![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
An lj-cut to mushrooms
Last week was my mother's birthday; tonight, being the one night in the month when my brother and I were actually in the same house, was her birthday dinner. So the most interesting thing I did today was dissect a large portobello and some oyster mushrooms for an appetizer, but for some reason this made me happy. These were beautiful fungi. From the way they clustered upward, their stems flattened and convergent, I decided that oyster mushrooms must grow on the sides of trees; their caps were softly grey, sleek as mice above and translucently fluted beneath, and their stems densely white and tensile. I found them so extraordinarily lovely, I took photographs.
(Cut for fungiporn.)
Obverse: a branch of oyster mushrooms in their somewhat less than natural habitat, my kitchen.
Reverse: any visual similarity to the cabled tentacles and beaked mouth of a squid is all in your head.
Deconstruction: I can't decide if this is food porn or mushroom snuff.
Still Life With Price Tag: the only on-camera appearance of the portobello mushroom, the original in-store inspiration for this dish. I dissected the meaty stem out of the cap, rinsed the whole thing in cold water and patted it dry, and later sautéed the minced stem in olive oil along with the cut-up oyster caps and stems, diced scallions, fresh basil, some thyme, breadcrumbs, pepper, and sherry. (Just think of it as charoses, with mushrooms.) Filled the portobello cap with the resultant mixture, doused all in fresh-grated parmesan, and baked. My only fear was that I should have bought more portobelli.
Supporting Cast: Rorschach Soup!
Supporting Cast #2: carrot-ginger soup with a splash of heavy cream, actually. But I still maintain that any soup in which one can see a giraffe should be treated as a clinical diagnostic.
Let All Who Are Hungry: perhaps not as eerily beautiful as its constituent fungi, but I can guarantee you the taste made up for it. Most importantly, my mother liked it. Cooking is fun.
I should point out, there was a more substantial meal appended to these dishes. My father was in charge of the creamed spinach with white pepper and the little rounds of beef tenderloin wrapped in bacon and pan-seared, with béarnaise sauce to go over them afterward, and we shared the potato-parmesan muffins* and the layer cake with strawberry syrup. My family makes strawberry ice cream for the Fourth of July, so I always associate the smell of rendering strawberries with summer: it was a little incongruous here, with snow still heaped and melting in the front yard, but it tasted well enough with cake and whipped cream and sliced half-strawberries sunk into the cream. Birthday candles on top, but under ideal circumstances those don't add to the flavor.
And now, having been involved with food in one way or another since early this afternoon, I am going to crash!
*I am not sure what else to call them, except perhaps puffs: they contain potato, butter, parmesan cheese, with egg white folded in, and we bake them in muffin molds. They're good.
(Cut for fungiporn.)
Obverse: a branch of oyster mushrooms in their somewhat less than natural habitat, my kitchen.
Reverse: any visual similarity to the cabled tentacles and beaked mouth of a squid is all in your head.
Deconstruction: I can't decide if this is food porn or mushroom snuff.
Still Life With Price Tag: the only on-camera appearance of the portobello mushroom, the original in-store inspiration for this dish. I dissected the meaty stem out of the cap, rinsed the whole thing in cold water and patted it dry, and later sautéed the minced stem in olive oil along with the cut-up oyster caps and stems, diced scallions, fresh basil, some thyme, breadcrumbs, pepper, and sherry. (Just think of it as charoses, with mushrooms.) Filled the portobello cap with the resultant mixture, doused all in fresh-grated parmesan, and baked. My only fear was that I should have bought more portobelli.
Supporting Cast: Rorschach Soup!
Supporting Cast #2: carrot-ginger soup with a splash of heavy cream, actually. But I still maintain that any soup in which one can see a giraffe should be treated as a clinical diagnostic.
Let All Who Are Hungry: perhaps not as eerily beautiful as its constituent fungi, but I can guarantee you the taste made up for it. Most importantly, my mother liked it. Cooking is fun.
I should point out, there was a more substantial meal appended to these dishes. My father was in charge of the creamed spinach with white pepper and the little rounds of beef tenderloin wrapped in bacon and pan-seared, with béarnaise sauce to go over them afterward, and we shared the potato-parmesan muffins* and the layer cake with strawberry syrup. My family makes strawberry ice cream for the Fourth of July, so I always associate the smell of rendering strawberries with summer: it was a little incongruous here, with snow still heaped and melting in the front yard, but it tasted well enough with cake and whipped cream and sliced half-strawberries sunk into the cream. Birthday candles on top, but under ideal circumstances those don't add to the flavor.
And now, having been involved with food in one way or another since early this afternoon, I am going to crash!
*I am not sure what else to call them, except perhaps puffs: they contain potato, butter, parmesan cheese, with egg white folded in, and we bake them in muffin molds. They're good.
no subject
gooood.
no subject
I wonder what to call THAT fetish...
The "muffins" sound very close to a sort of potato-based soufflé, given the folded egg whites. I would think the more traditional method of baking would be using individual ceramic ramequins, but muffin tins work perfectly well. (and now, time to plug http://www.muffinfilms.com)
no subject
I understand the aesthetic point, and in fact I can't even argue, but it's been a long day: all I can think is, "Boinking to Beethoven!"
Very glad you liked. And thanks for the soufflé-muffin information! If I were to try these again with ceramic ramequins, where would I pick up something like that?
no subject
no subject
no subject
*having kitchen envy, mine own needs serious remodel*