Sunday afternoon lunch

  

We have been eating well lately. That trip to Montreal; some cranberry beans simmered in broth with parsnips, carrots, onions; a wicked-spicy Thai-inspired rice noodle dish; and then... then the buckwheat crepes. Last weekend in Montreal, I had another buckwheat crepe with Nutella in the Jean-Talon Market that made me swoon. So when the February Bon Appetit arrived with a feature dedicated to buckwheat, well, the crepes definitely had my name on them. 

  

I made the batter yesterday, actually while Hubby was making oatmeal for breakfast. And we tried just one with melted butter and brown sugar along with our oatmeal. And it was heaven. Brown sugar and buckwheat? Seriously good stuff. So I stuck the batter in the fridge until lunchtime and then sliced a ripe pear and some blue cheese for the second round. Excellent.  

But today's batch was the best. I sauteed some shallots and mushrooms and folded the crepes around the mushrooms along with sour cream- and with that meal, this recipe made it into my canon. It is just enough outside the ordinary standbys to feel a little exotic, but flexible enough that I made three versions without a special trip to the grocery store. I am smitten. And you don't need a special crepe pan- I used a non-stick saute pan, and it worked just fine (though if you're the kind of guy or gal who likes an excuse to buy new kitchen gadgets, by all means, don't let me stand in your way here).

The mushroom crepe, with some red wine, and a little bowl of the aforementioned beans in broth, somehow felt more like a summer lunch than one where the windows are lacy with frost. And smack in the middle of two weeks where the temperature is hovering around zero, that is just about what I need right now. Enjoy.

Buckwheat Crepes with Shiitake Mushrooms and Sour Cream
As I mentioned earlier, I played around with several different fillings for these crepes and none of them disappointed. Feel free to adapt to suit what you have in the fridge, or your own taste. 

For the Buckwheat crepes: 
(adapted from February 2010, Bon Appetit magazine)

1 1/4 c. buckwheat flour
3 large eggs
1/4 c. canola oil
3/4 c. whole milk
1 1/4 c. water
pinch of salt

Heat oven to 160 degrees. Put large plate in oven to warm. Whisk all ingredients together in a mixing bowl, taking care not to leave lumps. Heat 10 inch non-stick skillet over med-high heat. Brush the bottom of the pan with oil (or not- I kept forgetting and it wasn't really much different than when I did) and drop a ladle-full of batter onto the pan, swirling it around to coat the bottom of the pan. Cook the crepe for 30-45 seconds or more, until golden on the bottom. Then gently slide silicone spatula around the edges to loosen crepe and carefully flip onto the second side. I used my fingers for this more often than not once I'd pried up the edge with the spatula. Cook the second side for 30 seconds. The slide the crepe onto the plate warming in the oven. Return to oven and continue with remaining batter.

For the mushroom filling:

3 large shallots, finely diced
2 large handfulls shiitake mushrooms, caps sliced
shiitake mushroom caps, diced
canola oil
2 glugs dry white wine
1/2 tsp. dried sage
1 tb. butter
salt and pepper to taste

Heat skillet over medium heat and lightly cover the bottom with canola oil. Add shallots and mushroom caps and saute until softened. Add sliced shiitake mushrooms and sage. Season with salt. Saute until mushrooms are soft and starting to brown. Add white wine and saute a few more minutes until liquid evaporates. Turn off heat and add butter, and salt and pepper to taste.

To fill crepes:

Buckwheat crepes
Sour cream, to taste
Mushroom filling

Take warm crepes out of the oven. Spread a dollop of sour cream on one crepe. Spoon a soup spoon's worth of mushrooms over the sour cream. Fold crepe into quarters. Serve immediately.

Mushroom hunter

Ralph and I took a long walk on Sunday. We walked through the woods, up the hill and onto a neighboring gravel road. It is narrow and lined with sugar maple, butternut (valiantly holding out against butternut canker), red maple and a stand of balsam fir that smells like heaven when the wind is blowing just right. All those sugar maples are a vibrant, burnished, golden yellow. The afternoon sun shines through the leaves, turning them transparent and making the whole world seem dipped in gold. It's really, really beautiful.

It was a quiet walk, not a lot of talking, both of us lost in thought. I think that all that quiet made us both notice where we were walking more than we might have otherwise. This attention to our surroundings meant we both noticed the huge number and variety of mushrooms underfoot. And as soon as we started noticing a few, more and more started popping out of the background leaf litter. They were everywhere. We were both wishing we knew more about mushrooms.

When I managed a CSA farm several years ago, Ralph and I both participated in the cultivation of shiitake mushrooms. He worked with one of the farm owners to cut and haul the sugar maple, hop-hornbeam, and ash logs out of the woods, and I worked with the other farm owner to inoculate the logs with mushroom mycelium. There was just about nothing better in the world than the shiitake mushrooms when they burst like little miracles out of those logs in the springtime. And sauteed with olive oil and garlic, they were way more fresh than anything you see in the grocery store. They almost squeaked with freshness. I miss that a lot.

So I've been excited that Ralph has been getting into mushrooms lately. He came home after visiting a friend toting a handful of sawdust inoculated with wine-cap mycelium. He's cultivating them in a sawdust pile under our lone oak tree and we're hoping to see them do their mushroomy thing in the springtime. He also recently went to a mushroom talk at the University of Vermont's Horticulture Farm, led by a man who, when he's not a mushroom hunter, has a day job as a local public radio host.

When we discovered our fungus bonanza on our walk, Ralph picked some of the more common mushrooms and saved them. He took some photos and sent them to the aforementioned mushroom hunter, and low and behold, they're edible, even palatable. The mushrooms pictured here are Armillaria mushrooms, commonly called honey fungus, and they were everywhere. You couldn't walk without stepping on them. It was amazing to see all that food, there on the forest floor. It was another little miracle.

Ralph went back today to look for them again and they were mostly past their prime. Peaked in two days. It's a fleeting season, apparently. Just to keep things exciting, there is another species of mushroom that apparently closely mimics the Armillaria and of course, this mimic has the charming quality of being deadly to people who eat it. That's what you have to love about mushrooms. Amazing little organisms that could potentially kill you or add a lovely earthy note to your dinner plate. I won't pretend I'm not every-so-slightly relieved that they were past their peak when he went back. The last time Ralph brought home wild mushrooms, I was on the edge of my seat, just waiting to melt into a little puddle of poisoned death on the floor during dinner. I fool myself into thinking I played this off coolly. Now, don't get me wrong, he does his homework. The last mushroom was a morel and he was very clear about the ID. But it was thrilling in a mostly safe kind of way nonetheless.

Photos in this post courtesy of Ralph.