Pine Mushroom Season

Last year Pine mushrooms made me make a delightful pasta dish. This year it wasn't much different and the delights went with some other mushroom

and this

and this from the balcony garden

and turned into this.

YUM! I love Pine Mushroom season at the Victoria Markets (even if they are a little expensive.)

Cooking with Garden: Wild Mushroom Pasta

This post needs to start with a disclaimer. I would love to say that these mushrooms were homegrown, but they weren't even home foraged. I'd have no idea of the difference between a safe mushroom and an inedible one, so it'd be expiration via death cap all the way. These mushrooms I sourced at the Vic markets, slippery jacks and pine mushrooms. They are only on sale for a few weeks of the year and they are totally divine. Not cheap, but as I didn't need too many they came in under my student budget. I added them to a linguine for a very decadent pasta. Also in this pasta ... rocket and almost rocket (random green that tastes the same) from the balcony garden, chilli from the balcony garden, and store bought other mushrooms, onion, garlic and lemon. I wish the lemon came from the garden but there are only four lemons on the tree, and they are as green as the greens in this dish.

First step wash the greens, rip them a little and leave them aside. Apparently I should also have cleaned the bench of red pasta sauce which I was making at the same time. Ooops.

Second step, admire the mushrooms. Seriously who could not want to just stare at these things - they are amazing. After breaking gaze prepare them so they are of relatively equal size. I chopped each different variety a different way so they would be even easier to recognise in the final dish. I added in some button mushrooms and some larger white mushrooms to give it a variety of flavour, and some enoki, (only add the enoki after cooking off the large mushrooms first, otherwise they become too msushy.) Once they are cut put them in a fry pan and cook for a few minutes. Only when the moisture begins to evaporate do you add any oil and season (in this case I added oil and butter, mushrooms are great in butter and a balance of both means the butter doesn't burn.)

I cooked this off for a bit then took it out, butter, oil, mushrooms and all. Don't drain anything, otherwise the taste goes down the sink. Step three is then to cook off the garlic and the chilli.

Then add the mushies back to the pan along with previously cooked linguine. Only at the very last second do you add the greens, alongside a squeeze of lemon.

et voila - Linguine with Wild (and slightly less wild) Mushrooms with rocket, chilli, lemon and buttery, garlicky oil. Yum, and despite the oil and butter, still within my calorie count!

Mushroom Madness or A bit more Yellow

Ok so this picture below did not come from a balcony garden pot, but it was added to some silverbeet and spring onions to form a rather well to do pasta ... and it was yellow, which adds to yesterday's golden post.

This mushroom medley was a concillatory buy on trip to the Vic Markets. I had to resist the Chanterelles I saw at the Organic Shop, at $160 a kilo I couldn't even afford to smell them let alone taste them. They just looked so, so, so good. I actually went back to the shop three times, thinking yes/no/no/god no/oh but yummy/yes/no and ultimately settled for the prepackaged non-chanterelle mushrooms sitting beside them at a slightly more reasonable $6 a box. I think the two people who own the organic stall thought I was mad. Then the guy in front of me weighed the paper bag in which he was going to put his chanterelles, and I realised I wasn't the maddest person in the vicinity. (Ok he was not mad, smart really, and ultra frugal, but weighing a paper bag???)

I know you can get mushroom growing kits, and they have branched out from the old button mushroom to a few more exotic ones like swiss browns (yes, the irony is not lost on me in calling swiss brown mushrooms exotic when chanterelles are named in the same post) but I am just not sure it is worth the effort yet. I have read some posts praising the sweetness and texture of mushrooms grown in a homegrown kit. However my uncle said he grew them a few times and the tield was small and the taste unremarkeable. This might just be a case of when the range at the local Market is so good, and the quality so high, why not draw the line. Homegrown plants on the balcony are one thing, you can look at their beauty all day, and eat them whenever you please, but these mushrooms in their kits need a dank, dark place in which to grow, which limits the amount you can stare at them lovingly. Thoughts?