18/04/2023
Thanks for letting me play at ! I was inspired to make two dishes, or more accurately one dish that evolved into a kaiseki style color play with the leftovers. Here are the album links for the finished dishes as well as the ingredients and processes for the mushroom ferments.
Final dishes https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.535161228805589&type=3
Mushroom Fermentation Pantry https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.535148785473500&type=3
NAMA Chopped ingredients and cooking processes https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.535157778805934&type=3
Notes on the process:
Original additions to the four basket ingredients: egg, oil, salt, wild herbs, wild persimmon. Second dish addition to play with the brilliantly colored leftovers: rice. That's it. I leaned heavily on the basket ingredients for the bulk of ingredients, and tried to use as little of anything else as possible.
Some of the wild mushroom components of this dish may seem very involved, and they certainly do involve a lot of work, starting with the foraging! But these are things I put up all year, typically by the gallon, and I like to keep a wide variety in stock for use in flavorful wild food cooking.
The original dish: Okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancake) of cabbage and maitake with bourbon yakisoba sauce and grapefruit ponzu mayonnaise. Topped with morels, red cabbage and seasoned Ritz cracker crumbs with toasted porcini salt. Multiple preparations of wild mushrooms were used to bring a deep umami to the dish that I balanced with the bright citrus notes of grapefruit ponzu and the sweetness of bourbon black trumpet sauce. I omitted meat and fish in order to showcase the deep umami of aged puffball mushroom miso, Meripilus garum and morel mushroom broth. Basket ingredients were fully transformed and integrated in all aspects of this dish as well as being the bulk of ingredients used. Eggs, oil and about a tablespoon of wild herbs were the only non basket ingredients in thisl dish. The bourbon yakisoba sauce has some wild persimmon in it for sweetness, but is primarily a bourbon reduction thickened with Ritz 'flour' and mushroom miso. The grapefruit ponzu mayonnaise uses duck egg and oil.
It was a deliberate choice to use no meat or fish products in this dish in order to showcase the deep, meaty umami that wild mushrooms can bring to a dish. Traditionally okonomiyaki is made with a fish based dashi and often includes pork. I considered incorporating my own homemade 'katsuobushi' (koji cured fish) dashi or a 3 year venison XO miso, as well as some some farm raised pork I recently butchered, but decided to bring 100% of the umami from mushrooms instead of meat and use as little as possible other than the specified basket ingredients. As a result of that decision, I also omitted the Lactuca canadensis that I had foraged with traditional okonomiyaki in mind, since its clean, refreshing bitterness is a good balance for fatty pork. I appreciate having a good variety of flavorful wild mushroom preserves and preparations that are fully capable of bringing intense umami flavors to a dish without needing any meat or fish, so I forage and prepare them year round.
I was very happy with my dish, and it was delicious! But when I went back to eat the leftovers, I saw that the okonomiyaki had turned a brilliant blue due to the anthocyanins in the red cabbage reacting to the grapefruit ponzu. That inspired me to do a little more playing around with the colors of nature, using the same ingredients. I sliced the leftovers and plated them as a beautiful blue tamago sushi, then used a few more fun preparations of wild mushrooms to paint a colorful kaiseki picture on the plate. I made rice with wild mushrooms four ways, as onigiri and mochi dango, with buttery Ritz cracker and Laetiporus 'umeboshi' furikake, bourbon marinated porcini conserva, maitake cabbage okonomiyaki 'tamago', grapefruit ponzu and bourbon mushroom miso dango sauce.
The blue onigiri ball is seasoned (and naturally colored) with Lactarius indigo puree made into sushi vinegar with the addition of grapefruit mushroom ponzu. The red onigiri has Amanita garum, concentrated Leucoagaricus americanus broth and grapefruit ponzu for acidity to fix the color. The white rice is seasoned with matsutake and wild cherry blossom soy and grapefruit ponzu with a furikake of crunchy Ritz cracker, wild ramps and dried 'umeboshi' pickled Laetiporus cincinnatus. The mochi dango is also from a L. indigo base that turned green with too much heat (a common result, but I saved it anyway!) plus fresh mugwort, enrobed in buttery, crunchy cracker crumbs and covered in bourbon mushroom miso sauce. The plate is garnished with wild herbs (ramp and mitsuba), red cabbage and bourbon marinated Boletus varipes conserva. Rice is the only non basket ingredient added to the second dish, in addition to the eggs, oil, wild herbs, salt and wild persimmon already used.
For folks less familiar with rustic Japanese street food, this entry actually is a cohesive dish - you would be expected to eat the tamago and mushrooms inside or on top of the rice cakes, and use the flavorful leaves as a wrapping. You could eat the seasoned mochi dango as it is or in one of the onigiri rice balls. It is presented in a colorful but rustic 'kaiseki' style, where the colors and ingredients tell a story of the changing seasons. Assemble and eat at your leisure.
That was inspiring and I had fun! I hope you did too while following along.
