As always, the long-awaited and desired summer has passed quickly and swiftly - a time of hot sun and fun relaxation. But this is not a reason to be sad. Autumn is generous with gifts, so you have the opportunity to spend an interesting weekend in nature and also replenish your bins with goodies. So get out your baskets and go to the forest for mushrooms, on the so-called "quiet hunt", interesting, exciting and incredibly exciting.
People began to collect mushrooms in ancient times, as evidenced by rock paintings found by archaeologists during excavations, and ancient manuscripts. The ancient Romans, Greeks, and Babylonians knew recipes for preparing various mushroom dishes. The Aztecs considered mushrooms to be the food of the gods, the Eskimos ate the ashes of burned mushrooms, and the ancient Aryans drank a drink made from them. The ancient Indians also loved mushrooms very much, but they used them raw, as hallucinogens, which often ended in the death of the "gourmets".
Mushrooms have also been known in Russia for a long time; at first they were called "gubi", and at the end of the 15th century they began to be called by the word "mushrooms" familiar to us.
Let's go for mushrooms.
Despite all their benefits, mushrooms also have disadvantages that you should be aware of and take into account. The most important is their ability to accumulate harmful substances emitted by enterprises and cars. Therefore, choose places for "hunting" as far away as possible from industrial zones and transport routes.
Another danger is poisonous mushrooms, which are very easy to confuse with edible ones, especially if you are new to this business. Therefore, it is better to go to the forest with someone who knows about mushrooms, or at least check every find on Google.
If you follow all these simple conditions, a mushroom hunt will bring you genuine pleasure, and your kitchen will be filled with exquisite delicacies from which you can prepare many delicious dishes for the whole family.
From the forest to the table
Mushroom soups
The easiest way to make mushroom soup is to add a few wild mushrooms to any vegetable soup. Soups with cheese, spinach, cream, shrimp are interesting and very tasty. Mushrooms also make very tasty puree soups, which can be diluted with cream or broth.
Classic mushroom soup
Chop any fresh mushrooms (500 g) and fry in butter, transfer to a saucepan with 2 liters of boiling water and cook for half an hour on low heat. Chop potatoes (5 pieces) and add to the broth. Chop two carrots, one onion and one parsley root, fry in vegetable oil and add to the soup. Season with salt and pepper to taste, add bay leaf and cook for another half an hour until the potatoes are cooked. Add sour cream, butter or mayonnaise to the plate.
Mushroom and cheese soup
Chop fresh mushrooms (500 g). Chop the onion and fry in butter for 10 minutes, add grated carrots and simmer together for 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and simmer everything under the lid for 15 minutes. Put the mixture in a saucepan, add 3-4 potatoes and pour boiling water to barely cover all the ingredients. Cook for 10-15 minutes. Add two grated processed cheeses, salt, if necessary, you can add a couple of cloves of garlic, passed through a press. Leave the soup under the lid for ten minutes to infuse and thoroughly grind with a blender. Such a soup will taste good with herbs and croutons.
Mushroom snacks
If you want to cook something special and pleasantly surprise your family or guests, prepare these snacks.
Julien
Finely chop 400 g of fresh mushrooms, fry them together with the onion, add the chopped chicken breast. Simmer under the lid for about 10 minutes, then remove the lid and cook until the moisture evaporates. Add sour cream or cream (3-4 tablespoons), salt, pepper. In fact, the julienne is ready, but you still have to work on serving. The first option is a cocotte. To do this, transfer the julienne to small ceramic containers that are suitable for baking in the oven, and sprinkle the mass with grated cheese on top. Bake the julienne in cocottes at a temperature of 200 C for 15 minutes, until the cheese is browned. The second option is to serve in thin pancakes. To do this, form pancake bags, fill them with julienne and "gird" with a green onion feather. Or you can roll the pancakes into "snails" and put the filling in the middle. This option will also taste good if you sprinkle it with grated cheese and bake it in the oven for a while.
Mushroom pancakes
Finely chop the mushrooms (500 g), grate the onion or chop it with a blender. Mix the mushrooms, onion, eggs (3-4 pieces), starch (6 tablespoons), add salt and pepper to taste. Pour vegetable oil into a frying pan and heat it. Spread the mushroom mass with a tablespoon, like regular pancakes, and fry on both sides until golden brown. Add sour cream when serving.
Mushroom cutlets
Soak the breadcrumbs (a small piece up to 5 centimeters) in milk. Fry the chopped onion in vegetable oil until golden brown. Cut the fresh mushrooms (650 g) into small pieces. Fry the mushrooms in vegetable oil until the juice has almost evaporated, then add salt, reduce the heat and fry until completely evaporated (there is no need to bring to a crispy crust). Squeeze out the moisture from the breadcrumbs and pass them through a meat grinder together with the fried mushrooms and onions. Season the resulting minced meat with salt, pepper to taste, add, if desired, a chopped clove of garlic and two egg yolks. Mix everything well and leave in a cold place for 30 minutes. Form small cutlets, coat them in breadcrumbs. Fry in vegetable oil until cooked.
Mushrooms in envelopes
Finely chop the mushrooms (500 g). Heat the butter in a frying pan, squeeze six cloves of garlic into it, add the chopped onion and fry it until cooked. Add the mushrooms to the onion, salt, pepper to taste, you can add cumin. Fry until the juice has completely evaporated. Roll out any puff pastry, yeast-free or yeast, homemade or store-bought (400-500 g) thinly and cut into squares. Grease them with melted butter, spread the mushroom filling, sprinkle with grated cheese and wrap everything in an envelope or, if desired, a bag. Grease a baking sheet with butter and sprinkle with flour, put the envelopes on it. Bake in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for 15 minutes. You can serve this juicy snack either hot or chilled.
Salads with mushrooms
There are a large number of different recipes using any type of mushroom. Mushrooms have their own pleasant taste, so spicy seasonings and a lot of salt are not added to mushroom salads, so as not to overpower the fantastic aroma.
Salad with chicken, pickled mushrooms and nuts
Boil chicken fillet (200 g) and cut into strips, cut three potatoes and three eggs into cubes. You will also need pickled mushrooms (200 g), washed and cut into small pieces, hard cheese (100 g), walnuts (100 g) and mayonnaise. Lay out the salad in layers, smearing each with mayonnaise: chicken, potatoes, eggs, mushrooms, grated cheese. Sprinkle with chopped nuts on top. Let it sit in the refrigerator for thirty minutes.
Salad with pickled mushrooms, chicken and celery
Boil chicken thigh (300 g) in salted water with the addition of bay leaf and black peppercorns. Cut the finished meat into pieces in the form of straws. Boil celery root (250 g) in water, to which add a teaspoon of vinegar, for 10 minutes and also cut into strips. Also cut pickled mushrooms (150 g) and sweet and sour apples (250 g). Mix everything, season with pepper, lemon juice and mix with mayonnaise. You can decorate with parsley leaves.
Mushroom fillings
Almost every housewife has her own signature recipe for fragrant pies, pies, and kulebyak with various fillings. Mushroom filling is always the key to delicious and aromatic pastries. It is prepared from fresh, pickled, dried, or salted mushrooms. So we provide recipes for such fillings, and you can choose any dough to your taste.
Creamy filling
Chop the mushrooms (600 g) and simmer with the chopped onion until the juice has completely evaporated. Add 1 tablespoon of flour, half a cup of sour cream or cream and bring it all to a boil.
Stuffing with salted mushrooms
Soak salted mushrooms (400 g), if necessary, and chop. Cut 50 g of bacon and fry together with mushrooms and chopped onion. Add a tablespoon of flour and three tablespoons of sour cream to the fried mushrooms, boil. Boil two tablespoons of rice and mix it with mushrooms. Add spices to the filling.
Stuffing with mushrooms and cabbage
Chop the mushrooms (400 g fresh or 200 g dried), onion, fresh cabbage (400 g). Fry the onion in fat, add the mushrooms and cabbage and simmer everything together under the lid. When they become soft, open and cook until the liquid evaporates, salt and pepper. You can add boiled eggs to the filling.
Mushroom sauces
The witty French joke that you can eat even old skin if you season it with mushroom sauce. And what about meat, fish, vegetable or pasta dishes.
Mushroom sauce made from dried mushrooms
Boil the pre-soaked dried mushrooms (40 g). Saute the flour (1.5 tbsp. spoons), dilute with mushroom broth, boil for five minutes and strain. Fry the chopped onion separately, add the chopped mushrooms to it and fry everything together for a while. Add the strained sauce of flour and broth, spices and cook for another fifteen minutes. Season the sauce with cream.
Mushroom sauce with plums
Boil and chop the mushrooms. Fry a pinch of flour in butter, add the mushroom broth, stir until smooth, boil and boil for 20 minutes. Add chopped and fried onion in tomato paste (2 tablespoons), salt and boil again. Boil for another five minutes with pepper and bay leaf. Mix everything with chopped mushrooms and fresh plums, add a teaspoon of butter.
Mushroom delicacies for the winter
You need to cook dishes from fresh mushrooms as soon as you bring them from the forest. They cannot be stored for longer than a day - they quickly spoil and lose their taste and beneficial properties. And you want this delicacy to be on the table as long as possible. A great way to preserve the mushroom aroma and taste, and with it unforgettable impressions for the whole winter, is to prepare mushrooms for storage. And you can do this in various ways: marinate, salt, dry, can, freeze.
Pickled mushrooms
Clean the mushrooms thoroughly, wash them, cut them into large pieces, put them in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to a boil, removing the foam that will form. Boil the mushrooms for fifteen minutes, then drain and rinse with cold water. After the mushrooms drain, place them back in the saucepan, cover with water and bring to a boil. Add, per 1 kg of mushrooms: 0.5 tablespoon of salt, 1 g each of black peppercorns and cloves, one bay leaf and 0.5 cup of vinegar. Boil everything together for three minutes, then place in prepared sterile jars, pour in the marinade and roll up. Place the jars in a warm place with the lids facing down until they have cooled completely.
Salted mushrooms
Clean the mushrooms, cut off the stems, leaving up to one centimeter from the cap, rinse thoroughly and soak in cold salted water (white and breast mushrooms for 24 hours, all others for 2-3 days), changing the water every 10 hours. Place the finished mushrooms in a container in which they will be salted, caps down, shifting them with horseradish, currant and dill leaves and sprinkling them with coarse non-iodized salt. The top layer should be made of leaves. Cover everything with a linen or gauze napkin, put a wooden circle (you can use a plate or lid) and press it all down with a weight that will be ten percent of the weight of the mushrooms. Make sure that the top layer does not dry out (add a four percent salt solution). Mushrooms should be salted at a temperature of two to eight degrees for 1-1.5 months. Mushrooms will be salted in two weeks.
Mushroom caviar
Rinse mushrooms (1 kg) and boil for 10 minutes, then drain the water, rinse the mushrooms and put them in a saucepan, adding 1 liter of water with 3 tbsp. spoons of salt. Boil and boil for 15 minutes, then drain the water, and pass the mushrooms through a meat grinder. Chop the onion (4-5 pieces) and fry in vegetable oil until transparent, add the mushrooms, three crushed cloves of garlic and simmer everything together for another 10 minutes, peppering and salting, if necessary. Arrange the caviar in half-liter jars, adding one tablespoon of vinegar to each. Roll up the jars.
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