Slow Start For Mushrooms
While the mushroom season has started, it is a slow go finding the elusive fungus.
My usual “One Bucket Walks” that take me out of the house and into the forest for short forays, or sashays as Mike refers to them, are more like 1/3 bucket walks. The rain has not soaked in around the tall firs that the mushrooms need in order to grow profusely.
The mushrooms themselves are rather dry. It is obvious from looking at their stems. They are peeling and chafing as I cut them am place in the bucket. This dryness does not affect the flavor and will not keep me from harvesting, making meals out of or from preserving.
It took me three days of forest walks to have enough mushrooms for a load of pickled mushrooms, my most favorite winter treat to add to those meals alongside the salads or crudités.
Once cleaned, the mushrooms can hold in the fridge until I have enough for a batch to pickle. I begin with the sectioning or cutting the mushrooms into nibble sized chunks and give them a quick sauté just until they begin to release their moisture before letting them drain in a colander. ‘
The juice is saved because it will be used as stock along with the handfuls of dried peppers, onion, squash, carrots, kale and tomatoes that I processed earlier in the season and are waiting in sealed bags to join the Chanterelle moisture when I am cooking.
The precious moisture add wonder flavor to otherwise drab meals.
To preserve the precious mushroom juice, I freeze it in ice cube trays or silicone muffin tins. The silicone makes it easy to pop out the frozen cubes and place in a freezer bag for storage.
With the sautéd mushrooms drained and at the ready, I pull out the large stockpot and prepare the pickling fluid. I had began the day before by steeping a cheesecloth packet of pickling spice in about a cup of white vinegar overnight. This gives extra flavor to the vinegar and I leave the packet in when I heat up the full amount of vinegar, water, sugar (or honey).
When the pickling juice is boiling, I add the drained Chanterelles with high heat just until the full pot is back to boiling and pack the mushrooms into jars with the pickling juice.
A quick water bath of 10 minutes before the jars are pulled out to cool and seal on the kitchen counter.
The left over mushrooms that are not quite enough to fill a canning jar, the ones that were the last of the stockpot, go into a cleaned jam jar with its own jam lid. You can see the odd shaped and yellow lid on the far left of the photo. This jar will be put into the fridge directly and will be consumed on sandwiches or in salads long before the sealed jars will be taken out of cupboard.
More walks are scheduled so that I can do another load or two of pickled Chanterelles in order to have enough for my own stash as well as those that I like to pass around to delighted friends, neighbors and relatives.