Chanterelles

It’s been a wet summer, and the woods are filled with chanterelles. Two questions:

1. does anyone have a good way to preserve chanterelles?
   And
2. what is your favorite recipe that uses them?

Thanks.

Lucky you. We won’t see many here for a few months. All the dried ones I’ve had are pretty flavorless, so if I were you, I’d just go chanterelle crazy right now. My favorite way to cook them:

1. Clean well but don’t wash and make sure they’re dry.
2. Make parchment packets of chanterelles, a pat of butter, salt, pepper, a few sprigs of thyme, and a dash of good brandy. Wrap them up but leave some space for things to steam.
3. Bake in the oven (350-400) for maybe 15 minutes until it’s puffed.
4. Serve with crusty bread.

Or you can just saute them with olive oil, garlic and parsley over high heat.

Also, I should have noted that some people I know who hunt mushrooms say you can saute them and then freeze them for use later. They won’t be as sturdy obviously but would work in things like soups or stews. I haven’t tried it personally, but I trust the sources since they know mushrooms and food.

Make a mushroom stock with the chanterelles.

Make a risotto using the stock.

This is how I like most mushrooms, but I prefer thyme to parsley.

The parchment treatment is very intriguing though.

Current recommendation for Chanterelles that I’ve read is to blanch before cooking as this removes some of the excess moisture.

Here is a quote from Connie Green, co-author of The Wild Table: Seasonal Foraged Food and Recipes copied from Wine Disorder:

"Chanterelle Blanching-
This is pleasing and a tad embarrassing all at once. After all these years of
close chef contact and the mushroom biz, I thought I had a handle on just about
every basic chanterelle cooking technique. Wrong! A dear friend sent a post from
a wine blog about a chanterelle cooking method. The writer had been taught in a
French school to blanch the chanterelles in boiling water before sautéing. The
instruction was to blanch the whole chanterelles in rapidly boiling water for
20 seconds, remove, drain, pat with a towel, slice if needed, and then proceed
to sauté them until caramelized. The result are chanterelles that have actually
shed much of their excess moisture during the blanching process. The
post-blanching chanterelles sauté nicely without bleeding liquid into the sauté
pan. I knew that butter poaching has the same effect, but didn’t realize that
the poaching was actually removing excess mushroom moisture.

After cross examining a French friend in the French wild mushroom trade, he
confirmed this. They have a lively business in producing little containers of
pre-cooked frozen wild mushrooms. They do this on a large scale, blanching,
draining and sautéing in oil, then freezing the mushrooms. He states that this
works very well indeed.

This makes sense also in the case of a master pickle maker that has done some
custom mushroom pickling for me. Our first efforts at heat pickling mushrooms
resulted in a dilute flavor. In our next effort we pre-blanched the mushrooms in
a brine. The result was superior concentrated flavored pickles.

I REALLY wish that I could add this to the technique section on my new book. Too
late- it’s already in boxes at the printer. Drat!"

The technique has been confirmed by a friend who does a lot of mushroom foraging and cooking.

I agree, the parchment thing sounds good. Soon. Thanks Rachel.

I just blanched and sauteed according to Jay’s instructions half a shopping bag of chanterelles - worked perfectly, just as described. I had even washed them using water first, since I figured I was just going to dump them into boiling water right after. They released almost no liquid when I sauteed them, and they caramelized nicely. In the freezer now.

Time to go back to the woods!

You can make a delicate lasagne with wild mushrooms and freeze some to enjoy later. I’ve done that using the recipe linked below as a base. I tend to use only fresh mushrooms (nothing wrong with 100% chanterelle!), plain whole-milk mozzarella, and omit the sage entirely, which I find overpowering. It really benefits from fresh pasta.

http://www.deandeluca.com/recipes/recipe_wild_mushroom_lasagna_with_smoked_mozzarella_and_fresh_sage.aspx

I have no suggestions on how best to preserve them.

As for my favorite recipe - I enjoy them in an omelet with a small spoonful of ricotta or chevre. Delicious.

I like mine prepared by someone else . Solbar at Solage here in Calistoga currently has an appetizer of small buckwheat pancakes with chanterelles, burrata, and saba (much like Balsamic but not as acidic). A winning combination.

Jay - thanks for the great tip on blanching. I’ll be trying it out soon.

I had a foie gras prep at La Regalade in Paris in the early 2000s that involved chanterelles and apricot pieces sauteed in butter. Unexpected but dynamite.

Try an experiment: freeze some of them raw in a block of water.

I have chanterelles and egg tagliolini, and am thinking about something along the lines of Rachel’s parchment packets - chanterelles cooked in butter with thyme and brandy, tossed with the pasta, and topped with a bit of Parmesan.

Other ideas for chanterelles and tagliolini?

Hi Bill -
Try this one:

Hey Greg,

Thanks - will give that a try.

Best,

Bill

OK, a Chanterelle story. I have been teaching a Summer Biochemistry class. Next to last lecture, the other day was about Transcription, and I went on at length about Amanita Phalloides, the death cap, the destroying angel, and how 1) it prevents mRNA synthesis and 2) it can look just like the mushrooms in the grocery store so 3) it is responsible for 95% of mushroom deaths.

I walk out of the classroom building and I see a large patch of beautiful orange mushrooms on the lawn, just outside of my classroom. The gills run down the stem a little way, I totally recognize these as Chanterelles, the smell is beautiful. After thinking about it I decide to pick a dozen. I am brave enough to pick them, but am I brave enough to eat them?

I take them home and show them to my young tenants. Smarties, she went to Yale, he went to Stanford, and they get busy with Google etc. I leave the mushrooms with them and tell them if they are edible they can have half. It turns out that there are “false Chanterelles”. After 30 minutes I got a call from them, they are in my wine cellar (the darkest place in the house) and these mushrooms gently glow in the dark.

Jack-o-Lanterns. Omphalotus olearius - Wikipedia

“Severe gastric distress”

be warned.

The so-called gills on a jack o lantern are parallel as contrasted by the branched gills of a chanterelle. Not too hard to tell apart if you know what to look for.