The Elusive Morel Hides No More

We found some morels!  We finally found some wild morels! Eric, Toby and I went for a hike on Sunday, and Eric spotted one within minutes of getting out of his car: The tiny fleshy fungus rose proudly from a pile of rotting leaves, near the base of a gnarled old Ash tree.

Unlike previous foraging expeditions, we hadn’t gone out specifically to mushroom hunt.  Our intent was to hike.  But when we reached the trail head, Eric noticed all the Ash trees and thought the forest could be productive morel habitat. And it was.  We collected nine morels. I found three or four, and Eric spotted the rest.

The experience of discovering the mysterious little mushrooms was like finding gold. Honest to G-d. That’s the way I described it to Eric at the height of my excitement while we were in the woods.  My analogy is not so far-fetched: Morels are that rare and valuable. One pound of wild morels retails for $40. Our nine blonde morels probably weighed about 12 ounces.  They were nice and plump.

Since morel season is just about over, Eric and I are very excited to have a good spot for shrooming next spring.  We’ll pick a bunch for ourselves and sell the rest.  If you’re interested in buying some morels, place your order now!

Eric and I are hoping we’ll get some rain in the next day or two so that we can go back to our spot and hopefully harvest one last crop.  I *really* want to make a morel and ramp quiche and a morel risotto.

We cooked four of the morels last night in some butter and sherry and ate them with grilled ribeye steaks and garlic toast.  Even though Eric was certain the morels were not the poisonous “false morels” because the mushrooms’ stalks were hollow and the ridges symmetrical, I was still a little nervous about eating them, having never before consumed a mushroom I’d picked in the wild. The mushrooms were delicious, though they tasted faintly of dirt (to me) despite my efforts to clean them thoroughly.  I did not get sick, nor did I have visions of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds after eating them, for better or for worse.

We’ll eat the rest of the morels this week.

Cooking with Game: Partridge

Eric shot a partridge last November, and we finally ate it for dinner last night. It was scrumptious.

I just love partridge. It doesn’t taste at all gamey, and it’s so easy to prepare. We usually roast it. Here’s our fool-proof method, which Eric employed last night:

Season bird with salt and pepper. Rub skin with butter and place in a roasting pan with some ramps (wild leeks) and a splash of white wine. (We prefer the screw cap wines. Nothing but the best for us.) Bake at 400 for 35 minutes.

Interesting note about the partridge Eric cooked last night: When he cleaned it out, we saw that its last meal had been bittersweet.

I made a bulgar wheat salad to go with the partridge.  I tossed a cup of cooked bulgar with some olive oil, lemon juice, sliced grape tomatoes, diced yellow bell pepper, chopped red onion and feta cheese.  It was wicked good.

How do you like to prepare partridge?

The Elusive Morel: The Search Continues

Eric, Toby and I searched for wild morels yesterday afternoon.  We had gone out about two weeks ago, when we bagged all the ramps, but the ground was too dry to give rise to any morels.  We thought we might have better luck yesterday because it had rained during the week, but when we got into the woods in Manchester, the ground still looked dry, and there was nary a morel in sight.

So we moved on to Dorset.  Eric took me to a spot that should have been teeming with the tasty fungi: We hiked up a logging road with wide, high berms that were flanked on both sides by clusters of ash trees.  The earth was damp from a spring creek, and there were plenty of rotting tree trunks in which morels and other mushrooms like to take root.

Despite the seemingly perfect habitat and despite our peeled eyes, we did not see a single morel. What a pissah! We kept thinking we’d see one every time we came upon a cluster of ash trees, but we kept getting skunked. Eric said the experience was a lot like deer hunting because he always expects to see a huge buck when he’s creeping through the woods.  Notably, we were not far from the spot where Eric shot his deer last fall.  We figured that someone else must have gone into the woods before us and scooped up all the morels.  Sigh.

I asked Eric earlier in the week if anyone at Orvis had found any morels. He said that he hadn’t heard of anyone having any luck, with the exception of Jim Lepage, who hits the morel jackpot every year.  Jim bagged 20 pounds of them. Son of a gun.

Have you had any luck finding morels? In what kind of habitat are you finding them?

(Photo from MykoWeb.)

Zucchini and Tomato Frittata with Ramps

On Mother’s Day, I cooked breakfast for my mom, dad, brother and sister-in-law.  I baked corn muffins filled with raspberry jam (à la Ina Garten) and prepared a zuchinni and tomato frittata, which I’ve made before.

The frittata recipe calls for onions, but this time I replaced them with the ramps (wild leeks) that Eric and I had picked the prior Sunday.  I’m guessing I used about 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of chopped wild leeks (I didn’t measure.)

I honestly think the frittata turned out better because of the ramps.  Its flavor was much richer, and it smelled even more fragrant when it was cooking in the oven than I remember it smelling last year. Of course, the frittata might have tasted better this year because my mom doubled the amount of cheese that went into it.  But I really do think it was the ramps.

Fiddlehead Ferns, Ramps and Morels

Eric, Toby and I went foraging for fiddleheads, ramps (aka wild leeks) and morels on Sunday in Arlington and Manchester, Vermont.  Sadly, we didn’t find any morels; the earth was too dry at the time. Although most of the ferns had almost completely unfurled, we managed to collect several handfuls of bright green, tighly coiled fiddleheads.

We had the best luck with ramps. We probably picked close to two pounds.  I’ll never forget seeing ramps for sale for $14/lb. at a Whole Foods in Wayland, Massachusetts a few years ago. I remember thinking it was crazy to pay so much money for a food you could easily find in the woods.  I can only imagine what a pound of wild leeks fetches these days at a Whole Foods. Do I hear $20/lb.? (Going, going, sold to the sucker driving the Saab!)

I bought salmon steaks at the grocery store to prepare en papillote for dinner Sunday night.  I couldn’t wait to cook them with the wild leeks and fiddleheads.  Unfortunately, I could only find farm-raised salmon at Shaw’s, which I’m never going to buy again. It’s bad for the environment, according to Eric, and not nearly as healthful as wild salmon. It’s much more fatty and tastes more fishy.

I seasoned both sides of the salmon steaks with salt and pepper and placed them on slices of lemon on top of the parchment paper.  I topped the the steaks with fresh parsley and dill and lots of ramps, crimped the parchment, and baked the steaks at 350 for about 20 minutes.

This was a great way to prepare farm-raised salmon because the lemon, herbs and ramps offset the fishy flavor the salmon, which, I must say, came out delicious.  I served the fish with steamed fingerling potatoes and steamed fiddleheads.  The fiddleheads were so good!  They tasted so fresh and green.  The ramps tasted amazing, too.  I just love the taste of a roasted wild leek.

The weather this week has been conducive to mushroom growth.  Eric is going turkey hunting tomorrow, and I’m hoping he’ll be able to find some morels or maybe even some chanterelles while he’s in the woods.  I’m dying to make a quiche with ramps and morels.  Unless I go out tomorrow at lunch, I don’t think I’ll have a chance to get back into the woods to forage until late next week, and by that time it may get dry again and the morels may be gone.

Of course, I hope Eric will come home with a turkey, too!

Venison Sausage and Peppers over Parmesan Polenta

Tonight I cooked Eric’s venison sausage with onions and orange and yellow bell peppers for dinner.  I served the sausage and peppers over parmesan polenta. It was so yummy and satisfying!

Venison Sausage Links

Here we have the raw venison sausage links. The butcher in East Arlington, Riverside Custom Butchery, carved up Eric’s deer.

Cooking the Venison Sausage, Peppers and Onions

I find that bell peppers always take longer than onions to cook, so I added my sliced bell peppers to my frying pan first and sautéd those for a few minutes before I tossed in the onions. After a few more minutes, I placed the sausage links on the peppers and onions and covered the sauté pan with a lid so that everything steamed for a little while.  When the sausages were cooked on the outside, I removed the lid from the pan and seared the casings. I finished the sausage by slicing it and then crisping the slices in the frying pan.

Cooking the Polenta

Meanwhile, I boiled the polenta.  I used a recipe from the Everyday Food cookbook that calls for cooking 3/4 of a cup of polenta in four cups of water seasoned with salt and pepper.  I whisked a tablespoon of butter and some grated parmesan cheese into the polenta when it was finished.

Dinner Is Served

Not the greatest presentation, I admit, but the sausage, onions and peppers were sooo tasty!  The polenta would have benefitted from more cheese, but it was still good.

Migraines

After a hiatus that lasted way too long, Sugar on Snow is back!

I had to stop updating Sugar on Snow last Fall due to a siege of cluster migraines, which began in early October. I had a migraine headache almost every day that month, and I continued to suffer with frequent headaches through November. My noggin didn’t begin to feel normal until December.

It’s too bad I got sidetracked by migraines because I had much to write about during the Fall and Winter. Eric shot a deer in November, and we enjoyed the roughly 60 pounds of venison his three-pointer yielded into January. We feasted on venison about three times a week: venison Stroganoff and venison Marsala, venison chowder and venison Jumbalaya, venison sausage à la Fenway Park and venison Philly cheese steaks. We still have a few packs of venison sausage left in the freezer.  I’m going to make venison sausage, peppers and parmesan polenta for dinner later this week. Let me know if you want to come for supper!

At the same time that we had Eric’s venison, we were reaping the bounty of Clear Brook Farm’s winter CSA, which was AWESOME. We will definitely sign up for it again next year. It was an excellent value for our money, and having all of that organic Clear Brook Farm produce from mid-October until mid-December was a boon.  Between the venison and the produce from the CSA, Eric and I frequently ate meals that were entirely local, organic and wild. It was pretty cool.  We also saved a bundle (probably about $20 a week) on groceries because we didn’t have to buy meat and bought very little produce.

While I was suffering with all those headaches in October and November, I became more conscious of the food I consumed.  I had no idea what triggered all of my migraines, but I knew in general that certain foods trigger them. I learned that many of the foods that I ate on a daily basis–such as processed meats (bacon), peanut butter, almonds, aged cheeses and chocolate–were known migraine triggers. So I eliminated those foods from my diet. Some days, I was starving, but I was very glad to have the fresh organic produce (especially the sweet potatoes and spinach, and the carrots I puréed into carrot-ginger soup) from Clear Brook to nourish my body.

To this day I don’t know exactly what precipitated all those migraines back in October.  I didn’t feel particularly stressed out at the time. And I had been eating peanut butter, chocolate, almonds and cheese on a daily basis for such a long time that I couldn’t imagine that those foods were suddenly causing the blinding pain above my right eye.  I suppose it was probably a combination of things that triggered the migraines.

I’m just glad I have these headaches under control right now and that I can return to Sugar on Snow. I hope you’ll come back, too.

Game Dinner

Sunday night Eric and I went to a game dinner hosted by Jim and Deb Lepage. Scott McEnaney came up with the idea for the game supper. He thought it would be fun and helpful if everyone cleaned out their freezers of all the wild game they’d frozen over the past year so they could make room for the bounty of this year’s hunt. And indeed it was a brilliant idea. The potluck dinner everyone put together with their game was terrific.

Eric concocted a wild turkey soup with the breast of a turkey he had shot (and with some chicken carcasses, carrot, onion, celery and sweet potato), and I baked a lemon blueberry bundt cake.

Bruce Woodruff made venison bratwurst. Jim prepared an hors d’oeuvre with slices of bacon that were wrapped around a piece of duck breast, a morsel of cheddar cheese and a slice of jalapeno. Scott presided over the frying of a turkey, and he cooked Triple Baked Pheasant Num Num. Brett Ference marinaded and grilled a striped bass he caught off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Kevin Andrezejewski slaved over a fish fennel and lemon risotto with smoked trout. Robin Kadet tossed up a salad with baby greens, grapes, cheese, toasted almonds and edible flowers. There was also a mushroom risotto speckled with wild morels, a colorful vegetable casserole, strips of mule deer and elk, what looked like pulled wild boar and lots more. It was hog heaven, and I pigged out. Oink, oink.

The buffet table at the game dinner

My favorite dishes were Bruce’s venison bratwurst, Jim’s duck appetizer, the risottos and Scott’s Num Num. I had never previously tasted bratwurst and I wasn’t expecting to like it, but Bruce’s brats were phenomenal. I was also dubious of Jim’s duck appetizer. I’m not crazy about duck as it is, and the duck-cheese-jalapeno-and-bacon combo seemed random to me, but I could have easily inhaled a half dozen of those nibbles. I also really liked Brett’s striped bass (pictured above in my blog’s header.)

If you’re interested in any of these recipes, let me know and I’ll see if I can get them from the cooks.

Fiddlehead Ferns, Part Two

Eric wasn’t convinced the ferns in our yard were of the fiddlehead variety. Since I was pretty sure they were, I had him take a closer look. I pointed to the coiled tops of the ferns that hadn’t completely unfurled, and asked, “Doesn’t that look like a fiddlehead to you?”

Eric spread apart a swath of ferns and weeds along the side of yard, and this is what we found:

Behold: Fiddleheads! Apparently, not all of the ferns in our yard were fully grown. I was ecstatic, especially since Eric and I desperately needed a green vegetable to have with the pasta I was preparing for dinner (and dandelion greens were out of the question). Eric picked as many fiddleheads as he could find. Unfortunately, that was only about a dozen.

Eric advised me to thoroughly rinse the fiddleheads to rid them of dirt and any insects hiding inside them. He also suggested I steam them (as opposed to blanche).

I steamed them for a good seven minutes, possibly more. I usually like my cooked vegetables on the rare side, but I feared the fiddleheads would taste gross the closer they were to raw, so I erred on the side of caution and overcooked them slightly. They were a little more gray than bright green when I took them out of the steamer basket. The water in my saucepan had turned a rust color–from what, exactly, I have no idea.

(Humble apologies for the blurry photo.)

I melted a dollop of butter on the fiddleheads and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. It was time to dig in. It was also time to face a fear I’ve always had about fiddleheads.

Part of the reason I’m so curious about these little buggers is because, frankly, they give me the creeps. There’s something evil about them. I think it has to do with them being so tightly wound. They’re coiled like snakes, and I hate snakes. I can’t help but think the fiddleheads are going to suddenly pop open and expose an alien head that’s going to bite me in the face. This must be some kind of residual trauma from having seen Little Shop of Horrors at a young age.

I fully expected the fiddleheads to taste terrible. I mean, c’mon, how good can a fern taste? I was pleasantly surprised. They tasted like a green vegetable, like a green bean. They weren’t awful at all. In fact, they were pretty good even without butter. And they didn’t bite off my face!

Do you like fiddlehead ferns, or do they frighten you? If you like them, how do you like to prepare them? I’m interested in learning more ways to cook fiddleheads so I can be better prepared for when they grow next year.

Fiddlehead Ferns

I missed the boat on the fiddlehead fern crop that grows wild in my yard. The fronds have completely unfurled and the ferns are fully grown. It’s too late to harvest them for dinner.

This is such a disappointment. I had been looking forward to trying fiddleheads and had been eagerly anticipating their tightly coiled bodies sprouting from the ground. I wanted to know why this most prosaic plant had become such a delicacy.

When Eric and I first started dating, he took me to what was then Montreal’s hottest restaurant, Toqué. It was a little too innovative for my taste. All the dishes on the menu showcased the most random combinations of ingredients. For example, one of us (I no longer remember who) ordered scallops with wild Maine blueberries and fiddlehead ferns. That, my friends, was the most sensible sounding entrée on the menu. I remember thinking it was so strange to add ferns, something that grows in my backyard, something that dinosaurs feasted on tens of millions of years ago, to what was supposedly a gourmet dish. Frankly, it still strikes me as odd, but now I’m willing to eat them as Vermonters do, with lots of butter and salt.

I realize now that the reason I missed the fiddleheads in my yard when they were young is because they were completely covered by weeds. I couldn’t see them growing. Next year I will know to peek between the weeds throughout the month of April so that I can catch the ferns while they’re young.

Fortunately, I may still have a chance to sample fiddlehead ferns: There’s on old, blind farmer who lives on route 7A who sells them every year. When I was passing by his home the other day, I saw the wooden sign he puts out on his property every spring. It reads: FIDDLEHEAD FERNS.