It's Mushroom Season!

Last year Nick and I dabbled in a bit of mushroom hunting, but without the knowledge we were too scared to eat anything, and identifications seemed complicated and dangerous!  We usually identified everything as poisonous or "no idea what that is" but yesterday we had a major break through!  We identified this bad boy as a Bay Bolete.

And we're convinced enough to eat it.  But we haven't yet.  I will let you know how that goes.  Unless of course I'm dead.  Knock on wood.  

Also this nifty website, Wild About Britain, has a forum where you can post your mushroom pictures and people can help you identify them.  So you have to be a little trusting, but it seems like a great learning tool when you just can't find the right pictures in the books or you want a second opinion.

Speaking of books, the one that is our favorite is Mushrooms : River Cottage Handbook.

Have you been mushroom hunting?  I highly recommend it, it's like a treasure hunt for epicureans.... which Lord knows most of you blogstars are!

Bread Dumplings with Mushroom Cream Sauce

For my family's first day in Sheffield we decided to keep things low key and we had dinner at our house. 

I saw this recipe for bread dumplings in mushroom cream sauce

 on Design*Sponge and I needed an excuse to make them.

See I usually try to avoid eating bread and cream for dinner,

 but my parents arrival was just the justification I needed...

I followed this recipe pretty well...

 except I doubled it and fried the dumplings in butter.

Judge me, whatever.

I'm starting a juice detox on Wednesday if you must know.

Anyways, then we smothered them in this white wine mushroom cream sauce...

Now thats what I call a double whammy!

If you're trying to serve a meat and potatoes kind of guy (my dad) vegetarian food, 

I would recommend this stodgy deliciousness.

Cheers to that!

Then Nick and I took Lizzie out on the town to "analyze European culture."

Somehow we ended up buying her a lot of drinks. 

(In typical youngest child fashion, everything gets handed to her.) 

This college girl can definitely drink me under the table.  

I'm such a lightweight now that I'm an old married woman.

Eeeeeek!

Hope you had a good Monday!

Sweet Potato Hash Browns

I haven't been cooking anything fancy lately.  We've been too busy with the move for me to do much experimenting in the kitchen.  I'm just trying to keep my cooking short and sweet and move along to the next task.

One thing that has been reoccurring a lot lately is sweet potato hash browns.  Sweet potatoes are nutritious and delicious, and by cooking sweet potatoes this way instead of baking them in the oven, it saves a lot of time.  This dish is pretty versatile so nothing is exact and don't get yourself worked about about anything.  It'll turn out.  I didn't add any onions or leeks this time, but sometimes I do, so you could try that if you wanted.

Ingredients

• A handful of mushrooms
• 1-2 sweet potatoes, (grated - done in a few seconds with a food processor)
• a Paula Deen sized knob of butter
• Salt and pepper to taste.

 In a pan, brown your mushrooms in a bit of butter.  When they are tender, add your grated sweet potato.  Cook the sweet potatoes and mushrooms stirring frequently until everything is tender, adding seasoning. Depending on your preferences you may want them to brown a little to add that extra crunch, or add some more butter if you're channeling your inner Paula and if they're not getting soft enough.  Obviously its up to you!

Serve with some eggs, sunny side up.

Its pretty much the perfect dish at any time of the day.  Its sweet enough for breakfast, but not overly sweet for dinner, and obviously lunch is no problemo.  If you grate extra sweet potato, it keeps perfectly well in the fridge and makes whipping this up even quicker and easier.

A Plethora of Polenta

So the other day at the market I told you we bought all these mushrooms, but I forgot to tell you what I did with them.... They became two very easy polenta dishes.  Forgive me for the lack of a clear and precise recipe, but this isn't really the type of thing you can eff up and I was just throwing stuff together.

Ok, first you need to make your polenta.  I used about 2 cups of cornmeal to about 4 cups of boiling water.  Pour in the cornmeal very slowly and whisk as you go breaking up all the clumps.  You'll probably want to turn the heat down a bit because it tends to go a bit like a bubbling volcano if you don't.  You may also choose to add more water if its getting too thick, I added a veggie stock cube as well just for a little extra flavor.  When it's ready, pour it into a baking dish, and place in the fridge so it will get solid.

It will take awhile, so give it an hour for best results.  Then you can make up a little sauce.  OK I made this up for Nick who thinks dairy is God's gift to mankind.  Please don't judge.  I took a handful of chantrelles, and a couple handfuls of basic button mushrooms, (sliced of course) and browned them with a white onion in some butter.  I then added a cup of cream, and a few tablespoons of blue cheese and flavored with salt and pepper.  Meanwhile, I had the polenta on a grill pan to get nice and crispy on the bottom and voila....

It was good, but a few minutes after eating it I got the Victoria's Secret swim suit advertisements in my email (probably my ultimate thinspiration) and I started to regret my decision to be so accommodating to my husband's dairy desires.

The next day we had left over polenta, and all those fabulous oyster mushrooms from the market.  I sliced the mushrooms lengthwise, sauteed them in a bit of butter until they were nice and brown, added some carmelized onions to the mix, and topped the whole thing off with store bought pesto (I'm a fraud I know).

This polenta dish was much tastier and probably much healthier than the last.  It was my first experience with oyster mushrooms, and they went down a treat!  A bit on the chewy side of things, but that was good because sometimes my carnivorous husband likes food he can sink his teeth into.  The pesto brought it all together and finished the dish off very nicely.