matsutake in broth

Matsutake, day two.

A mix of very clear chicken and duck broths, lightly salted, and brought to the point of almost simmering. I let that reduce slowly while doing other things.

Add julienned leeks and thinly sliced matsutake. Bring to a quick simmer, serve immediately, garnished with a few drops of sesame oil.

Absolutely incredible. The broth was full-bodied but simple, the leeks lent a mild allium kick, together making a perfect backdrop for the lightly poached matsutakes.

matsutake!

At the Tuesday Market I came across Paul Lagrèze's booth. He had two things to sell: hen of the woods (maitake) and matsutake. I had had hen of the woods —they are incredible — but I had only heard of the famous matsutake. They can't be cultivated, so they must be found in the wild.


I bought some that were open, although the closed fungi are more prized (allegedly fetching hundreds, even thousands, per kilo). They smelled of cinnamon and pine and were very delicate despite being almost the size of portobello.


I marinated them in a splash each of mirin, tamari, and grapeseed oil. I grilled them on an extremely hot grill for a minute or two, charring the skin but leaving them partially cooked. I tossed them in the marinate and cut them into bite-size pieces.

I served them with sweet brown rice, a ginger-garlic-kombu broth over leeks and carrots, bettara-zuke, and tempeh fried with shichimi togarashi (seven spice powder). This way the matsutake were the centerpiece, surrounded by other simple dishes.


The matsutake were incredible. They were firm yet gave easily to the tooth, with a velvety, rich flesh. They tasted faintly of pine but had an overwhelming yet subtle flavor that compares to nothing that I have ever had. Without any doubt, they are one of the most singular and delicious foods that I have ever tried.

spring is here

Fiddleheads feel like definitive proof that Spring has sprung. (75º weather, on the other hand, suggests it may have already passed us by). These hail from the same spot off the bike path where I found them last year.

fiddleheads, chiffon

Wednesday, while on the bike path, I passed a patch of ferns and thought "shit, is it too late?"; On the way back I passed two friends harvesting fiddleheads! Obviously, it just took it little more work than a quick pass. I went back last night, since Wednesday I was without bag or pockets, and collected some.

I boiled them for the sake of pulling out any potential toxins (I did some research, and these should be the Ostrich ferns, whereas the Bracken have been tied to stomach cancer), and then sautéed them in butter and ate them with toast and 4-minute eggs. It was really good. Very green, very earthy.

I'm also making a birthday cake (for my Dad), a strawberry chiffon (from Tartine's recipes)... the chiffon cake rose (& fell) like a soufflé. It cut into rounds well. I halved a 10-in recipe into a 7-in (10in² is roughly twice 7in²). It's two layers of cake soaked with strawberry purée with strawberries in a layer a pastry cream and whipped cream. This is the first real cake I've made... we'll see.

Last night I saw duck legs for $4.99/lb. And supposedly all-natural all-of-that. (Breasts at at least twice that, naturally.) As I've wanted to make duck for a while now (since realizing that duck, unlike chicken, has flavor), I figured I'd give it a go. I'd had confit, magret and breast before, but never a leg that wasn't confit.

I looked through recipes, most of the books I have sugesting roasting or braising, but mostly as a duck or a breast or a leg confit. I ended up marinating the legs in a Côtes du Rhone with rosemary and sage for an hour, then searing until caramelized and braising until "done." Well, had I not forgotten my research, that should take about an hour and a half. Not the forty minutes that - maybe, if that - I gave myself.

The leek-potato soup that I distractedly made earlier-and-during, as well as the earlier-and-during baguettes, were a bit sad, the former not thick enough and the latter not light enough. The soup was good, and the bread wonderful with gravy, just not my best effort. (The bread I had tried as an overnight rise, which was part of the problem. In cast iron and free-form is one thing; in a baguette form is another.)

Anyway, duck, braised, with spinach sautéed in duck fat (and fond) with a quarter preserved lemon and a reduction of the braising liquid was delicious but a bit tough. I took the second leg and roasted it, so we'll see how the twice cooked leg fairs tomorrow for lunch.

On a literary note, started a cover-to-cover read of South Wind Through the Kitchen, an Elizabeth David collection. She refused to sell garlic presses at the shop that she owned. Sigh. And, for the moment, I sell high-end culinary gadgets -- no, "tools," claims the Rösle rep., -- for a living. Some things are tools, some things are gimmicks. (Who am I to make the distinction?)

I purchased Euell Gibbons's Stalking the Wild Asparagus tonight. That and the David book (and Mann's Joseph...) at once. Gibbbons makes me wish it were fall and I had the foraging skills of a squirrel and I'd make acorns into acorn meal, and then acorn meal into acorn pancakes. I like that he admits that much of the edible flora he omits from the book as it's edibly inedible. It makes him seem a bit more reasonable.

And that makes me think of a delicious succulent green that I ate up the slopes of Mount Eisenhower with my 12th grade Biology teacher. Joseph Rodrigues, what became of you? And what was that plant?