted sweet and dense (hoku hoku) sweet potatoes.

There are several ways of cooking sweet potatoes, but my favorite way is to just roast them whole in their skins. No added butter or anything is necessary, though a tiny sprinkle of salt can bring out the sweetness.

While we don’t have sweet potato carts here in Switzerland, we do have roasted chestnut carts, which help to warm the body and spirit with their hoka hoka hoku hoku-ness too.

Japanese adjectives for food

Japanese is full of very descriptive yet not really directly translatable adjectives to describe how food tastes and feels. A lot of them repeat the same sound twice. Knowing when to use which adjective may be one of the hurdles to overcome in order to master Japanese - the differences can be rather subtle. Here are a few:

shiko shiko - Chewy, textured, al dente.
tsuru tsuru - Slippery, smooth.

Example: “These noodles are so tsuru tsuru and shiko shiko”. (This was used to describe the perfect ramen noodle in Tampopo.)

hoku hoku - dense, floury, sweet. Example: “These baked potatoes are hoku hoku.”
hoka hoka - hot. Used only for hot foods (and other hot things) that can be held in the hand and are steamy-hot or warming. Actually there are other words to describe hotness or warmth: atsu atsu (piping hot), poka poka (warming…never used for food though, but an electric blanket can be poka poka, and your body can feel poka poka after eating an atsu atsu soup), etc.
nuru nuru - slippery, slimy (e.g. okra).
nume nume - even more slimy
shaki shaki - crispy, crunchy - only used for vegetables and fruit, never for something like potato chips
kari kari - dry-crispy
sara sara - flowing, not sticky - e.g. cold noodles are better if they are sara sara
puri puri - chewy, lively, fresh
pichi pichi - fresh, young, taut (can be used for a fresh fish or a young and pretty girl)

(If you are in Zürich, you can find the the pink-skinned satsumaimo type of sweet potato at Barkat.)

Sweet and spicy roasted kabocha squash

maki — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:34:37 +0200

I hesitated to put this recipe up, because it’s not the prettiest thing in the world. But it’s so tasty, dead easy to make, and of this season - so, here it is. As a bonus it’s full of fibre and is relatively low-calorie, low-sugar etc for people who want a bit of something sweet without going on a massive guilt trip.

Most recipes out there for using winter squash seem to involve pureeing them, but I rather like them when they are in chunks or slices. This roasted squash has a sweet, spicy and salty glaze of sorts on them, which brings out the dense sweetness of the fruit. Cut into fairly thin slices like this, it makes interesting finger food. You can vary the sugar and spice to your taste, though too much of either may overwhelm it.

You do need to use kabocha-type squash for this ideally, though butternut should work too. You will need a dense, starchy and sweet squash. Don’t use regular pumpkin, which is too watery and lacks sweetness. (Rouge d’etampes pumpkin may work, but I’ve found their sweetness to vary quite a bit.)

Sweet and spicy roasted kabocha squash

1/2 small to medium sized kabocha squash
3 Tbs light brown, natural cane, or muscovado sugar, plus a bit more for sprinkling
1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper or hot chili powder, more or less to taste
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbs soy sauce
Oil for drizzling - pumpkin seed oil is preferred, or use toasted sesame oil, argan oil, or walnut oil (see notes)

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F. Line a baking sheet or two with silicon baking liner or parchment paper.

De-seed and cut the squash into slices about 1/2 cm or 1/4 inch thick. (Use a sturdy knife for cutting squash or pumpkin, on a stable surface, and be careful!)

Combine all the dry ingredients. Toss the squash slices in this until coated thoroughly. Add the soy sauce and toss well again.

Spread the slices in a singler layer on the baking sheet. Drizzle over them with the oil, and optionally sprinkle more sugar on them. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, then turn over, drizzle with more oil and sprinkle more sugar, and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes.

Serve hot or at room temperature.

Notes

Toasted pumpkin seed oil (Kürbiskernöl) is a mainly Austrian speciality, though they make it here in Switzerland too. It’s very nutty and dark, and is terrific in dressings and marinades. Toasted sesame seed oil or walnut oil can be substituted, or even expensive argan oil.

Instead of cinnamon, nutmeg and cumin, you can use a ‘pumpkin pie seasoning’ mix (or if you are in the Germanic parts of the world, a Lebkuchen mix would do too.)

Slightly bitter apple preserves

maki — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:07:12 +0200

Whether you are picking them from your own trees or at orchards, getting bushels of them in CSA boxes, or just buying them at your local market, you may possibly be swamped by apples at this time of year. Who can resist those cheeky little things after all? I live in an area with a lot of apple orchards, and seeing the little red or greenish-red fruit bobbling on branches just does something to me, and I end up buying bags and bags of it. A lot of them just get eaten out of hand, but cooked apples are also great, of course.

I love to make all kinds of jams and chutneys and preserves, but I think these apple preserves are my favorite, and they are a great way of dealing with a glut of the fruit. These preserves have a slightly bitter taste to them under the sweet-tartness, which comes from the whole lemons that are thrown in as well as the fact that it's cooked for a long time until it starts to caramelize a bit. I like this marmelade-like bitterness, but if marmelade is not your thing don't chuck in the whole lemons, but just use the peel.

I prefer to use eating apples rather than very sour cooking apples for this, since they disintegrate faster and you need a bit less sugar. It can also be interesting to use a mixture of different kinds of apples.

This goes very well with plain yogurt, as well as on hot buttered bread. If you put it up in smallish jars, they make great gifts to take along when you are invited somewhere.

Since jam-making does take its time, this is designated as a Weekend Project. Incidentally, the smell that will fill your kitchen during the cooking of this is heavenly.

Slightly bitter apple preserves

The amount of sugar and other ingredients depends on how much cut-up fruit you have. It's best to use a scale for this, since cup-measurements are inaccurate (not everyone cuts their apples up the same size after all).

You don't need pectin, since the apples themselves and the lemon peel have a lot of it, and you do cook this for a few hours to allow it to caramelize.

I usually make about 2 kg (4-5 lb or so) of apple at a time, but scale up or down according to what you feel comfortable with. If you do scale it up, you may need a bit more sugar, and if you make just a bit, you may need a bit less.

For every 1 lb /450g of peeled, cut up apple -
11-13oz / about 320g-370g sugar - more if you have sour apples, less if you have sweet
1 whole lemon, organic/unwaxed

Equipment needed: a large, heavy-bottomed, non-reactive (stainless steel or enameled cast iron work great) pot.

Peel and cut up the apple first, removing any bruised/brown bits. A vegetable peeler is the best for peeling a ton of apples, unless you have one of those apple-peeler gadgets or are a wizard with your paring knife. Weigh the apples at this point.

Cut the lemon(s) in half and juice them. Keep the squeezed halves.

Put the apple chunks, sugar and lemon juice in the pot and mix. Leave it for about 30 minutes until the apples exude their juice and the sugar starts to melt. Turn on the heat, and bring up to a boil while mixing.

Once it is bubbling, toss in the lemon peel halves. (If you don't like the bitterish marmelade taste, don't put in the lemon halves but just peel off some of the outer peel, leaving behind the white pith, and put that in.)

Turn the heat down to low and simmer for at least 4 hours, if not more. I have a ceramic-top electric/halogen type stove, so I feel safe in leaving this to simmer overnight on low heat, but if you have gas and feel uncomfortable with that you can try putting it in a lowish (280°F/140°C) oven too. The objective is a amber-colored, jammy, slightly caramelized mixture.

In the meantime, prepare your canning jars following the instructions here.

Once you have cooked the preserves to your satisfaction, take out the lemon halves and put the jam in the canning jars. If you've made just 1 lb. worth or less, you can just store it covered in the refrigerator, and use it up within a couple of weeks.

Variations

Cook for less time, without the lemon peel, for a fresher-tasting apple jam. In this case you want to cut up the apples very small.
Add a cinnamon stick or two in while cooking.
Add two de-seeded and chopped up habanero peppers for an interesting spicy jam.

Other things to do with your apples

Knittykat's busy day apple pie, via Amber
Erin's apple butter
Elise's baked apples - I love baked apples!
Also from Elise: Apple Chicken Quesadillas
If you like savory dishes with apples, these Cinnamon Apple Pork Tenderloin is a bit sweet but very nice (maybe a good side dish might be Mookie Wilson's candy yams)

Produce: Winter squash and pumpkins

maki — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 17:55:16 +0200

I think that winter squash is not nearly as popular as it should be. The only food-trendiness strike against it is that it's not low-carb, but in all other aspects it's so much healthier, and tastier, than their much popular summer squash relatives like zucchini. Winter squash are packed full of fiber, beta-carotenes, and other goodness. Most varieties are also deliciously sweet, and now is the season for many of them.

Perhaps winter squash isn't so popular because the most popular kind, pumpkins, are not that tasty. The flesh of pumpkins is quite bland and rather watery, with a fibrous texture - which is why it's usually only fit for doctoring up with tons of sugar and things, puréed and made into pies or turned into soup.

Once you get beyond pumpkins though, it gets a whole lot better. My favorite kinds are in the kabocha (the generic name for winter squash in Japanese) family. Most kabocha squashes are bright to dark green on the outside and a flattish oval in shape. The flesh inside is a bright orange or bright yellow, and very sweet and dense, like a sweet potato. In Japan, kabocha is most often eaten as a side dish, cooked in dashi stock and soy sauce, with just a little sugar if needed. You can also substitute kabocha chunks in this nikujaga (potatoes and meat) recipe, and it's a popular vegetable for tempura-style deep frying. The skin of kabocha squash is quite thin so you don't need to peel it.

Another kind that has similar qualities to kabocha is called kuri squash or Hokkaido kuri. (Kuri means chestnut in Japanese, and it is sort of a chestnut shape - though I believe it refers more to its chestnut-like flesh rather than the shape.) It's the bright orange, onion-shaped one in the foreground of the photo at the top. In Switzerland and Germany it's called Knirps. Thin-skinned and a bit less sweet than kabocha, it's great for roasting, soups, and a lot else.

Most winter squash however have rather thick, inedible skins. These will need to be peeled if you use them in chunks. Or, bake or microwave then, then scoop out the flesh for use in soups or pies. The popular and distinctive butternut squash for instance has a pretty tough skin, so it's best to just use the flesh. Cut in half, remove the seeds (a spoon is best for this task), and place cut-side down in a baking pan with about 1/2 inch (1 cm or so) of water in it. Bake for about 45 minutes in a 350°F / 180°C, until a knife poked into it goes through without any resistance. To microwave, wrap each half in plastic wrap and nuke for about 12 to 15 minutes until tender. Scrape out the cooked flesh and mash up further for use. Other kinds of tough-skinned squash can also be treated like this.

Incidentally, I find most huge squash to be fairly watery and tasteless, while tiny immature squash are not sweet enough. Go for the medium-sized ones.

Generally speaking, the better a "keeper" a squash is supposed to be, the tougher and thicker the skin. Blue Hubbard squash for instance has a skin that's so tough that you almost need a hatchet to cut it open. Cutting squash can be a rather scary thing - just use a sturdy knife, and go slowly. Once you've cut into it, the rest of the chopping up is a lot easier. Limiting yourself to the thinner-skinned varieties also helps. Frozen pre-cut kabocha squash is available in Japanese and Asian groceries - squash does freeze quite well. (If freezing your own, cut it up in chunks and blanch briefly.)

Following are two very easy recipes using thin-skinned kabocha type or kuri squash. (You can use thicker-skinned ones if you peel the skin.)

[Update:] also check out this creamy kuri squash pudding with apples, flavored with maple syrup - it's even vegan!

Roasted winter squash with feta cheese

This is a super-easy and fast vegetarian one-dish meal. The feta does not really melt, it just sort of relaxes, and the saltiness of it contrasts perfectly with the sweet squash.

About 4 cups of cut-up squash, peeled if from a tough-skin kind
4 cloves garlic
1 cup (or more, to taste) feta cheese, crumbled
1 tsp. dried thyme
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400°F / 200°C.

Peel and very roughly chop the garlic.

Toss together all the ingredients except for the cheese in a bowl until all is coated with the oil and the seasonings. Spread in one layer on a baking sheet. Bake, covered with foil, for about 30 minutes.

Remove the foil and sprinkle the feta cheese on top. Bake for another 10-15 minutes until the squash is tender (poke with knife) and the top is a tiny bit browned. (The feta will not change color much.) Serve immediately. .

Winter squash with crême fraiche and honey

This may sound like a dessert, and you can eat it as dessert if you like. But it's also a great side dish, for roast pork, roast lamb and so on. The cinnamon and cayenne add just a bit of zing that brings it all together. I could eat bowlfuls of this.

About 4 cups of cut-up kabocha or kuri squash (here I used the orange-skinned Knirps, or kuri squash kind)
1 cup crême fraiche
3 Tbs. honey
1/4 tsp (or a pinch) each of cinnamon and cayenne pepper
1 tsp. salt

Put the cut-up squash into a pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer until the squash is tender, about 15-20 minutes. Drain the water.

Put the squash back in the pan. Add the crême fraiche, honey, and salt. Stir gently and simmer for another 5 minutes. Add the cinnamon and cayenne; mix well. (It will disintegrate somewhat, don't worry about it.) Serve while hot. This also re-heats in the microwave very well, and leaving it in the fridge for a day deepens the flavors.

Produce: Mushrooms, on the wild side

maki — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 16:57:11 +0200

One crisp day in the fall when I was about 12, my cousins and I went for a foraging hike in the forests of the Okuchichibu mountains with our Aunt Naoko. (Relatives of another aunt had a farm there.) We were looking for wild rakkyou (a kind of wild onion), fuki (coltsfoot), and whatever wild mushrooms we could find. We found plenty of rakkyou, but had no luck with mushrooms, until we suddenly came upon a clearing full of brown caps. They were big, luscious shiitake mushrooms, growing on rotted logs.

"Wow, can this be real?" we asked ourselves. "Is this really wild? Doesn't it belong to someone?" I don't know why the fact that they were growing on sawed logs didn't tip us off, but somehow we assumed - Aunt Naoko as well as us kids - that they were wild, and proceeded to pick more than half of them.

Later on, the relatives at whose farm we were staying got an angry phone call from a neighbor. Those shiitake were indeed being farmed. Oops. I think my aunt settled it by paying for what we'd picked...it couldn't have been cheap, because the four of us came away from that clearing with a big bag full each. They were sure delicious though!

I'm not sure if the memory of that afternoon is why I love mushrooms so much. When I say wild mushrooms, I'm talking about mushrooms that are not the old, boring white button mushrooms, even though some of the 'wild' mushrooms are cultivated, especially shiitake. Some of the mushrooms you'll see at the markets right now are gathered wild - fall is the perfect time for them, when the weather turns cool and moist.

There many different kinds of mushrooms, and the variety depends on where you live. The photo here is a sampling of the mushrooms available at the "mushroom man" stall at the Wednesday market in the Zürich main station. You may recognize the brown capped shiitake (top left) and bright yellow chanterelles (top right). The big sliced ones in the bottom right are wild porcini, called Steinpilz here, and the big, white one on the left is an oyster mushroom or Krauterseitling (pleurotus eryngii). In the middle is a mixture of thin, delicate mushrooms that are just called wild mushrooms. They are similar to the chanterelles in texture.

The method of cooking depends on the texture of the mushroom. Meaty, substantial mushrooms like mature porcini or the gigantic 'puffs' you can get in some places can stand up to grilling and frying, but delicate chanterelles will fall apart if you cook them too long. If you're doing a mixed mushroom dish, start cooking the meatier varieties before the thinner ones, or slice them thinly. Instead of slicing mushrooms, it can also be fun to just shred them apart with your hands.

I like to cook mushrooms in two ways: Japanese, and European. With Japanese methods you don't add any fat. European methods usually require quite a lot of butter or oil, but it's worth it of course. The better or more fragrant the mushroom, the simpler the method used to prepare them.

Cleaning mushrooms

Ideally you do not want to wash mushrooms at all, and do not ever soak them. If you must wash them, do so under running water, and immediately dry them off. The more delicate the mushroom, the more they will be damaged by water-washing.

I like to clean them gently with a moist and well-wrung out kitchen towel, and I cut off any impossibly dirty bits, like the root end of maitake mushrooms.

Mushroom foraging

Don't, unless you really know what you are doing. Many mushroom picking courses are offered around this time of year, and can be great fun (though dress warmly - you will get very cold).

Recipes

Some of my favorite mushroom recipes are already on the site:

Mushroom rice, or kinoko takikomi gohan - mushrooms are marinated briefly then cooked with rice. Fat free! (ok, you get some calories from the rice.) We tried this recently with spelt instead of rice, and it was really good.
Mushroom lemon soup - made with wild mushrooms, this is much better than the version with button mushrooms.
Melange of mushrooms soup - A lot of cream in this, and totally worth it.

Japanese style steam-baked mushrooms

This is my mom's favorite way to cook mushrooms, and it's almost ridiculously easy.

An assortment, or just one variety, of mushrooms, such as shiitake, chanterelles, maitake (hen of the woods), etc.
Soy sauce
Sake
Sansho pepper (if you can get it)

Pre-heat the oven to 400°F/200°C. (You can also use a toaster oven for this.)

Clean the mushrooms; cut off any tough or dirt-filled stems. (You'll need to do this for big shiitake and maitake, but not for chanterelles).

Shred or slice any thick, meaty mushrooms. I like to keep shiitake and chanterelles whole, and just shred maitake up into chunks.

Place the mushrooms on a large sheet of aluminum foil.

Sprinkle with sake and soy sauce - about 1 tablespoon of each for two large handfuls of mushrooms - and toss. Sprinkle with sansho.

Wrap the mushrooms up in the foil, and seal around the edges. Place in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes.

You can also make individual serving size packs which can be opened up by each person. The wonderful aroma that wafts up into your nostrils when you rip into the pack is amazing.

Mushroom pasta

Again, this is very very simple, but that's really the best way to enjoy mushrooms when they are at their best. The subtle sourness of the crême fraiche really accentuates the mushroom flavor. You can add some freshly grated Parmesano if you want, but try it without first.

If you can afford it, try this just with chanterelles.

1 pack fresh fettucine (8 oz or 225g)
10 oz / 250g (or so) wild mushrooms, ideally chanterelles
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves, or dried thyme
2 cloves garlic
2 Tbs. unsalted butter
3 Tbs. crême fraiche
Salt and pepper

Start boiling the water for your fresh pasta.

Finely slice the garlic. Start sautéing them in the butter in a pan, until they turn tender.

Clean and slice or rip apart your chosen mushrooms.

When the water has come to a full boil, toss the mushrooms into the pan, toss rapidly over high heat, until it all starts to wilt and brown and emanate a wonderful smell. Add the thyme, and the crême fraiche. Season with salt and pepper.

In the meantime, put the fresh pasta in the boiling water - it should cook in a couple of minutes.

Drain (a little moisture should still be clinging to the noodles), and add to the pan with the mushrooms. Toss well and serve immediately.

Produce: Swiss chard

maki — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 18:15:04 +0200

With the recent spinach-e.coli scare in the U.S., a lot of attention is being paid to alternative greens. Frankly I think this is a bit silly, since it's not like the conditions that could have possibly caused the e.coli bacteria to contaminate the spinach crops, such as improper handling or fertilising with infected manure, would just target Popeye's favorite food to the exclusion of other green leafy vegetables. However the good thing is that it does give an excuse to try other kinds of greens and experiment a bit.

Due to its bright dark green leaves and relatively bland flavor, Swiss chard is being touted as a spinach alternative. It's not exactly like spinach, since the leaves are much thicker, as are the stalks. To me, the stalks are a lot tastier than the leaves, though the leaves have more nutritional value. I always separate them anyway since they have different cooking times. Also, while the bright stemmed ones are pretty, the classic white stemmed ones have much better flavor. Those thick, white stems are very juicy and sort of like less fibrous versions of celery stalks, with a much more subtle flavor. The stems of the brightly colored ones are thin and can be rather tough sometimes. The bright stemmed ones are nice when the leaves are picked very young and put into a salad though. Mature chard leaves are better when cooked, in my opinion.

Swiss chard is actually a variety of the beet plant bred for more leaf production, so you can use it in any recipes that call for beet greens.

The picture above shows an array of Swiss chard being sold at a local market. Incidentally, here in Switzerland it is not called Swiss anything. In the German speaking parts it's usually called either Krautstiele, Stielmangold or plain Mangold, and in the French speaking parts it's just called blette. Apparently it was called Swiss chard in some English-language seed catalogs to differentiate it from French charde or chardon originally. It is very popular here in any case, and grows like crazy in this cool yet mild climate.

There's a traditional dish from the eastern part of Switzerland called the Grisons (the area where the story of Heidi was set) called capuns. Swiss chard leaves are stuffed with a rich mixture of cheese and grains, and cooked in milk or soup stock. I prefer this vegetable a lot plainer though, so here are two very quick and easy ways to enjoy Swiss chard.

Braised Swiss chard stems

Cut off the stems from about 4-5 large white-stemmed Swiss chard leaves. Reserve the leaves for another dish. Wash well and cut off any discolored parts. Cut into chunks about 1.5cm / 1/2 inch wide.

Heat up a pan with a little butter or olive oil. Toss in the stems, and toss. Cover the pan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring several times, for about 25 minutes until it's turning golden-brown around the outside and translucent.

Take off the lid and turn up the heat, and toss briefly to evaporate any remaining water. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir fried Swiss chard leaves

Green parts of 4-5 Swiss chard leaves
2 garlic cloves
1 chili pepper
1 Tbs. Soy sauce
Oil for stir fry (such as peanut oil)
1 tsp sesame seed oil
Salt and pepper

Chop up the garlic and the red pepper. (You can de-seed the pepper if you want, though I don't bother to.) Roughly chop up the Swiss chard leaves.

Heat up a wok with oil of your choice over high heat, and toss in the garlic and pepper. Toss in the Swiss chard. Stir rapidly until the leaves are wilted. This will only take a couple of minutes.

Put in the soy sauce and sesame oil and stir around rapidly. Season with salt (if needed) and pepper. Serve immediately.

Melange of mushrooms soup

maki — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 23:22:21 +0100

We are a little past the peak of the mushroom season now, but it's still quite possible to get a whole variety of fresh cultivated and wild mushrooms. And what better way to have them than in a simple soup, that really brings out their flavor?

For this soup, I would choose about one-half cultivated mushrooms, and one-half wild mushrooms, simply for the sake of cost - but of course if you can afford all wild mushrooms, by all means go all the way! It's also not too bad with all cultivated mushrooms either. Any kind of mushrooms that catch your eye would do; the only ones I would avoid are shimeji and shiitake. Shimeji are the white, rather tasteless stringy mushrooms often used in Japanese dishes; they are rather trendy, but to my mind only good for texture, not flavor. Shiitake I would also avoid because it has a very distinctive and rather overwheming flavor to me. If you love shiitake though, you could make an all-shiitake version too.

For this version, I used brown cultivated mushrooms, sometimes called chestnut mushrooms, plus wonderful yellow chantarelles, oyster mushrooms, and a couple of porcini. The aroma and flavor are absolutely wonderful. If you are on a strict low-fat diet, you can omit the cream and simply simmer it gently in the vegetable stock and it will still be quite good.

Once you've had this you'll never go back to canned Cream of Mushroom Soup again.

Mélange of mushrooms soup

200 g / about half a pound of fresh cultivated brown mushrooms (chestnut mushrooms) or white mushrooms
200g of mixed wild mushrooms; chantarelles, oyster mushrooms, porcini, etc.
1-2 garlic cloves
1 shallot, or 1 small onion
1 good quality vegetable stock cube (I use Knorr or Maggi)
Butter
Fresh or dried thyme, a couple of parsley sprigs, and bay leaf (the classic bouquet garni)
Salt and pepper
About 1 cup of cream

Brush off any dirt from the mushrooms with a moist paper towel. Thinly slice the cultivated mushrooms; sort of cut up the wild mushrooms (the chantarelles and oyster mushrooms you can almost tear apart with your hands). Chop the garlic and shallot or onion finely.

Heat about 1 Tbs. unsalted butter in a heavy-bottom pot. Add the garlic and shallots and saute until just limp. Add the cultivated mushrooms, and a bit more butter if you like, and saute until the mushrooms start to shrink. At first they will give out a lot of moisture, which will evaporate quickly then the mushrooms will turn brown and shrink. Add the wild mushrooms at this point (they are more tender than the cultivated ones) and briefly sauté them.

Add enough water to make the mushrooms float just a bit (that means, enough to cover, and a bit more to that). Add the stock cube. At this point, if you are a neat person tie up the parsley, thyme and bay leaf in a bit of cheesecloth and dangle it in the pot - or, if you're like me and are a messy cook, just add the thyme - dried of the leaves of a sprig of fresh, a bayleaf, and the parsley sprigs whole into the pot. You'll be fishing out the parsley and bay leaf later.

Let this simmer for about 10-15 minutes.

Add the cream, stirring. Salt and pepper to taste. Simmer just a bit more (about 5 minutes) until piping hot. Take out the bay leaf and parsley before serving.

Feeds 4 very hungry people with good bread for lunch, or makes a very nice starter for a winter meal.

Mushroom rice

maki — Sat, 29 Nov 2003 12:58:07 +0100

Fall is the season for wild mushrooms. We can get mushrooms all year round now of course, but the wild variety are at their best when the fungi can draw lots of nice nutrients from the rotting leaves and wood that is lying around.

Fungi are a strange thing. They feast on decay. All plant material draw energy to grow from their decayed ancestors, but fungi are the only things that draw all of their energy from this source. And, the more they can suck up, the more flavorful they seem to be.

Truffles for instance, are so greedy that they don't even raise their heads out of the earth, until their are sniffed out by pigs or dogs. (Allegedly, virgins can also detect truffles.) I was quite sceptical about the reputation enjoyed by the truffle, until the day I actually had one, a real one, not just truffle oil or the microscopic specks of truffle that are allegedly in some canned patés. This was a real truffle, sliced into bold chunks and baked inside a dish modestly called a galette de pommes (potato cake) on the menu of the Beurehiesel in Stransbourg. (The Buerehiesel is a 3-star Michelin establishment, and our favorite restaurant right now. It will be mentioned many times in this blog I'm sure.) The wonderful fragrance of the truffle permeated the potato cake and made it something out of this world.

While we can't afford truffles on a regular basis, we can enjoy wild mushrooms. One of our favorite ways of enjoying a delightfully smelly bag of mixed fungi is simply cooked in our trusty rice cooker with a basic dashi stock. It can be assembled in no time, and then you just wait for your kitchen to be filled with the fragrance of the 'shrooms. It's low-fat too.

[Update:] See this vegan variation of mushroom rice.

Recipe: Japanese-style Mushroom Rice (_kinoko takikomi gohan_)

3 cups (750ml) of Japanese style _japonica_ rice (often sold as sushi rice)
3 1/2 cups (875ml) of basic dashi stock
300g (about 10-12 oz) of mixed mushrooms, such as shiitake, chantarelles, oyster mushrooms. You can use regular button mushrooms but it won't be nearly as good.
Soy sauce
Sake, or sherry
Mirin (sweet rice wine) - optional: you can just use a little more sake and a touch of sugar instead
1 fried bean curd (aburaage) (optional)

Wash the rice well in several changes of water, until the water runs clear. Drain.

Slice the mushrooms, or simply shred them with your hands. Cut the fried bean curd into small pieces. Place in a bowl.

Sprinkle with 1-2 Tbs. of soy sauce, 1 Tbs of sake, and 1 Tbs of mirin. Let marinate for about an hour if possible, though you can skip this if you're in a hurry. If you do, massage the mushrooms a bit with your hands to make the marinade penetrate.

Place the rice in a rice cooker and add the dashi and mushroom mixture. Cook the rice. If you don't have a rice cookier, cook thus: place the rice mixture in a pot with a heavy bottom and tight fitting lid. Bring to a boil. Immediately lower the heat to the lowest possible setting, place the lid on top, and steam-cook for about 20 minutes. Switch off and let rest for at least an additional 10 minutes.

A non-vegetarian alternative is to add small bits of cut of chicken instead of the fried bean curd.

To make it more "western" to serve as a rice side-dish, add a bit of butter to the cooked rice.