Extreme Cooking Blog

Well, just one bolete and barely a handful of chanterelles. But it looks promising. Many more Amenitas. Rain almost every night. Warm days. I’m hoping we’re still a little early. Back up to forest next week.

Even if we don’t find any edibles, Tavo has such a blast. Normally he’s pretty mellow, but up there, he flies high over fallen trees like Super Dog. This morning he followed me into the garage and sat next to the car looking up at the tailgate expectantly.

Anyway, I brushed the sliced bolete with olive oil and herbs and grilled it with a Wagyu rib-eye.

Gustavo (“Tavo”), my yellow Labrador retriever and I went up to the forest early this morning to scout out some of our favorite mushrooming spots. The 40-minute drive into the sun at it rises above the Sangre de Cristo mountains always fills me with joy. Tavo seemed very happy too since he knew exactly what I was up to.

We saw some Amenitas which often portend the arrival of porcini. Even though conditions have been wet and warm, we were still a little too early. We found one large Aspen bolete, but I don’t like to eat them. So even though we came back with an empty basket, we had a great time. Tavo is crashed-out as I write this, his head on my foot and snoring like a train.

We’ll head up again next week. Stay tuned.

What started out as a plan to use up some leftovers or expiring food turned out to be a real feast:

• Bread from leftover pizza dough
• Mushroom turnover from some aging button mushrooms and leftover puff pastry
• Tomatoes from the garden – the season has suddenly ended. These were probably the last.
• Aging asparagus, cheese, avocados.

And I made a split-pea soup from the Moosewood cookbook, but needed to make a correction to the obvious omission by throwing in a big chunk of leftover smoked ham shank.

Went up into the National forest again looking for Boletes, but instead found a bunch of small chanterelles – about 1.5 pounds. Made chicken with chanterelles and marsala:

I wish I could find more Boletes, but I’m not complaining. These chanterelles are awesome.

Slices of the freshly picked porcini mushrooms were brushed with olive oil and roasted for a minute in 900F wood-fired oven. These were used to top a white pizza baked a few minutes later in the same oven.

Last year was a disaster for local porcini. I think I collected only one decent specimen. OTOH, it was a great year for chanterelles. After a wet winter and spring, I was hopeful this year would be different. This afternoon Tavo, the mushroom sniffing Lab, and I headed up to the National Forest on a scouting mission. Within about 10 minutes I had collected about a dozen nice specimens of various size. Unfortunately, they were filming a movie up there and not only did they have my favorite area blocked off, but noise from the set construction and trucks destroyed the serenity. And it was getting hot. Tavo was able to play in a stream for comfort.

Anyway, we’re going to return first thing in the morning to see what we find.  It has been pretty dry the last week, so unless we get some good rains soon, this may be all I get this season, at least as far as prcini are concerned. Plan is to use these for pizza on Friday or Saturday.