teamEggers

Oktoberfest Pictures

I seem to be playing catch-up with the posting today.  A few weeks back, our friends Heather & Tom invited us to Oktoberfest. The plan was to stay in these huge cabins with about 20 other people (Wisconsin folk: think of a place like Debbie’s house on the lake). We’d cook a few meals together and head to drink some German beers on Saturday.  We had such an awesome time. Here are some pictures.

Kyle & Megan:

Tom & Heather:

Brian Reece:

Michelle, Megan, Heather:

Kyle & Megan:

The crazy german girls that rang bells, danced, and yodeled:

Reece & Michelle:

Liz & Jesse:

Heather, Dana, Will:

Reece & Will:

Jon & Tom:

Lobster Carbonara

After the mushroom’ing adventure, I knew I wanted to make something that really highlighted the characteristics of lobster mushrooms.  How often would I have a pound on hand?

I did a bit of googling, and found out that they pair really well with eggs.  Because of this, a frittata is a really classic preparation for them.  I found a mushroom carbonara recipe from The Chubby Vegetarian and decide to ad lib off of that.

I should also note that we were staying at Heather & Tom’s house around this time, puppy sitting while they were at DisneyWorld.  This is Fifa, the adorable French Bulldog. Aside from her penchant for wanting to chase leaves at 1am, she was a spectacular roommate.

You’ll remember, this was the mushroom we’re working with:

We also want the following on hand:

• 4 cloves of garlic (minced)
• 1 shallot (cut up)
• 2 strips of Bacon (finely chopped)
• 1/2 cup wine (recipe called for white, but we were drinking pinot at the time)
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of milk
• 1 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 8 ounces spaghetti
• parmesan cheese (to taste)

I washed my beast of a mushroom, and chopped it up into bite sized pieces.

Meanwhile, I’ve got my oil and butter melted in a pan on the stove.  To it, I’ll add the bacon, garlic, and the shallots.  The original recipe called for vegetarian bacon, and if you’re using that you’ll want to add it AFTER the mushroom mix. Let this cook on medium heat until the bacon’s crispy and the shallots are translucent. (maybe 10 minutes?)

It’s also worth saying that this recipe originally called for different types of mushrooms. There’s a real good chance that you’re not going to have a 1lb lobster mushroom sitting in your local supermarket, so feel free to improvise.

Toss your mushrooms in the shallot/bacon pan and let them go for about 15 minutes, or as long as it takes for them to cook down to about half their original size.  If they’re not letting out enough juice, and they start sticking to the bottom of the pan, just add a little bit of the wine that you’re drinking.  Stir a little bit, but for the most part, just leave them alone.

This might be a good time to pour yourself a glass of wine.  Jon and I were drinking Torii Mor that night – a vineyard that we’ll definitely check out on this month’s trip to the Wilamettee Valley.  The earthiness of oregon pinots seemed like a natural pair with the mushroom carbonara.

Start a pot of water boiling.

Okay. So at this point, you’ve got crispy bacon, garlic, shallots, and mushrooms in the pan.  They’ve reduced and caramelized for about 20 minutes.  Add your 1/2 c of wine to the pan, deglaze, and reduce to about half.  Spepper and taste, taste, taste.

As you remove your mushroom mixture from the heat, start cooking your pasta.  While the pasta’s cooking, whisk together your eggs and milk.  The heat of the pasta is what’s going to actually cook the eggs, which is kind of neat.

When the pasta is ready, remove from the water with tongs and put it straight on top of your mushroom mixture. Toss mushroom mixture and the cooked pasta together, and then pour the eggs & milk directly on top of the pasta. Toss the pasta in the pan until you notice that the eggs have set. You will know it when you see it. If you want the sauce to be more “saucy”, use some of the pasta water to loosen it up a bit.

Garnish with cheese.

Mushroom’ing

A few weeks back, I met a guy that mentioned he was planning to take a group out to forage for mushrooms. It turns out, it’s exactly chanterelle season in the rainy northwest.

Three emails later, I find myself 30 miles east of the city with a group of people hoping to pick dinner from the ground. Jaxon (our guide/friend) asked us to each bring a basket, a knife, and a brush for cleaning dirt off your shrooms. He gave us a rundown on what we were looking for (and what we were NOT looking for!) and we all decided to meet up about four hours later.

He had scouted out a chanterelle for us, told us the general direction, and asked us to try and find it.

After we were ALL stumped, he pointed it out. Boy. this was going to be tricky.

As it turns out, I found a LOT of types of mushrooms, but not many chanterelles. It sounds like of the 30 of us that were there, only about two people really scored.

I landed in Lobster Mushroom town. While I didn’t end up keeping most of what I found because they were pretty water-logged, I did take home a big fatty that we ended up cooking for dinner. Can you spot the lobster?

These lobster mushrooms are really interesting. They’re about the same price as chanterelles in the store (not super common and I’d probably not be able to afford a 1lb piece for dinner!) but have a cooler back story.

So a lobster mushroom isn’t really a mushroom and it doesn’t really taste like lobsters. They get their name from the bright red hue that they take on, and some say they taste vaguely like seafood. I think there might be a citrusy tang, but to say they taste like crustacean is quite the stretch. What’s MORE interesting is that “lobster mushroom” is a bit of a misnomer. See, there’s this parasite that attaches itself to unsuspecting and otherwise inedible shrooms, like the one below. After the parasite fully takes hold, it’s transformed into what we know as a Lobster Mushroom. Totally fascinating. They’re very dense and kind of starchy. More on how to eat them later.

Oh! I found another thing during my exploratory trip to nature. Check this out, it’s a hobo’s home! Nicely disguised. I’m just happy he wasn’t home.

A tasty morning

Jon’s been obsessing over biscuits and gravy lately, and I decided it was high time I learned how to make it.  After a quick trip to the store, I came home with enough ingredients for bloody marys for a month and some sausage. Turns out, it’s *really* easy to make white sausage gravy.  really not good for you, but whatever.

Fry 1 pound of lean sausage (like Jimmy Dean).  I decided that buying “reduced fat” sausage was a good idea, but after cooking it, I realized that you don’t get any fat drain off from reduced fat sausage.  Ugh. The base of white gravy is the sausage fat + flour, so I had to improvise and decided to make some bacon-swizzle sticks for our bloody marys.

After the sausage is cooked, move it to a paper towel + plate, cover and set aside.

You want about 4T fat.  How you get this is up to you. Since my sausage was woefully inadequate, i went with a combination of bacon fat and crisco. I could hear my arteries clogging, but hey.  Sometimes we do questionable things for the ones we love. By the way. Make sure you’re not using a non-stick pan. Two reasons: 1. you’ll want to use a wire whisk in the next step, and 2. you’ll want the stuck-to-the-bottom stuff.

About this time, you’ll want to put your biscuits in the oven.  Maybe next week I’ll be more Martha Stewarty, but for my first experiment with B&G, I didn’t want the potential to fail in two places. I opted for the pre-made crack-and-bake kind. You’ve got about 10 minutes on your biscuits.

You may also want to pour yourself a bloody mary at this point because the part where you can’t really leave the stove is about to start.

Add 4 T flour to your 4T fat. Mix mix mix.  You want it to brown, but not burn.

Slowly add 4 cups of room temperature skim milk to this. It’s going to look really thin, but that’s okay.  Once everything’s incorporated and all the browned bits are scraped up from the bottom, crank it up to medium high and let it boil.  After a boil (mixing the whole time!), turn the heat down to low so that the sauce thickens. Spepper. Taste, taste, taste.

This part should have taken about 10 minutes. When the timer goes off on your biscuits, turn off the heat but leave them in there until you’re ready to plate.

Split the biscuits in half, so you’ve got maximum absorbency area for the gravy.  Ladle. Eat. Enjoy.

This recipe was really basic, intentionally. Next week I think I’ll add some herbs and maybe a bit of spice.  I’ll also try the biscuits from scratch next time too. Wish me luck.