Resident foodie Eugenia Bone serves up a savory winter dinner and reveals her secret sauce for the perfectly cooked chanterelle.
“On a mushroom hunt with Sonoma-based preserver and gleaner Elissa Rubin-Mahon, we found a load of sooty little Craterellus tubaeformis, known as the yellow foot or the winter chanterelle. Lots of people look down on this mushroom, but they shouldn’t: it is delicately peaty tasting, and perfect, as Elissa pointed out, cooked with scotch. You can substitute any tender wild mushroom in this dish, though switch the scotch to brandy if you do.” – Eugenia Bone
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Is there any way to leave out the alcohol? Any substitutions/suggestions?
Sure. Just don’t add it, and increase the stock by 1/4 cup.
This is arecipe I would like to try!
Would the preferred scotch whisky be an Islay expression, to accentuate the peatiness of the mushrooms?
Or would another single malt whisky work better? A Highland Park would add a gentle peat, with some sherried notes. A Speyside whisky aged in sherry casks would add less peat, more sherry.
What whisky did Eugenia use?
I’ve used Johnny Walker, Glenfiddich, and Laphroaig (right on with the geography!) but I think the idea of Highland Park or Speyside is inspired!
One of the most abundant mushrooms in my basket this past fall was the tiny but flavorful chanterelle, the Cantharellus lutescens, known in Catalonia as “camagrocs” or yellow legs. With such a bounty, we dried them for safe keeping. Now, deep in the winter I can rehydrate with chicken broth for a delicious baked wild rice with mushrooms and onions. Such a sweet mushroom!