Featured Market Mushroom Recipes 2

We're back with more delicious mushroom recipes for oyster and shiitake mushrooms.

Featured Shiitake Recipe

Honey-Soy-Glazed Vegetables with Crispy Mushrooms

http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/honey-soy-glazed-vegetables-crispy-mushrooms

INGREDIENTS

• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1 pound medium turnips, cut into 3/4-inch wedges
• 1 pound medium radishes, quartered
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 pound Swiss chard, stems discarded and leaves coarsely chopped
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 2 tablespoons water
• Salt
• 6 large shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and caps quartered
• 1/2 pound Asian rice crackers, pulverized

In a large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil until shimmering. Add the turnips and radishes and cook over moderately high heat, stirring, until lightly browned and crisp-tender, 10 minutes. Add the honey and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until the vegetables are glazed, 5 minutes. Add the soy sauce and cook until syrupy, 5 minutes longer. Add the lemon juice and the Swiss chard; cook until the chard is wilted, 2 minutes. Raise the heat to high and cook until all of the liquid has evaporated, 2 minutes longer; keep warm.

In a medium bowl, whisk the molasses with the water and season with salt. Add the shiitake and toss to coat. Drain the mushrooms, squeezing out most of the excess liquid. In a separate bowl, toss the mushrooms with the rice cracker crumbs, pressing to help the crumbs adhere.

In a large skillet, heat the remaining 1/4 cup of oil until shimmering. Add the coated mushrooms and cook over high heat, turning once, until golden and crisp, 5 minutes. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Top the vegetables with the mushrooms and serve immediately.

***

Featured Oyster Recipe

Crispy Oyster Mushroom

http://iloveicookibake.blogspot.com/2013/05/crispy-oyster-mushroom.html

http://catatan-nina.blogspot.sg/2012/03/jamur-crispy.html

Ingredients

4 cups fresh oyster mushroom

2 eggs (can use whites only)

1 tsp salt

150g plain flour

50g corn flour

5g baking powder

enough oil for deep frying

garlic salt

Method:

1. Mix together plain flour, corn flour and baking powder
2. Wash clean mushroom, cut lengthwise (remove the stem)
3. Dip mushroom in the egg whites, drain
4. Put in the mushroom in the flour mixture, make sure all are fully coated
5. Heat oil in frying pan (lots of oil!) and deep fry mushroom til crisp
6. Remove from heat and drain over kitchen towel, let cool
7. Sprinkle with garlic salt and toss well
8. Keep in airtight container

***

Featured King Oyster Recipe

Crispy Vegan Smoked Mushroom “Bacon” Recipe

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/02/crispy-smoked-mushroom-bacon-bits-vegan-recipe.html

• 
  
• 8 ounces King Oyster (also sold as Trumpet Royale) mushrooms, cut lengthwise into 1/8th- to 1/6th-inch slices (see note above)
• 3 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons maple syrup
• 1/8 teaspoon sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/8 teaspoon paprika
• 1 chunk applewood, hickory, or mesquite

Adjust oven rack to center position and preheat oven to 350°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper. Add 2 tablespoons oil and brush with a pastry brush to coat evenly. Lay sliced mushrooms on sheet in a single layer (you may have to work in batches or on two trays). Season with salt and pepper. Flip slices and season with more salt and pepper. Transfer to oven and cook for 20 minutes. Turn mushroom slices carefully with a thin metal spatula. Return to oven and continue cooking until well-browned and crisp, about 20 minutes longer. (Mushrooms will quickly overcook, so monitor them carefully.) Remove from oven and transfer mushrooms to a paper towel-lined plate to drain.

Transfer mushrooms to a bowl and toss with maple syrup, sugar, garlic powder, paprika, and remaining oil. Season to taste with more salt and pepper. Transfer mushrooms to the basket of a steamer insert and space evenly over bottom.

Ignite wood chunk over a burner or with a torch. Transfer to a large pot. Add steamer insert and cover pot with a tight-fitting lid. Let mushrooms smoke for ten minutes. Remove from pot. For crisper mushrooms, return to lined baking sheet and continue baking until sugars start to caramelize gently, about 5 minutes longer. Allow to cool completely before transferring to an air-tight container and storing at room temperature for up to a 5 days.

DIRT! Glorious Dirt!

Contained within the sturdy walls of this utility trailer is black gold! I am blessed and full of luck to 1) live in a city which composts the vast majority of it's denizens organic waste and 2) have the ability to take as much humus (in varying degrees of decomposition) as I can physically load and haul on this beast.

 In about 40 minutes my good friend Greg and I were able to load up about a cubic yard of still cookin' deep black soil and get it back to the house.

 Here is the South side of our home and where our first raised beds are going to be planned. To the left you can see a tower of bricks which will serve as the retainers for the garden.

Here we will have a rain catchment/filtration system in place of the downspout, in addition to cold frames built against the walls.

And here is (in my opinion) the shot for my before photo. This patch of yard is full of potential and will look so drastically different by the time we're done with it no one will believe it was once yellowed and nitrogen starved grass and weeds.





The first action taken after collecting the black gold was to liberally distribute it to the compost bins. There are a few reasons for this, the first being the city compost is much further than mine and therefore contains mature (and bountiful) microorganisms which aid in the decomposition of organic matter.

Above is the larger bin already churned, oxygenated, and layered with the humus

Why is this important in an already started compost? Well it seems to me that everything in nature thrives off of diversity and it is through this diversity (of everything from colors, to scents, to genes, to species of the same plant) that strength is built. Have you ever wondered why BigAg *has* to use myriad chemicals just to keep bugs, disease, pestilence, rot, and other unsavory happenings from happening? The answer is simple; Monoculture.  Having miles and miles of fields full to the brim with ears of corn or chest deep soy is saying to pests and problems the same thing as neon sign displaying "FREE SURPLUS" at a methadone clinic is to junkies. Through the systematic approach of modern agriculture businesses and corporate farmers have found it necessary to poison, over fertilize  and drop tons of chemicals on food which humans are supposed to ingest. I find this appalling and realize I have ranted my way into a subject for an entirely different time. Diversity! Diversity in everything you do! For example, with the compost, there are microbes from my garden busily working their hardest to convert all that plant matter into thick, rich humus. Adding microbes from another source of composting materiel will increase the diversity of life within the compost bin. What this does is create an environment where the immigrating microbes (being further along in the composting process) will help the native microbes out by strengthening their tolerances, and increasing overall performance.

Here is the technique I used for both bins;

Dig your way to the bottom to ensure you remove the matter being compacted then spread a thin layer of top layer compost over the floor of the bin followed by a layer of humus.

Next you repeat the process of lightly layering more material

And then once more you add more humus, much like microbial lasagna, before dowsing the whole pile and letting it set overnight.











In our society we look upon soil with no respect, as if it were a static, inanimate lump of dirt. We even apply the word dirt(y) to parts of society which are viewed through slanted eyes (pornography, gambling, strip clubs, etc etc) so its no wonder that BigAg works as it does. It treats the soil as a means to an end and not as the foundation for the entire journey. Real diversity and therefor real success starts in the soil and there is no way around that. I'm not going to get into the different soil types, ph levels, or what works for which plants but I am going to say that no matter what the situation, any soil (see dirt) can be improved from wasteland to sustainability to the point of surplus. If you want to succeed in providing quality food for your family, provide quality soil for your worms, microbes, insects, fungus, plants, and everyone else involved in the food growing process.