Daring Creative Exercises with a Gigantic King Oyster Mushroom

An old friend named Adam Demartino got in touch recently and asked me, "Do you want some fancy mushrooms?"

It's not an inquiry that I took lightly. He sent me this photo:

Like high schoolers at dance, Kings like to cluster, stick in the corners, and mainly hang out with members of the same sex.

A photo posted by Smallhold (@smallhold.co) on Jan 10, 2017 at 4:03am PST

And I said, "OH HELL YEAH, DUDE!"

It was like a culinary drug deal

It turns out that Adam lived very close to my apartment, so I walked over. He produced an Amazon box from his fridge, like one that would hold several books. When he opened it, my emotions were a blur. I slightly remember hearing words like mycelium and how Smallhold's distributed farming worked. He gave me these mushrooms to see what I could do with them. I was up for the challenge!

I also packed a small gift my pocket: a small vial of Pangasinan salt that I had blended with dried shiitake mushroom and tarragon. Adam's eyes widened and quickly searched for a surface to pour it out on. He settled for a piece of junk mail and tapped a bit of salt out of the bottle like it was cocaine. This was going to be a fun partnership, I could tell.

Here's what I learned

As soon as I got home, I started texting this photo to my friends; 1) for the laugh and 2) because I couldn't think of anything but making very large vegan scallops with these mushrooms. I went on a quest to find out how other people prepared them.

King Oyster (or also called King Trumpet) mushrooms are moist, canvases for flavor. Most other mushroom stalks are way too tiny to do anything with except make stock. King Oyster's iconic thick stalks are striated enough to act like crab, lobster or scallop. 

Here's what I made

ROY-L-T. 👑  (Recipe coming soon)

One of my first findings was Serious Eats vegan mushroom bacon. Sign me up for anything-bacon, really. The only change I made was simply smoking on a grill. If you put a little too much maple syrup on the pan during the last round of drying in the oven, it makes this fun, savory candy you can peel off.  The results are crispy, sweet, salty and spicy. You can store them in an air-tight container on the counter. Naturally I made a BLT.

Queen Rachel 👑  (Recipe coming soon)

In the same vein as meat-substitute, I thought about what other kinds I could make. I started by running a couple of the smaller king oysters through the mandoline set to 1/8". Mushrooms are like sponges. When cooking them, you have to devise ways to wring them out with either heat or physical pressure and then to infuse them. If you don't get rid of the initial moisture, you're left with soggy mushies (and we hate those, don't we?).

I smoked a sheet pan of mushrooms until they lost a little volume, almost like mushroom chips. Then I brushed them with a healthy dose of pastrami butter (seasonings from this recipe) folded with a couple drops of red food colors to give it that signature pink color.  Did you know? When you make a reuben with pastrami, it's called a Rachel.

Fresh lumpiang kabute 🍄 (Work in progress)

Continuing with the thought of drying out mushrooms in sheets, I started to tackle the very large king oyster. It made no sense to just cut the mushroom up and treat it as normal, I wanted to demonstrate what you could do with its unique length. I've never seen a mushroom with this long of a stalk. I had a difficult time slicing consistent sheets of it with my mandoline because the fungi is so squishy and my blade was simply not wide enough. 

In the Philippines, there are many kinds of lumpia or what we Americans know as eggrolls. One of my favorite kinds is just called fresh lumpia, which is a vegetable stir fry wrapped in a very delicate crepe and topped with a thick garlic sauce. Instead of putting the sauce on top of my mushroom, I thought to infuse it and use the sheet as a wrapper.

I started by drying the mushroom sheets in the oven on low at 200 degrees F. Once they looked dehydrated,  I soaked them in vegetable broth spiked with a lot of raw garlic. The sheets became pliable! I made a quick stir fry with pork sausage and mushroom scraps and wrapped them in a mushroom sheet. It was a little hard to bite through, perhaps needs more time to soak.

"Stroganoff" 🐮  (Recipe coming soon)

I had several broth-soaked mushroom sheets left and I cut them into fettuccine noodles. Excellent because it already had a vegetable flavor from the broth and could adhere to sauce like stroganoff, a power chord of taste. I chose stroganoff because it normally has mushrooms in it but what if the mushrooms were the noodles?

Topped the whole thing with rare AF grilled adobo skirt steak because, I had not had a lick of meat throughout this whole experiment and I was growing blood-thirsty.

Surf n' dirt 🌊  (Work in progress)

Making scallops with king oyster mushrooms isn't new. But I wanted to play with the idea of making them taste more like seafood. I was going to try infusing them with lobster juice but my stock of it did not keep very well in my freezer. I kept going but cooked thick mushroom coins sous vide with truffle, thyme and garlic at 150 for 4 hours. I wrung them out and poached them in chive goat butter. Served with luscious mashed potato with the rest of the goat butter and a pinch of sumac.

Pulled Porque 🐷  (Recipe coming soon)

I had mentioned that king oyster mushroom is striated, like strings packed together. I took all of my scraps and sous vide cooked them in another bag with garlic adobo marinade. The next day, I pulled them with forks like I would pork. It was surprising! I tossed the strings with brown sugar and broiled them until the top layer was crisp.

Love mushrooms? Check out these other posts.

• An important guide to lion’s mane mushroom

• Super savory mushroom rubbed Delmonico steak

• Shiitake tartines with arugula salad

• Pickled oyster mushrooms

• Zero waste mushroom powder

Stay tuned for links to the recipes as I finish developing them! If you have more mushroom suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Tweet me @Randwiches.

Pickle These Beautiful Wonderland-Inspired Oyster Mushrooms

As seen on FeedFeed!

I’ve seen pickled mushrooms in Italian deli cases and was always off-put but their slimy nature. Inspired by Epicurious’ #CookItWithColor challenge on Instagram, I scoured the internet for ways to transform the magical looking mushrooms I picked up every week from the Madura Farms table at the McCarran Farmer’s Market.

I love the idea of roasting the mushrooms before brining them, they have more of an edge and developed flavor. The addition of white wine vinegar and paprika add a much-needed zest to an otherwise run-of-the-mill appetizer.

What you'll need
1 pound of oyster mushrooms 1/2 lemon, zest reserved 1/4 cup of white wine vinegar 1 small chili pepper 1 shallot, sliced into rings 1 garlic clove, grated 1 tablespoon of hot paprika	1 tablespoon of brown sugar 1/3 bunch of chives 2 tsp of salt 2 tablespoons of olive oil 1/2 teaspoon of whole peppercorns 1 bay leaf 1 medium swing top jar

Cut the foot off the oyster mushrooms and separate them. Make sure to brush off any dirt with a paper towel or food-safe brush. Lightly toss the mushrooms them in a pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 teaspoon of the salt and a couple grinds of fresh pepper. Broil them on low for 5 minutes or until they shrink. The idea is to wring them out of moisture so they will absorb the brine.

Meanwhile, prepare the jar by steaming it in a water bath for one minute. In a small pot, simmer the vinegar, sugar, garlic and remaining salt until the sugar dissolves. Pierce the chili pepper and add it to the jar with the mushrooms, lemon, zest, shallot, paprika, peppercorn and bay leaf.

To finish, twist the chives into a rope and coil them into the jar. Fill the remaining space with ice and let the jar cool at room temperature until the ice melts. Store it in the fridge for two weeks. 

I recently served these mushrooms as an amuse bouche on a dollop of whipped robiola cheese. Try them on your next antipasto plate, in a salad, sandwich or on pizza.

Love mushrooms? Check out these other posts.

• An important guide to lion’s mane mushroom

• Super savory mushroom rubbed Delmonico steak

• Shiitake tartines with arugula salad

• Daring exercises with a giant king oyster mushroom

• Zero waste mushroom powder

An Important Introduction to Cooking Lion's Mane Mushroom

As seen on FeedFeed!

My first encounter with lion's mane mushroom was the McCarren Park farmer's market. I glanced at the John D. Madura Farm's table and spotted this white fluffy ball, not unlike a tribble.

The kind man at the stand advised me to slice it into steaks and cook it slowly with butter and pepper. That's it! This is totally optional and only because I want to complicate everything: I put the whole head in the smoker and it tinted the entire lobe a dirty brown. I sliced it and pan fried it. Minutes later, it was rich, sort of lobster-y and striated like a piece of chicken breast. I implore you to try it if you can find it!

You'll need:
1 medium head of lion's mane (Or enough to constritute a head of cauliflower)	2 tablespoons of butter Pepper Salt

If you're going to smoke it. Try and smoke other vegetables like tomatoes or cauliflower so you don't fire up just for a little bit of mushrooms. I recommend 30 minutes with maplewood.

If you don't smoke the mushrooms, they still turn out great!

Brush off any dirt or black bits on the "fur" of the mushroom. Cut off the "foot", where it used to attach to the tree (it resembles the stalk of a cauliflower). Cut the mushroom into 1/2 inch steaks or as best you can, uniformly.

Place them in a dry pan on medium. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes and flip. When the mushrooms have released water and start to brown, add the butter. Make sure every piece gets a bit on both sides. Be delicate as you handle them and don't stir them around. Season with salt and generous amounts of fresh ground pepper. Bring the heat down to low and cook until both sides are golden brown.

The furry fronds will go from soft to crispy and soak up all that butter. MMMMPH. So satisfying as a side dish or garnish to a warm salad.

Love mushrooms? Check out these other posts.

• Zero waste mushroom powder

• Super savory mushroom rubbed Delmonico steak

• Shiitake tartines with arugula salad

• Pickled oyster mushrooms

• Daring exercises with a giant king oyster mushroom

Have you had lion's mane? How do you cook them? Tell me by tweeting to @Randwiches.