Wild Foraged Foods
... Here are a sampling of the edible mushrooms that I brought back from my outing with the mushroom experts. Starting with the biggest one, and going clockwise, we've got an Amanita grisette, chanterelles, purple Laccaria amethystea-occidentalis , candy caps, and a few oyster mushrooms. The first ones we cooked up were the chaterelles. We made a delicious cheesy creamy sherry and shallots sauce. The dish was splendid, but in all honesty that sauce would have made shoe leather taste wonderful. I read that the way to prepare the chanterelles was to gently tear them apart, rather than slicing them. I'm not sure why that's preferable, but it certainly was satisfying. The next night, I cooked oyster mushrooms, some of which we grew ourselves, and some that were wild-harvested. I hadn't cooked oyster mushrooms in years, and had completely forgotten that the reason they're called oyster mushrooms, is because of their freaky seafood smell. I had a small panic attack,