Thursday, October 09, 2008

Close Enough For Jazz

I joined the local mycological society in the spring, but they evidently had some staff shake-up and never contacted me due to lack of organization. Since I was hardly around this summer, it's probably no great loss. But next year I hope to go on some of the walks. And a mycologist friend of ours is coming for the weekend, so with any luck we can go hunting. In the meantime, one of our local stores sells wild-foraged mushrooms from the local woods.

Christine got some maitake there, and some salmon, so I made a quick dinner that was gloriously autumnal in color and flavor. A huge sweet potato got peeled, steamed, and mashed, and I turned some frisée into a flourescent green mash. The mushrooms, which had a fair amount of dirt in their nooks and crannies, needed to be chopped fine as a result of all the dirt-removal surgery. I sautéed them with a little guanciale, garlic, and parsley. I baked the salmon dusted with salt, 5-spice, pepper, dried sudachi zest, garlic, and ginger. And that was it; in a perfect world I would have made a little more of the sumac sauce, or a little red wine-soy reduction, but as it was pretty great even without it. Green mash is as much of a condiment as most meals need- especially those centered around a piece of animal.

6 comments:

Heather said...

I made salmon with a potato-maitake hash last night! But my salmon was curry-maple-mustard glazed with some of the alder salt, and the potato-maitake hash had some yellow pear tomatoes, roasted jalapeño and curry cream. It sounds a hot mess, but worked.

There's just something about the change of weather, isn't there?

We Are Never Full said...

bitchin. gotta love the fish/meat combo. this looks so good and is reminding me that i've been eating too much meat recently.

Rendezvous with an Indian Marwari Bahu said...

Check out the really easy recipes and cooking tips at www.recipesbysam.wordpress.com

cookiecrumb said...

My mushroom teacher said "You can eat *any* mushroom. Once."

Brittany said...

I love a nice autumnal array of colors on my plate. Beautious.

Frisee mash? Wow. I'm intrigued.

peter said...

Heather: That sounds awesome. We're, like, psychic or something.

Amy: The fish guys at Union Market are really good, and they'll order you anything you want.

CC: That's true. We didn't find much, and they were all inedible.

Brittany: All of the endive/radicchio family make great mash. I'll link to my mash post again so you can see how it's done.