Spaghetti al Funghi

Today we had a fantastic family outing to Sheffield.  The reason; The Sheffield Food Festival.  Twitter had alerted me of the existence of this South Yorkshire three day food-athon and so I was duty bound to visit.  Along with the treats on offer, the trip to Sheffield also meant that I could meet up with a couple of the other Olympic Food Challenge participants.

I'm always a bit wary when I go to food festivals.  So often I'm left disapointed.  Huddersfield is by far the best one I have visited but the people at Sheffield put on a good show.  There was a good variety of produce on offer* and there was plenty of space to sit and enjoy any food and drink that you bought.  I bought a chicken mole burrito, from The Street Food Chef, for lunch which sadly wasn't as great as I expected.  Don't get me wrong the burrito was good but the mole sauce was just too sweet for me.

The afternoon was spent lounging around the Peace Gardens soaking up the sun and the beers from the "craft" beer tent*.  My one plan was to seek out inspiration for tonight's meal and that came from Autumn Harvest, who can be found at lots of food fairs and markets in Yorkshire.  Sadly it is too early for Wood Blewit season but they did have some Chanterelle mushrooms which I hoovered up.

I'm not going to pretend that chanterelles are cheap, far from it, but they are really nice.  The flavour is subtle, less mushroomy and sweeter, more fruity than your average mushroom.  To make sure I didn't mask the 'shrooms I made a simple sauce for pasta by frying them in butter and olive oil with a little salt and pepper.  The sauce was finished with a splash of white wine, a handful of parsley and a little grated parmesan.  I'd normally add cream to a mushroom sauce, sometimes bacon makes an appearance too, but chanterelles are too special.  For an end of a foodie day treat, they were worth it.

*still a bit heavy on the cupcakes for my liking.
*I'm no beer geek but I'm sure that the beer on offer was closer to real ale than craft beer.

Mushroom Stroganoff

Tonight I was going to tell you the tale of our foray into fungi foraging.  Last year I spotted a rather large mushroom growing on a verge close to our home.  We had recently bought mushroom field books and identification guides so it was the perfect opportunity to see if I'd stumbled on free food growing around the corner from the house.  On closer inspection it turned out that I had discovered a ring of Horse Mushrooms, which are indeed edible.

I have been keeping a keen eye on that patch of earth ever since, hoping to reap some tasty free food.  All to often I find the mushrooms kicked and smashed, laying strewn in their own fairy ring.  Yesterday I noticed the white caps poking through the long grass and decided that on my way home from taking R to nursery this morning I would pick a couple of them for our tea tonight*.  Sadly some other keen eyed mushroom hunter had beaten me to the goodies and, annoyingly, had picked all of them.

So instead of tonight's stroganoff being packed with free mushroom, it is full of shop bought ones.  I suppose I could have cooked anything that I wanted but my heart was set on stroganoff.  The combination of mushrooms, onions, sour cream and hot smoky paprika is just too big a temptation to resist.  Served with wild rice, tonight was another meal that took no time to cook.  The mushrooms I bought were fine, but I am still lamenting the missed opportunity of another free meal.

*I never pick everything that is available, only what I need.

Spaghetti al Funghi

When planning our meals for the week we tend to start with whatever is still lurking from the previous week's shopping.  The stand out item this week, not having many leftovers at all, was a full, unopened, tub of double cream.  Now I don't have a sweet tooth at all and Z would never indulge herself to the extent of using an entire tub of cream so it was destined for a savoury dish.

The cream was added to fried onions, mushrooms and bacon and allowed to come to the boil before a large handful of parsley and plenty of black pepper were stirred through the sauce.  Cooked spaghetti was then mixed through the cream so that every strand was coated.  This could so easily have been a vegetarian meal, just leave out the bacon and adjust the seasoning as cream does need quite a lot of salt to pull savoury flavours through.  I know this is an autumnal dish but it was so comforting that I'd happily eat it no mater what the time of year.

Crispy Pancakes

There was a time before this blog.  It seams like an aeon ago.  In reality it's only 4 months past that I started a daily update on the food that we eat.  We have always* eaten well.  On the odd occasion, when we were feeling particularly proud of our creations, we would even photograph the meals.

Tonight I am recreating a meal that I made a year ago on this very night.  In fact, it is a recreation of childhood memories.  The crispy pancake.  To me this falls into the same category of food as Campbell's Meatballs and Bernard Matthews Golden Drummers.  These were the midweek meals that we ate in front of the telly watching Knightmare or Jossy's Giants.

Now that I'm all grown up, I look back on those innocent meals with a mix of emotions.  The kid in me still longs for things wrapped in breadcrumbs and served with a dollop of tomato ketchup.  The food-bore in me, who knows all about the campaign to ban the Turkey Twizzler, would rather I'd had different favourites as a child.

Last year, in a peak of nostalgia, I decided that I wanted more than lemon juice and sugar on my pancakes.  I wanted to recreate the meals of my youth.  We made the pancakes in the standard fashion and filled them with a basic beef and tomato sauce.  That is where things became interesting.  I knew before I had even started that I was going to dip the folded, stuffed, pancakes, in beaten egg and breadcrumbs, before shallow frying them.  I'd done this before with chicken goujons and fillets of fish, what could go wrong?

Until you have handled a 12" diameter pancake stuffed with mince and tried to pané it you won't understand. To say that it was difficult to handle is an understatement. The pancake was so delicate that a wrong turn would end up with the filling all over the floor, or worse, in the egg mix.  It took some doing but I managed it.

Tonight I have learned from my previous effort and amended the technique.  Knowing how late we tend to eat these days, we got ahead of ourselves on Sunday.  Z, the master of eggs in these parts, knocked up a batch of pancakes using a much smaller frying pan than last year.  I made a chicken and mushroom filling and we froze the lot.

All that was left to do today (after defrosting) was to build the pancakes and cook.  The smaller pancakes made all the difference.  Now that I'm a grown, up I have substituted boiled new potatoes and broccoli for the chips and baked beans of my childhood.  As midweek meals go this is a bit of a faff but for one day a year it's fun to encourage the inner-child and pull some food-wheelies in the process.

*Certainly for the last eight years or so.

Mushroom Risotto

It turns out that mushroom risotto was the fourth menu I posted here on Tonight's Menu way back on the 21st November 2011.  Those were innocent times, I hadn't started labelling the posts so if you click on "mushroom" below you simply won't find it.  I've decided not to go back and label the early posts and to leave them as they are.

I have also realised that I am cooking mushroom risotto tonight for the same reason as I cooked it two months ago.  It's that "what are we going to do with..." scenario.  I suppose I should broaden my mushroom horizons and cook something else, but that's not who I am.  This blog is not meant to be a test of my ingenuity when it comes to cooking.  It doesn't even contain recipes*.

The bottom line is I really, really like risotto.  So I'm surprised that this hasn't happened sooner and amazed that two months have passed since I last had mushroom risotto.  If you choose to go back and peek at the previous risotto you'll get a glimpse into my risottophilia.  I have it bad.

Along with mushrooms, tonight's risotto has leeks substituting for onions and a fair amount of thyme.  Everything else is standard risotto fare.  Arborio rice, wine, stock and patience.  Finished with butter and parmesan cheese.  I wonder how long it will be until the next risotto comes along.

*sometimes it contains recipes.

Tagliatelli with Wood blewit mushrooms and chicken

Another glorious find on the streets of Leeds this weekend was a bag of Wood Blewits from the lovely people from Autumn Harvest Mushrooms.  They had a small stall at the Briggate Farmers Market at the weekend.  As soon as I noticed them I homed in.  They always have a really good variety of fungus on offer from pink oyster mushrooms to ready to go dried risotto packs.

I first heard about Wood Blewits on an episode of River Cottage.  Hugh was waxing lyrical with his mushroom man John Wright about the joy of this hard to find shroom and eventually set fire to his mushroom guide (he was using it as a wind break for his camping stove).  Things like these stand out in my mind, so when we were faced with them in Leeds we had to buy them.

Wood Blewits are not cheap, but they are very tasty.  Tonight's menu is being kept simple so that they're the star of the show.  Simply pan fried with butter and a bit of garlic and tossed with fried chicken.  The sauce is finished with a spoon of crème fraiche.

Miso Soup

Schadenfreude \SHOD-n-froy-duh\ , noun: satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.

 

I know that I have had the odd pop at supermarkets, that Z works for one is irrelevant.  I dislike a handful of companies having too much power and influence.  I long for small, independent, greengrocers, butchers and bakers in our streets.  I am also aware that the convenience of supermarkets, is super.  

 

There are reasons why I revel in supermarket shopping.  I get excited by the range of food and the possibilities of how I'll cook them.  Also, we live in an area that is not known for its affluence and people around here know what they like.  These two things combined mean that the local supermarket always has high-end and interesting ingredients in the "reduced to clear" section.  I'm talking about venison, duck, celeriac, chicory etc.  I'd think twice about paying full price for items like these but reduced?  I'm in!

 

A trip to the shops yesterday, lead to the discovery of some reduced Japanese White Beech Mushrooms.  There was, and is, nothing wrong with them.  Due to an obsession with use by / sell buy dates, good food is being chucked away.  The reduced section in shops is where I get most of my inspiration, such is my desire to not waste food.

 

I know that I said, just a couple of days ago, that soup wasn't an evening meal.  However, a Japanese Miso soup with fresh vegetables and udon noodles, served with Gyoza and Edamame (dumplings and soy beans) is a feast.