Shitaki Mushroom Sauce Rabbit, We've Got Something Here

My friend Dinah Mellin who hosts the Brick Hill House Concerts in Orleans has a tenant who is passionate about mycelium. Mushroom spores. Hero and I helped harvest the last of the crop. Many a tick was discovered underneath the logs, but we survived. Here's what we learned.

It should be noted that Shitaki mushrooms make any dish taste Japanese, even if you are going for a buttery French stew. Shitaki mushrooms have a pungent, nutty, woody, miso-like, and yeasty flavor that doesn't magically go away when you pretend they are portabello or cepes. They are delicious, but you are stepping into a Japanese forest, as soon as you pluck your first stem. Know your terrain. And when harvesting them, leave no stems behind in the logs, where their spores have been plugged and have blossomed. You want those holes reusable.

Do not eat the stems. They are too woody, and I like bark. I'm a tea drinker, and I'm a fiber fanatic. Dry your stems always. Even if you harvest your shitaki mushrooms when they are still whitish, and moist. When the stems are dry, you can grind them to a powder in a coffee grinder and use them as a soup base later on. Dry them on a screen or in the windowsill in the sun. If they are still moist, place them on a baking sheet in the oven on very low heat for an hour or less.

If you harvest some brown specimens which have already dried a bit on the logs, finish the job in the same way as the stems. You don't want your extra mushrooms moldy when you jar them.

To reconstitute them, Sam the mushroom man says forget water, use wine or apple juice. I like the sound of that.

Here's my attempt at French Shitaki Mushroom soup, I improvised the recipe after reading about mushrooms in my 70s cookbooks. I recall it involved a lot of butter, some white wine and shallots. I also added turkey bacon instead of ham, which was a bit too over powering, but not as bad as the time my uncle baked Thanksgiving turkey with bacon on top and threw in a cardboard box of stuffing into the poor bland carcass. The flesh was bacon greasy, yellow and crusty and the meat was stringy and dry, while the rib cage smelled like the rusty fence of a factory farm. And speaking of factory farms, malign organic all you want, butter is more delicious organic. As are most fresh foods.

My soup was pretty damn good, but better the next day. If I hadn't been lazy, I would have most definitely blended it to a creamy consistency in a blender. It would have smoothed out the flavor, and I suspect enhanced the nutty flavor. We ate it over jasmine rice, which was too strong a flavor, and also made it blander despite the whole minced garlic bulb and other herbs I used. Mushroom soup should be served with buttered bread, that's a fact. Also, I can't recommend the token cherry tomatoes I threw in there. But, I am sharing this experience despite the foibles, because it's fun to experiment with new items. When God gives you mushrooms make soup.

I don't have a photo, but I discovered the best way to make green beans. Hero eats these! Trim both ends, cut the beans lengthwise. Saute fresh minced parsley in olive oil with minced garlic. Add a bit of minced savory if you have it. Next add a pinch of thyme, oregano, and fresh black pepper. Place your beans in there. Simmer high enough that you need to stand there tossing them. Add sea salt. C'est voila. Romano or goat cheese and toasted slivered almonds would really rock it.