Friday, January 11, 2008

More vegetables that look like creatures from the deep

I was never much of a playing-with-my-food type when I was little. That was before the age of purple ketchup (alas, that is not me in the picture), Go-Gurt and Lunchables, so maybe I was just lacking in intiative and creativity in the absence of corporate-formulated "kid food". Either way, I now seem to be going through an extended phase of buying stuff basically just because it looks fun and I want to play with it.



So I picked these mushrooms up yesterday from Far West Fungi, which I'd had in mind because I was going to make steak sandwiches for dinner. Of course, they do have a nice-sized basket of your standard white button mushrooms for $2, but these caught my eye instead. Why buy something that you see every day when instead, you can have a strange fungal mass that looks like a hedgehog crossed with a coral growing on top of a cauliflower?

It turns out that this mushroom goes by several different appellations including: bear's head, monkey's head, Pompom Blanc and satyr's beard, among others. It also has a pretty wide range of different physical manifestations. Of course, if you buy the cultivated kind, you probably don't have to worry overmuch about that.

The clerk at the store told me that this variety of mushroom tastes kind of like crab, which sounded too good to be true - and it was. It does definitely have a shellfish undertone to it and is not as aggressively mushroomy-tasting as your average button mushroom or portobello. The texture is also softer and juicier; these mushrooms give off quite a bit of liquid when they cook, which could make them a good candidate for mushroom stock or risotto.



Nothing quite as involved and grandiose as stock or risotto was in store yesterday, though. Instead, I just sliced and sauteed them with a little butter and tossed them into what was probably the most pretentious steak sandwich you could imagine: leftover roast beef slices w/ caramelized onions and Braeburn apples, Colston-Basset stilton, the aforementioned mushrooms and some German-style cole slaw on the side.



What can I say? That's just what we had in the fridge. Not sure if I should be embarrassed by that, or just grateful that that's the kind of food you can get this time of year in California.

1 comment:

cuteradish said...

Hey this blog reminds me of my mom she has been driving all over the state to find this that will be better for us. Because I am a kid hence: kid food. Your blog is awesome check out mine

your truly,
cuteradish