Tag Archives: mushrooms

how-to, meat & fish

Chasing Autumn

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deer*photo from unsplash

There’s this thing about autumn that keeps on fascinating me more and more with every year. It isn’t only the relief the change of temperature brings. It’s the colours that shimmer golden, orange, red, and green in the warm sunlight. It’s the warmth that rears up again from deep inside. The earthy scents in the air. The rustling of foliage in the woods. The soothing mist. The snuggling into warmer, soft clothing without really needing a thick, constricting jacket yet. The anticipation of coming home after being outside to drink a cup of comforting tea.

And it’s the return of venison dishes. I’m looking forward to them every year, waiting for them to supply my palate with strong flavours and my soul with a good, better, alternative to the usual choices of beef, pork, and poultry.

And since autumn nudges us to return to the homely tasks, to withdraw a bit and tend to our inner self, to prepare for the scarce winter times, to stock up the pantry with precious treasures, and to conserve the last glimpses of warmth and bustling summer life…making sausages is suggested, isn’t it?

Venison Sausages

Homemade Venison Sausages

ingredients for nearly 2 kg 

  • 1,25 kg of red venison* without bone, shoulder or haunch for example
  • 600 g pork belly
  • 10 g salt
  • 8 g pepper, freshly ground
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg, freshly ground
  • 1/2 tsp porcini powder
  • 5 g fresh thyme leaves
  • 2 juniper berries, freshly ground
  • 3 m sausage casings

*personally, I prefer deer and stag, but you could also use any other red venison meat you can find, like moose or reindeer.

Be sure that your tools are perfectly clean and the ingredients are properly cooled. Best cool your tools as well to obviate the meath going bad during the process. Best would be if you insert breaks after every meat grinding step to properly clean your tools and cool everything down again. For example pack everything into your freezer for half an hour. 

Venison Sausages

Soak the sausage casings in water.

Cut the venison and pork belly into bite-sized chunks and grind it through the coarse plate of your meat grinder.

Mix the meat with all the spices and grind it through the coarse plate a second time.

Mix it all with your hands for at least 2 minutes until it’s nearly emulsifying.

To check if you’ve got the flavour right heat up a pan with a little bit of oil and fry a teaspoon full of your sausage filling until it’s cooked through. Adjust the seasoning to your liking.

Get the casings out of the water and put it onto the horn of the sausage filler. Start to get the meat though the filler and when it is just about to come out of the horn stop the machine and make a knot into the end of the casing. Fill up the casings rather loosely until all the filling is through.

Make a knot in the other end of the casings and start to to twist portions (video). Store the sausages in the fridge for one day and/or pack them into a freezer to store them for hungry times.

Venison Sausages

main dish, vegetarian

Summertime Happiness

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Being outside. Throwing your arms up in the air. Simply because you can.

Sunbathing. A book to that?

Dancing in the warm rain. And finally being barefooted again.

Counting the stars, whilst thriving in the coolness of the night.

Celebrating simplicity. Complicated can come back later.

Even more sun! And noshing tarte flambee.

Tarte Flambee Goat Cheese

Tarte Flambee with Goat Cheese, Pear, and Mushrooms

Ingredients for 2 portions

For the dough:

  • 185 g wheat flour
  • 90 ml soda water
  • 2 tbsp peanut oil
  • 1/2 tsp salt

For the topping:

  • 150 g soft goat cheese
  • 2-3 tbsp sour cream
  • 1/2 pear
  • 2-3 champignons or other mushrooms
  • some fresh thyme

Knead the ingredients for the dough until it is smooth and soft. Cover the bowl and let it rest for 1-2 hours if you’ve got the time (the resting isn’t really necessary but it will be better with it in the end).

Preheat the oven to 250°C.

Cut the pear into small dices. Cut the mushrooms and the cheese into slices. Divide the dough into two halves and roll out each of them very thinly, until you almost can see through. Put each of them onto a baking tray with baking paper. Spread half of the sour cream thinly onto each tarte and scatter half the remaining ingredients onto each tarte as well. Bake for 5-10 minutes until the dough is crispy. Serve hot.

how-to, soul food, vegetarian

Treasure hunting in the woods

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Enough with the autumnal melancholy! Enough with cheerless and sad glances through the windows! Enough with the resignation when you realize that this year is beginning to draw to a close! It is Novembre – the month of the last golden sunbeams. The almost-end of the delicious mushroom season and the beginning of the long awaited venison season. The month with beautiful star falls of autumn foliage, warm sunny afternoons and also the first misty and lazy evenings on the couch. It’s this month, when we finally can smile at the long-forgotten staple of book again, with a glass of red wine in one hand und a comfy blanket; a cuddly pillow in our arms, with our favourite person by our side. So many hobbies (left unattended during summer) await me, that I almost find it difficult to choose.

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But today the sun is shining so wonderfully… so let’s go into the forest again! To inhale the autumn air and catch those precious spots of light between the trees with our freckles. The wind blows away the spiritlessness and the melancholy and makes us feel alive again. Autumn has come! And maybe we will find one or two of my most favorite mushrooms on our way: The shaggy mane mushroom.

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Shaggy mane mushrooms are a delicacy. And sadly very short-lived, why we will never be able to find them on the farmer’s markets or in supermarkets. As soon as they start to show their caps between the fallen leaves, they are ready to be picked up.

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If not done so we can almost watch them how they start to compost themselves: The cap will part from the stem and curve outwards until it finally begins to turn into thick inky black liquid that drops down. Not very pretty and the dripping indicates the mushrooms have surpassed their lives as edible fruits of autumn. The three photographs of this single shaggy mane I took within tree days, all about 24 hours apart. But if you are lucky and spot a freshly grown shaggy mane…  gently pick it up with a careful grip and a twist of the hand. Also it is best to immediately remove the stem in the same way so your mushroom will definitely survive the way back home. And there you should directly get a pan, because yes: They really start to decay very quickly! 

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Like almost every mushroom the shaggy manes are best when you simply fry them very shortly over high heat and in a generous amount of good butter. A little bit of salt and pepper on top, maybe a little thyme and a slice of roasted bread to that is all you need for a little bit of luxury in your belly.

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Shaggy mane mushrooms in butter

  • shaggy mane mushrooms… as much as you can find
  • at least 1 tbsp good, unsalted butter
  • a pinch of salt
  • freshly ground pepper
  • thyme leaves

Carefully clean the mushrooms of dirt and remains of the forest. Do not wash them or they will turn soggy. Just use your fingers or a gentle brush without crushing the mushroom. If you haven’t already removed the stems of the mushrooms gently twist them to separate them from the caps and cut everything in bite-sized pieces or chunks.

Put a big pan on the stove and heat it thouroughly. Add the butter and when it starts to sizzle and almost smokes it is time to add the mushrooms. Do not crowd the mushrooms: They should have space in the pan so they can turn brown and crispy within a minute. Gently flip them over to fry them from the other side, too. Season them with a little bit of salt and pepper and some thyme if you want. Serve quickly and best with a slice of golden roasted bread.

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Shaggy mane mushrooms taste like a wonderful mixture of porcini and green asparagus. The flavour is very mild and still remains for quite a time. A real delight! You can find them on meadows, all the time between March an Novembre, and even fertilized lawns in residential areas are a likely place for them to grow.

You can recognize them by a tall, slim growth, a reddish or brownish offset tip on the otherwise almost white cap, that is covered with upturned scales.

When you pick mushrooms in the woods always be aware of evil twins! Shaggy mane mushrooms for example have a twin that is edible too but that’s poisonous when eaten with alcohol. Always be sure to pick only those mushrooms you definitely know are edible! Go to mushroom counseling if you are just the slightest bit unsure. Always double-check to be certain or just let it be completely and buy pre-selected mushrooms, if you crave for them! Life is too precious and short to eat a bad mushroom.

Asian food, main dish, meat & fish, soul food

A Little Bit of Wellness for the Soul

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Miso Ramen

A good noodle soup is a treat: It makes you warm, saturates and it is filled with delicious ingredients. A really good noodle soup is far better though… a little bit of wellness for the soul. It is pleasing to the eye and has been cooked with love – with commitment and a lot of time spent already on the broth itself. It really makes you sigh out of pure happiness. The Japanese have made an art form out of their soup and maybe some day I will be able to go there… to go into a tiny little noodle bar to sit at the counter and order my first “real Japanese Ramen soup”. Until then I’ll have to try every other noodle bar with a good reputation (this one for example) to educate my palate and take everything I’ve learned back home. There I will try my best to make a soup of my own.

This recipe has been the best result since a long time: A ramen soup with an “own” miso mixture, broth-poached fillet of pork, mushrooms and egg. The soup is completed with a dash of soy milk, a small but effective trick I’ve come across on lovely Mandy’s blog. The miso mix is inprired by her recipe, too.

The spicy miso with sesame makes the soup wonderfully creamy and adds a nice fragrance of sesame, ginger, garlic and chili. The mild-flavoured prok loin indulges us with proteins, the mushrooms add a nice freshness, the egg makes it perfect and the nori finally reminds us of beautiful days at the sea. Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients: Most of it is spices and except of a little time the soup itself just needs simple attention. But it’s definitely worth it!

Miso Ramen

Ramen Soup with Miso, Fillet of Pork, Mushrooms, Nori and Shoyu Tamago

Ingredients for 2 big bowls

Miso mix:

  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 30 g ginger
  • 10 g chili paste
  • 30 g sesame
  • 3 tbsp mirin
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 2 tbsp oil for frying
  • 130 g red miso
  • 130 g white or yellow miso

Soy sauce eggs (“Shoyu Tamago”):

  • 1-2 eggs
  • 3 tbsp soy sauce
  • 3 tbsp mirin
  • 1 tbsp sake or sherry
  • 1 tbsp sugar

Broth-poached fillet of pork:

  • 200 g fillet of pork
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • 500-600 ml good, unsalted chicken broth (the homemade one is always the best choice)
  • 1/2 spring onion
  • 1 peanut-sized piece of ginger

Ramen soup:

  • the leftover broth from the poached fillet of pork (see above) – about 500 ml 
  • 160 ml miso mix
  • 100-150 ml soy milk
  • 2 portions Japanese soup noodles (ideally ramen)
  • 1/2 spring onions 
  • 1/2 sheet of nori
  • a few small mushrooms (like shiitake)

Additionally:

  • a few drops of sesame oil
  • a few drops of chili oil
  • sesame

Peel the ginger and garlic for the miso mix and add them to all the other ingredients in a bowl. Mix thoroughly with a hand blender, fill it into an airtight glass jar and store it in the fridge. You can let it stay there for a few weeks until you use it up.

For the shoyu eggs boil the eggs until they are soft (I always put them in boiling water and let them stay in there for exactly 7 minutes), then put them in ice water and let them cool down completely. Peel them carefully. Mix soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar and let the eggs marinate in that mixture for 2-3 hours.

Heat up a small casserole, pour in the oil. Fry the fillet of pork shortly on each side, then add the broth and the spring onion in one piece. Cut the ginger into slices and add to the pot. Heat the broth until it almost boils, skim off the foam that may rise to the surface and let the broth gently simmer at medium temperature for 30 minutes. Turn the meat after 15 minutes so it doesn’t dry out on one side. Get the pork out of the pot and strain the broth through a sieve – then pour the broth back into the pot. You will need it for the soup itself.

Add the right amount of miso mix to the broth and resolve it in there. A miso sieve or a ladle helps with that. In an extra pot cook the noodles according to the instructions on the package and strain through a sieve. Devide them into two soup bowls. Meanwhile bring the soup to a boil but don’t let it cook for too long.

Chop the spring onion into rings. Cut the pork into thin slices. Pour the hot soup over the noodles in the bowls. Garnisch with the remaining ingredients. Serve hot with a few drops of sesame and chili oil and a few sprinkles of sesame.

Miso Ramen

main dish

The Comfort of the Simple Things: Roasted Mushroom Risotto

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Autumn

The Octobre sun shines on the world and bathes the nature in the most beautiful way we can imagine: bright and colourful! Golden shades of orange, luminous red and somewhere in between the cool green of the conifers delight the eyes and tempt even couch potatoes like me to go outside. So I take my multicoloured scarf and a warm jacket, take my man by the hand and go into the woods to spy on nut-hunting squirrels (and to happily cheer out of joy if we happen to spot one).

Pilz

The mushrooms are busily growing already, huddled against moss-overgrown logs or nestled down in rustling autumn foliage… ready to be picked up by skilfull strollers to be sizzled in good butter back home. We don’t really know about mushrooms so we let them grow and rather pick them at the farmer’s market. These days the selection is wonderfully huge and so I choose a variety of those small-grown ones I adore to take them home with us. Those are packed with the same flavour as their big fellows but can just be tossed into the pan without having to be cut in pieces beforehand.

Today we’ll cook risotto; something we usually prepare together. One stirs in the big, steaming pot, the other one takes care of the necessary glass of wine and the mushrooms. We just love to cook them in a simple way: In lots of butter and today with a little bit of crispy bacon, sweet honey and a generous gulp of warming Cognac with perfumy thyme and garlic on top. Added to the creamy risotto they are just perfect this way and again a proof for the comfort that comes with the simple things. Life is good!

mushroom risotto

mushroom risotto

Roasted Mushroom Risotto

Ingredients for 2 portions 

For the risotto:

  • 150-200 g risotto rice
  • 1 glass dry white wine
  • 1/2 liter broth
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 onion or shallot
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 generous tbsp unsalted butter
  • 1 small hand full freshly grated Parmesan

For the mushroom:

  • 100 g mixed mushrooms of your choice
  • 4 slices of bacon
  • 1/2 tbsp butter
  • 50 ml Cognac
  • 1-2 tsp honey
  • 4 branches of thyme
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 generous pinch of salz
  • some chili powder

Heat up the broth for the risotto in a pot. Peel the garlic and the onions and chop them finely. Gently heat up the olive oil in a pot over medium temperature and add the garlic and onion. Let them cook gently for about 5 minutes and stir occasionally. Meanwhile prepare the mushrooms: Also peel and chop the garlic, cut the bacon in stripes, clean the mushrooms, and cut larger ones in half or in quarters.  But the bacon into a pan and let it sizzle on medium temperature until it gets crisp.

Add the rice to the garlic and onion pieces in to pot, let it fry a second than pour the white wine over it. Add one ladle of broth and let the rice cook on medium temperature while stirring from time to time. As soon as the broth has almost fully been absorbed by the rice add another ladle of broth and keep on cooking and stirring from time to time. Repeat for about 15 minutes or until the broth is used up.

Meanwhile the bacon should be done: Fish it out of the pan and let it drain on a kitchen towel. Turn the temperature up a little bit and add the butter to the bacon fat. As soon as the fat start to smoke slightly add the mushrooms and fry them. After 2 mintutes they should already have browned a bit and after 5 minutes they should let go a bit of the fat that they have soaked up earlier. Deglaze them with the Cognac now, add honey, garlic, thyme and condiments, stir one more time and set the pan aside.

Try the rice and check if it is done or needs a bit more cooking time. It should still be just a little bit al dente and should make “creamy waves” in the pot, when you stir. If it needs a little bit more time or fluids add one more ladle of broth or water if the broth is used up. Is the risotto done switch off the stove, add butter, Parmesan and half of the mushrooms to it, stir shortly. Put the lid onto the pot and let the risotto rest für 2 minutes.

Divide it onto two plates, top it with the rest of the mushrooms, the crunchy bacon and some more freshly grated Parmesan. Serve quickly with a glass of wine.

mushroom risotto