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Agaricus Augustus: The Prince of Mushrooms

Princes are tall, noble mushrooms with feathered, golden caps that have a square-ish, marshmallow-like shape when young. They often crop up twice in a season, and are considered choice edibles.

These beauties appeared in July along a sidewalk edged with ivy. We carefully pried them out of the ground, marveling at their long stems, and carried them home.

Click on a photo to open the gallery:

Golden, feathered heads nestled in the ivy.
White, scaly stems pushing up through the leafy litter.
Six long-legged beauties, showing some tell-tale yellow bruising.
About 640 grams.
Cleaned and trimmed.
Unbroken veils, and an unmistakable almondy scent.

What would you do with such fresh, tender, aromatic mushrooms?

Click on a photo to open the gallery and see what we did.

We carefully tore some of them lengthwise into quarters.
The rough edges cook nicely on the grill.
A little char adds so much flavour.
The rest we cut up for the pan.
Beautiful, firm flesh, and so aromatic when cut open.
Into a hot pan with olive oil and a little garlic.
Half were finished with Sherry, half with cream.
No bread required, just amazing on their own.

About two months later, the same stretch of sidewalk revealed another crop. Unfortunately, they went unnoticed for a few days and were a little past their prime when we found them.

The veils are broken, the caps have opened fully, and the edges are starting to split.
Such a great haul, although they’re starting to lose their sweet scent.
We decided to dry these in the dehydrator.
A jar full of dried Princes, still heavy with a sweet, earthy aroma. They add their famous flavour to creamy sauces and casseroles.
At the same time, this batch of Agaricus praeclaresquamosus showed up very nearby.
These are quite similar to the Prince, with scaly caps, brown gills and a ring around the stem. Two noticeable differences are their grey-brown cap and their distinctly phenolic scent, like a bottle of ink, or that paste/glue we all used in kindergarten, or perhaps asphalt/creosote. Oh, and quite poisonous. So three differences, then.

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Saving California from Purple Sea Urchins

California’s beautiful northern coast is currently under attack by purple sea urchins.
We came to save it.

Purple sea urchins (uni) are currently swarming on the west coast, from San Francisco all the way up to northern Washington. According to a recent AP article, millions of the spiky, squat spheroids have decimated kelp beds and left delicate coastal ecosystems denuded and in risk of collapse.

We don’t need much of an excuse to eat urchin roe, so we drove down to Humboldt County to forage what uni we could and help save the west coast.

We timed our visit to coincide with the new moon/spring tide, and used Google Maps to select Baker Beach as a likely hunting ground. Here’s what happened when we got there:

(click for larger images)

Baker Beach has easy access to rocky sections.
On the ocean side of some large rocks we found our old friends, gooseneck barnacles.
This odd lump is a chiton…
…which is apparently edible, but the tiny amount of meat on them is very tough.
“I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
We didn’t invite little Prufrock to our party.
Out on the tide-exposed rocks we found our spiny prey.
Urchins like to jam themselves into crevices to elude predators.
We came well equipped, with grabbers and scrapers.
Aya chose her sweater to match. She thinks of things like that.
After much cleaning and prepping, we feasted.
Washed in white wine, the raw uni roe sits atop hot rice and salty nori.
And we couldn’t help but invite some goosenecks to the party. Always a special treat.

Next time we will take our snorkels and wet-suits and go out to deeper water to gather the big fat ones from the ocean floor.

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Elephant And Bear

We spied these beautiful 12th Century frescoes in the Prado.

We imagine the original conversation probably went something like this:
Client: “And up there, above the right arch, we want a bear.”
Artist: “A bear. Good choice. No problem.”
C: “You’re familiar with bears?”
A: “Bears? Oh, yes. My father and uncle used to dress up in a bear skin to frighten the kids at festivals. No problem there.”
C: “Okay, but it has to look like a real bear.”
A: “Of course.”
C: “Not like two men in a bear skin!”
A: “Ha-haa! No! Of course. No problem. And on the left?”
C: “On the left we want an elephant.”
A: “An…?”
C: “Elephant.”
A: “What, like a horse?”
C: “No, an elephant.”
A: “Elephant. Yes. No, that’s what I thought you said. Elephant. Good.”
C: “Do you know what an elephant is?”
A: “Oh, yes. No problem.”
C: “You’ve seen one before?”
A: “An elephant? Yes. No problem.”
C: “You keep saying ‘no problem’…”
A: “Yeah, no problem. An elephant… Like a horse.”
C: “What?”
A: “What?”

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West Coast Truffle Hunt

Winter is truffle season in Oregon, so the weather can be tricky to plan around. We have been trying to arrange a hunt for a few years but have been foiled by soaking wet or snow-covered ground. This year things came together and we hired a wonderful guide, James, and his lovely truffle dog, Augie (click for larger images).

Hunting grounds: a 20 year-old Douglas Fir plantation in North West Oregon.

Hunting grounds: a 20 year-old Douglas Fir plantation in North West Oregon.
Our guide, James, and his truffle dog, Augie.
As Augie digs we gather round to intercept.
Augie gets a treat…
and we get…
truffles!

Because the fruiting bodies of truffles are all underground, it was quite a different style of mushroom hunting than what we’re used to. Rather than looking around for splashes of colour or tell-tale signs of mushrooms, we just followed Augie and watched as he bashed around happily in the woods. Augie is a Lagotto Romagnolo,  so he’s born to hunt, swim, and retrieve, but he has also been trained from a young age to find truffles, and he’s really good at it. Never mind that they’re all 20-30 cm underground, he can smell them out and is quick to dig.  As the dirt flies, James gets ready to distract Augie with a treat in one hand and to snatch up the truffle with the other. Although he prefers treats to truffles, Augie still managed to gobble a few of the precious things.

You can hire James and Augie for your own truffle hunt via their website: Terra-Fleurs.

Watch Augie do his thing:

Truffles don’t have much flavour, and the texture is firm and a little crumbly, like a raw mushroom cap. It’s best to slice them raw, as thinly as possible onto hot, fatty food to make the most of the intense aroma. The aromatic compounds are oil-soluble, so they’ll infuse fats with their wonderful scent. We put a wheel of Brie in with our truffles for a few days and it came out smelling strongly of truffles. We have heard people do the same with eggs and blocks of butter.

The scent of white truffles is difficult to describe; it’s wonderfully earthy, richly herbal and has high notes of spicy garlic. The black ones are also earthy with a sweetly sweaty character. They smell strongly of dark chocolate and have a distinct pineapple fruitiness. James says he can’t leave his truffles open and exposed to air on the drive home because the smell in the car just becomes overpowering.

Here’s what we did with some of our truffles (click for larger images):

Our collection of mostly white truffles with two large black ones, at top right.
White truffles start out white inside but gradually turn a warm cafe-au-lait brown as they ripen.
One of the best vehicles for truffles is a simple cheese pizza without garlic or other competing aromatics. The hot cheese carried the deep, intoxicating truffle smell, filling the room.
Another great option is atop grilled meat with a creamy, red wine sauce. The bitterness of the grilled endive was a great match.
The black ones usually grow further north so we were lucky to find a couple.
Sliced as thinly as possible.
Creamy scrambled eggs with Brie made for a wonderful base for black truffles and a very decadent breakfast.

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Goto Islands, Part 2: Oysters

Click here to see Part 1 of our trip to Japan’s Goto Islands.

We heard about Goto Island’s famous oysters and decided to send some to Aya’s parents in Osaka. We stopped at a seafood company called Maruoto and the day took an amazing turn.

Maruoto specializes in big, beautiful oysters.

We had only been in the store for a couple of minutes when Shin, the owner’s son, offered to open some samples for us. They were huge, but so delicate and gently briny, like a sea water custard.

That was just the beginning of what turned into an amazing afternoon. Read on to see more.

Continue reading “Goto Islands, Part 2: Oysters”

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West Coast Gooseneck Barnacles

Gooseneck barnacles are so ugly it’s hard to think of them as food. We’ve heard that in Spain and Portugal, percebes can cost up to $200 per kilo at restaurants. If people are spending that much to have them with a glass of Sherry, they must be pretty special.

On a recent trip to the far side of Vancouver Island we spotted some on the rocks at low tide and took the opportunity to see what the fuss was all about.

A very low tide gave access to rocks that are usually out of reach.
Gooseneck barnacles compete with the mussels for space.
Because they are filter feeders, they prefer turbulent waters. The biggest ones grow on the far, ocean-facing side of the rocks.
The big Pacific waves help the muscle grow fat and long.
A sampling of seafood from the rocks.

Hard to believe that inside these dinosaur-like heads and leathery bodies hides incredibly tender flesh with a flavour something like shrimp crossed with scallops.

Click through to see them cooked and served.

Continue reading “West Coast Gooseneck Barnacles”

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Summer Figs

Kamala clapped her hands loudly, so that the golden bangles tinkled. “Your poetry is very good, brown Samana, and truly there is nothing to lose if I give you a kiss for it.” She drew him to her with her eyes. He put his face against hers, placed his lips against hers, which were like a freshly cut fig.”

Siddhartha (Herman Hesse, 1922)

This passage always comes to mind when Vancouver’s fig trees are heavy with fat fruit in the hot weeks of August. But the simile “like a freshly cut fig ” did not conjure up a very desirable image when I read the passage for the first time as a teenager. At that point I was only familiar with dried, wrinkled brown figs that came threaded onto a loop of straw. It was decades before I first met up with the luscious red interior of a fresh one and finally understood.

We like to poach these summer treats with ginger and cardamom and serve with a scoop of ice cream, or slice thickly for a pizza topping.

This year Aya made some wonderful tarts (click any image to see larger photos):

Fresh, fat figs.
Slices soaking in lemon-cardamom syrup.
Slices assembled atop a bed of almond filling and pastry.
Ready for the oven.
Caramelized fig almond tart, with lemon and cardamom.
Fig and nectarine tart with almond.

Click through to see how the pizzas turned out.

Continue reading “Summer Figs”

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Goto Islands, Part 1

From Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four big islands, we took a ferry out to the small chain of islands called Goto for a week of camping. You may remember it from the Kamigoto surfing post a while ago.

Goto-Map-02

Driving onto car ferries is one of our favourite parts of travel. It’s as close as we’ll get in our lifetime to putting a little private flying ship inside a giant interplanetary craft and taking a trip across the stars to explore other worlds.

Sasebo is a busy Naval port, and we saw many unusual ships on the way out of port. (Click on the gallery below to see larger images).

Sailors on deck of a Japanese Navy ship.
Japanese Navy ships.
Leaving Sasebo port, with many Navy ships, including an aircraft carrier.
Bizarre ship we passed on the way out of Sasebo.
Small Navy cutter on the way out of Sasebo.

One of the US Navy patrol boats showed off their speed and maneuverability by catching air from the ferry’s big wake.
Looked like a lot of fun. Note the big machine gun on the bow!

Goto Islands appeared out of grey, rainy skies.

The local weather was actually quite lovely, changing frequently.

We followed whatever road seemed interesting, often ending up in situations that were unexpected.

Eventually we found our way back to the coastal roads and went looking for a seafood snack. Click through to see what we found.

Continue reading “Goto Islands, Part 1”