It had been ages since I'd done a proper Saturday shop at the market, so I trotted down to Prahran yesterday. I wanted to get some interesting mushrooms, and Cam at Damian Pike's talked me into trying one of the Japanese snow caps they have at the moment. They each come individually wrapped in a reliquary of white tissue paper, and cost a small fortune. But oh they are so very very good.
The charming S was coming over to my place for brunch this morning, so I'd bought a snow cap mushroom and some fancy-pants organic eggs at vast cost to the management, and told S to bring along some juice and his good self. I followed Cam's advice and kept it really simple, whipping up some scrambled eggs on grilled turkish bread, then draping the thin slices of mushroom over the top, having fried them up separately in butter. To finish, we added lots of cracked black pepper from the well-endowed pepper grinder I gave DJ for Christmas.
I just LOVED the mushroom: it had a delicate but lingering flavour, with a tantalising hint of seafood (being vegetarian, S had to take me at my word that it was a seafood flavour, but he was similarly ensorcelled). Many thanks to those in twitterland who helped me identify the mushroom when I posted up a photo of it, having forgotten what it was called (see Haalo's lovely take on snow caps here)!
3 comments:
hi clare, its charles from jamon your meal sounded delicious and I wanted to share another way of dicovering the amazing texture and sublte flavour hidden in this mushroom from japan. Try poaching whole or sliced , in a brodo even a veg brodo, not to long or shorgargaldt time, and serve sliced in the brodo or with a napoli and fresh basil. The soft texture can range from fish to baby veal ! bon apetito charles
G'day Claire-I'm also offering advice, hope you dont mind!
Does your Mum or Nonna have a food dehydrator? If so dry these mushrooms as per the users manual. It really intensifies the flavour of mushrooms in particular, me having tried it with some local shitakes, trying to emulate that flavour one gets with the Chinese dried, then reconstituted shitakes.
These dried mushies then can be simply re-conned or you could whizz thrm in a spice grinder for a pinch of intense flavour to a risotto or somethin?
Hi Charles, thank you for visiting and leaving me with a suggestion. I hadn't considered using this Japanese mushroom in a napoli, but you've intrigued me! I bought another snow cap this weekend, so will experiment with it one night this week!
G'day Steve, alas neither Mum nor Nonna owns a food dehydrator. Will do the rounds though to see if any other family/friends have one, as I love the idea of playing around with drying them out. Thanks for the tip! :)
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