Golden Chanterelle Stroganoff

If you haven't yet signed up for one of Chef Eric Tucker's cooking classes at Millennium, perhaps this will tempt you - Chanterelle Stroganoff.  He said it was ok for me to reproduce this recipe, so here you go!

This is one of my favorite recipes - I have experimented with a few variations which I will mention below. 

Chanterelle "Stroganoff" by Chef Eric Tucker

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 yellow onion, sliced into thin crescents
• 2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 2 Tb olive oil
• 1# cleaned chanterelles, sliced thin
• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
• 2 tsp paprika
• 1 Tb tomato paste
• 2 c vegetable or mushroom stock
• 1 Tb nutritional yeast (or more, to taste)
• 1 c cashew cream (make yourself with pre-soaked cashews, drain, blend with cold water, dash of salt and squeeze of lemon til you get a cream)
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• salt & pepper, to taste
• minced fresh dill
• lemon zest
• cooked papardelle (super easy to make yourself!)

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a large skillet, sautee the onion in the olive oil over medium, stirring often until onion is medium caramelized.
2. Add garlic & mushrooms, continue to sautee, stirring often until the mushrooms are dry.
3. Add thyme & paprika, sautee 30 seconds, then deglaze with red wine.
4. Add tomato paste, stock & nutritional yeast and simmer 5 minutes.
5. Add cashew cream, simmer until thick.
6. Taste & adjust seasoning.  
7. Toss the cooked papardelle with some olive oil.  
8. Place a portion of sauce over noodles, sprinkle with dill & lemon zest.

Variations:  I have made this with morels and other mushrooms - it comes out pretty delicious.  I have also substituted dry sherry for red wine for deglazing.  

Make your own pasta  - it's really not hard, and papardelle are wide strips that you want to cut by hand anyway.  Rustic homemade noodles are divine!

Millennium Winter Mushroom Cooking Class 2011

If you have never attended a cooking class at Millennium - or even at all - I highly recommend getting behind the counter at Millennium with Chef Eric Tucker for his annual Winter Mushroom Cooking class.  There's usually a pre-class foraging trip in addition to the pre-class Farmer's Market trip.


Winter Mushroom Cooking Class
Sunday January 9, 2011
10am-4pm (ish)
$155/person
Join Eric Tucker for a hands on cooking class in the Millennium kitchen. Spend the second Sunday of the new year creating multiple mushroom filled courses that you will then have the opportunity to sit down and enjoy family style. You will be working with mushrooms that Eric has foraged locally and you will have the opportunity to join Eric for a guided tour through the Ferry Building Farmers' Market on Saturday, January 8 at 10am.
Space is limited, please call Alison for a reservation 415.345.3900x13

Ravioli, Redux!

Another round of Stinging Nettle & Wild Chanterelle Ravioli from the Millennium cookbook - why? Because it's AWESOME! This time, I made up a very big batch of candy cap balsamic reduction well in advance - two bottles of balsamic and 1/2" oz of dried candy caps later, I've got a decent 2 cups of syrupy reduction to add to dressings and sauces.

The ravioli turned out amazing - even though two of my guests couldn't eat wheat, I saved the filling for them to eat with the salad and they pronounced it delicious. In fact, one guest said "This is the best meal I have ever had!"

The ravioli were served on a bed of mixed greens (I'm in love with mizuno), and a salad of roasted beets with candied pecans and arugula. Homemade strawberry ice cream for dessert.

Millennium Winter Mushroom Cooking Class

2009 Millennium Winter Mushroom Cooking Class - Here are some photos from the class, I will be posting recipes this weekend:

A Bad Winter for Growing Things but Everyone Likes Lemonade!

MUSHROOMS FORAGING/COOKING: As much as I enjoy 68 degrees and 83% humidity, that is not good mushroom growing weather. If we don't get rain, I may not have much of a garden, either.

James made good use of some of those golden chanterelles last weekend - he made oven roasted breakfast potatoes with golden chanterelles, garlic, fresh herbs and pine nuts that was just outstanding.

This weekend is the "Winter Mushroom" cooking class at Millennium Restaurant. I'm assisting chef Eric Tucker and will be leading a mushroom foraging trip after the morning visit to the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market. If you're interested in the class, call Erica at 415.345.3900 x11 to see if there are any spaces left!

GARDENING: Saturday, I pulled up all my stakes and dead tomato plants, stacked tomato cages and built a potato condo (I promise a photo!). The potato condo needs a bit more dirt. I bought a bunch of red and yellow potatoes at Farmer Joe's in the Laurel District -- they had some nice baby Yukons which I hope will sprout so I can plant them in the potato condo. Garlic still is not in - I have to decide where I will put that.

Sunday, I helped James pull up his garden, too. He also harvested a big pile of purple carrots which seem to taste a lot sweeter without the purple skin.

LEMONS and other backyard citrus are in full swing. Tonight I zested 25 lemons with a microplane and poured 1.75 L bottle of 190 proof Ever Clear that my friends brought down from Portland -- I couldn't bring it on the airplane with me when I bought it there in November because it is a fire hazard.

I also made a killer pitcher of lemonade - and I am leaving 2 cups of lemon juice in the fridge so I can make another batch without defrosting cubes. I think I'll have a lot of nice lemony Vitamin C this week to combat all the bugs that seem to go around the office. Might be time to ask Barbara if I can pick more of her gorgeous Valencia oranges with my fruit picker.

DEHYDRATOR ACTION! This past week I have embarked on several flaxseed cracker experiments which have turned out quite well. First two batches were garlic/curry/cashew/flaxseed and orange curry catsup/black sesame/flaxseed. The next savory batch was homemade dried tomatoes with flaxseed, nutritional yeast, oregano, rosemary and thyme. I have raw cacao powder/agave/almond/flaxseed in the dryer right now. I just don't think there's a lot you can do "wrong" when it comes to making flaxseed crackers. I'll post some more actual recipes in a separate entry.

Fall Farmer's Market Cooking Class at Millennium

Fall Farmer's Market Cooking Class at Millennium
Originally uploaded by jennconspiracy

Photos are up from the Fall Farmer's Market Cooking Class at Millennium - in this photo, Chef Eric Tucker demonstrates how to assemble a rustic galette filled with braised greens.

Fall Harvest Cooking Class at Millennium

Hey folks - check out the Fall Harvest Cooking Class at Millennium. The classes are a lot of fun - I will be there on Sunday and hope to see you there!

Fall Harvest Cooking Class
Sunday November 9th, 2008
10am-3pm (approx), $135/person
With a plentiful Thanksgiving upon us & nary an inspiration for a holiday menu, let chef Eric teach you a few new tricks... Optional opportunity to meet the farmers that provide for Millennium & it's guests: join Eric Saturday November 8th @ the Ferry Building for a guided tour through the Farmer's Market. Gather up your produce for the week & talk about the finishing touches to the class's menu the following day...10am @ the CUESA information booth located in the front of the building, just below the clock tower.

Eric's Perfect Pizza

Eric's Perfect Pizza
Originally uploaded by jennconspiracy

A night of chanterelles cooking for an article on golden chanterelles that Eric put together for Spooning Magazine, along with some of my photos!

Millennium - Spring Veggies Cooking Class

Just got home from Millennium for a spring veggies class with Samael7. We were assigned to the "fire" team. We spent all day making incredibly yummy food and eating it. I'll update this post separately about the food and recipes. Check out Albion Cooks blog posting on the class.

Millennium - Winter Mushrooms Cooking Class

COOKING CLASS AT MILLENNIUM: After two mushroom foraging trips, I finally made it to my first cooking class at Millennium. I was worried about being late but I was the first person to arrive! The private dining room was set up with a table, recipe packets and name tags. Everyone had a cook's jacket over her chair. There were 10 people plus Thomas and Allison (from Monday mushroom hunting), Aylene (from Friday mushroom hunting). We got a packet of recipes -- and the the group was split into two to work in 2s and 3s... in my case, my group was comprised of a married couple and a pair of friends so they worked together and Eric has me work on the main parts of the recipes myself. I ended up making the candycap brownie myself, as well as the entire "Soup X" and the Chanterelle Stroganoff. Here's a list of what was on the menu:

• Chanterelle Butter
• Black Chanterelle Pecan (or Walnut) Pate
• Button Mushrooms done right
• Pickled Clamshell and trumpet mushrooms
• Soup X
• Grilled Oyster Mushroom and Kale or Radicchio (or Endive Salad), Truffle Vinaigrette
• Chanterelle Stroganoff
• Candy Cap Blondies (or brownies if you mix the chocolate chips before the stuff cools and melt them)
• Truffled sorbet

The things I really would have wanted to do - I got to do! The soup was really fantastic -- we had a "team meeting" to discuss the direction suggested by Eric and then he tasked them with their button mushrooms and pickled mushrooms and took me to the pantry to collect ingredients for the soup.

Soup X

• 2-3 T olive oil
• 4 stalks of the Devil's Weed (aka celery - ok, it wasn't bad)
• 3-4 smallish (smaller than fist size) yukon gold potatoes, peeled & cubed
• 6-9 parsnips of many colors, peeled and sliced at an angle
• 1 red onion chopped
• 1# black trumpets, cleaned, triple rinsed and chopped
• 1 qt (give or take) of dark mushroom broth
• cumin, allspice, oregano
• 3 dried chiles, toasted, seeded and pulverized -- add half to the soup, reserve half
• pebble beans
• chestnuts
• garlic
• salt
• pepper

Toasted Pumpkin Seed pesto garnish:

• 2 c toasted pumpkin seeds
• 1 bunch flat leaf parsley
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 3 T minced garlic
• pumpkin seed oil
• salt
• pepper

At first, it was peculiar being in the kitchen with so many people. That really threw me at first and made a mistake. When I mixed the ingredients from the double boiler with the dry ingredients for the Candycap blondies and threw in the chocolate chips before the liquids cooled, turning them into brownies (they were still edible). I was pretty disappointed and thought I ruined them and wanted to redo (I really do like blondies!). I think I would use less grapeseed/cocoa butter -- that would lighten them up a bit. I will start using parchment paper more often for those sorts of things -- it works miracles in getting stuff out of a pan.

We made the first several dishes for lunch -- the pate, chanterelle butter, mushrooms, soup and pickled mushrooms. Then we went back to make the stroganoff and the salad. Folks on my team prepped the salad and a biscuit-like crust to go on the stroganoff which I prepared. My stroganoff came out a lot better than the other group -- I actually got my onions carmelized and know how to cook with chanterelles. The other team used too many chanterelles and didn't get enough liquid out, and also did not start early enough or use a big enough pan to carmelize their onions properly. They made cracked black pepper papardelle which came out really amazing and yummy.

And I just have to say - the truffled sorbet and the blondies/brownies were to die for. I just thought I was going to explode from eating so much delicious food. It was utterly unfair that we should have so much yummy food and my friends should not have it.

Eric & the giant chanterelles

Eric & the giant chanterelles
Originally uploaded by jennconspiracy