A gift! Fresh black trumpet mushrooms!

[Jenise]

This is one of those bucket list items: never cooked them before, have never even eaten them before. So lucky me: a dinner guest who did not even know this brought me a bag of them yesterday. Did a little research just now and learned some interesting things. The French call them Trumpets des Morts. They are a mycorrhizal fungus that grow around the roots of chestnut trees, and they need to obtain enough tree sugars below the soil in order to produce the mushrooms above the soil. They have an apricot aroma that comes directly from those tree sugars. These were scavenged somewhere on Vancouver Island. Interestingly, the Pennsylvania-based website I got the initial information from, Wild Purveyors, says that there these mushrooms appear there at the beginning of summer and before chanterelles. That these are available fresh here in January suggests that nature is following a completely different biological regime in the Pacific Northwest--for us, chanterelles are an October thing.

That website provided a few recipe ideas gleaned from the New York Times: a sauce for monkfish, a toss with linguine and chives, and perhaps the most intriguing to me, served with grits and taleggio cheese. Well, wouldn't say no to the monkfish but I can't GET monkfish up here in the long, cold fresh-fishless winters.

What to do, what to do....

[John Treder]

They're great! I get them at the local market on occasion. Wonderful with chicken or veal!
If not monkfish, try sturgeon.

John

[Jeff Grossman/NYC]

Scrambled eggs. Mac 'n' cheese. Pasta with butter.

[Jenise]

They're great! I get them at the local market on occasion. Wonderful with chicken or veal!
If not monkfish, try sturgeon.

John

No sturgeon here. No anything, really, except at best one or two farmed fish and most from places I'm leery about. They have better luck in Seattle, but up here? Nada. Alaskan true cod is about it.

But about the mushrooms: oh my god. I sauteed them tonight and made a little sauce with cream, parmesan and garlic then put that over some homemade pasta. I was completely unprepared for them to actually taste somewhat of truffles in spite, in a way, of some similarity to their growing habits even if above ground, which I'd note expected based on what I'd read earlier today. They were FANTASTIC: texture of mushroom, flavor of truffle (if, albeit, somewhat lighter than). We were blown away by them and will make sure we hunt them down next year. (Nadine and David: remember this, I may need your help!)

[Jenise]

Scrambled eggs. Mac 'n' cheese. Pasta with butter.

Door #3, Monty.

[Bill Spohn]

Aha - the Great International Fungus Smuggling Ring! Keep your hands off our Canuck fungi, Yankee Dog!!

[Jenise]

Then spit up the cheese, you maple tree hugger.

[Bill Spohn]

Good point! Have some mushrooms!

[Jenise]