use real butter

Recipe: wild mushroom pizza

Here it comes. Cooler weather, I’ve been waiting for you since May. We were so used to leaving our windows open overnight to cool the house down that it came as a surprise to us when we woke up Saturday morning and the temperature inside was 52°F. That’s even lower than what we set our heat to overnight in winter (we set it to 55°F). No wonder Neva was all snuggled up between us on the bed after her 6 am breakfast. Outside we could see an impressive frost on the deck. Well alright then! The scrub in the high country has been turning red and gold for a couple of weeks now, but the leaves are finally following suit at higher elevations. My landscape photographer friends are getting itchy for the fall shoot. We’re all waiting to see if the colors will be on time (like usual) or if they’re going to bust out of the gate early.

bright red huckleberry bushes on cottonwood pass (looking west toward taylor reservoir)

dreamy sunset colors

red aspen leaves against bluebird skies

But before I could even think about the fall shoot, I had to research, test, make, and photograph recipes with my foraged chanterelles and porcini from last weekend. Oh, and I had to clean them – a time-consuming process with the chanties when you have several pounds. From the moment I cut the mushrooms off the ground, the clock starts ticking. I store them in brown paper bags in the refrigerator and they last about a week. Brown paper bags populated all of the non-freeze zones of my refrigerator while I shifted everything else around them. The rest will be sautéed in butter and frozen for winter. Any chanterelles that are too far gone to eat get chucked into a separate bag. Those will soak in a combination of water, molasses, and salt for a day or two before pouring the “spore” water out in suitable chanterelle environments.

Generally, I don’t pick the porcini that have been wormed out (the stipe or cap will feel particularly squishy), but sometimes you can pick a firm porcini and the few worms present will make Swiss cheese of the inside while you hike around, drive home, and pop it in the refrigerator. That’s why I try to dress the porcini (cut out any worms) in the field if I have the time. Porcini that are too wormed out (those itty bitty worms, they have voracious appetites) get staked under an appropriate spruce where some spores might take hold in the future.

always delightful to peer into the huckleberry leaves and find a chanterelle or two

porcini like the huckleberry plants, too

The first recipe I wanted to shoot involved both kinds of mushrooms, mostly because I wanted to take care of the porcini before the worms ate anymore of them (or any more worms escaped onto the refrigerator shelf). The reality of foraging porcini is that you will deal with worms. I’ve rarely encountered chanterelles that were wormed out, but it has happened on rare occasion. Even if your porcini have some worms, you can usually cut that section out and salvage the rest. So let’s make some wild mushroom pizza! And as always, you can substitute any combination of edible mushrooms.

chanterelles, porcini, pizza dough, parmesan, fontina, butter, flake sea salt, sea salt, thyme, garlic

melt the butter and mince the garlic

mix the garlic into the butter

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: huckleberry buckle

The academic year has begun, my parents have flown back to Virginia, and the huckleberries are in season. I have spent a good bit of my waking hours preparing my quads for telemark skiing. Squatting on steep slopes for hours at a time, pivoting and balancing to reach that one perfect ripe, dark snurple huckleberry. How convenient that huck season should precede ski season, right? The sad part is that the huckleberry season isn’t very good this year on the Front Range. Even worse than last year. Checking trail after trail with few berries in sight, you get both exercise and depressed.

took erin hiking and SUPing and looking for huckleberries on her visit

the rains came too little too late for the hucks

Jeremy and I spent Labor Day holiday weekend in Crested Butte where stormy weather reluctantly gave way to sunshine and blue skies. We met up with friends from out of town so Neva and their pup could play together at the lake and what do you know? My friend, Teresa, showed up with her two pups – one of which is actually a puppy! I am convinced that the best puppies are your friends’ puppies. They are so cute and cuddly and fun, but without the sleep-deprivation, the potty training, or the sharp little toofies! Poncho is 14 weeks old and he is so so so sweet and mellow and good. He was particularly fond of chewing on Neva’s collar or leash or face or toys. It was the first time Neva played with a puppy since she’s become an adult (I use the term loosely) and she did quite well, mostly ignoring or tolerating Poncho’s antics.

a passing storm over crested butte (that we got caught in)

poncho liked carrying neva’s leash and harness around

poncho chewing on neva’s chuckit

poncho chewing on neva’s leash with neva attached

The next day, Jeremy and I took Neva for a short hike. Having scouted out the trail that delivered so many beautiful chanterelles last year and finding almost nothing, we resigned ourselves to simply enjoying hiking, running, and biking – stuff you do in the mountains. We went to a different trail and found… huckleberries and chanterelles and porcini. Neva’s short hike turned into an all day forage. We don’t usually forage with Neva because she has two gears: Go and Go Faster. The whole “stopping to look or forage” doesn’t suit her, but I found she would sit nicely for a huckleberry or wild strawberry. By the end of the day, when we stopped at a huckleberry patch, Neva would lie down and eat the berries off the plants. When I open my tupperware of berries in the kitchen, Neva comes running and sits like a good girl at my feet with that “I’m here for my huckleberries!” look. Hard to say who the huckleberry hound is – Neva or me?

a pretty pretty porcini (king)

jeremy’s find

and lots of chanterelles (with a huckleberry!)

some of the huckleberry plants were already turning red

our haul from the day

I don’t think I’ll ever run out of huckleberry recipes to try. The limiting factor is the fruit. Even though I have frozen hucks throughout the year, the fresh hucks are only around for a couple of weeks if I’m lucky. This buckle can be made with fresh or frozen berries and you can use huckleberries or other juicy berries (like blueberries) if you don’t have hucks. The only drawback to the substitution is that you can’t call it huckle buckle.

water, flour, sugar (twice), huckleberries, butter (twice), salt, vanilla, milk, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg

cream the butter and sugar together

combine the dry ingredients

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chanterelle ravioli with sage brown butter

School is starting and summer is winding down even though we have a good month of it left before we can officially declare autumn’s arrival. We spent the beginning of last week getting outside with Neva to explore and play and continue “training” her – whatever that means. Our neighborhood lake in Crested Butte had some strange water biochemistry going on, so we took little Neva to a nicer lake with cleaner water. This required a much longer drive on bumpy backcountry roads, but instead of puking or drooling or crying, Neva had her nose out the window and she was quite excited about our destination. Our little girl may have finally (finally!!) turned the corner on the car ride! I don’t know what we’re going to do come winter when we can’t open the window if it is -20°F outside, but I’ll take what I can get.

sometimes neva’s life jacket looks like a superhero cape from the front

the happiest, dorkiest dog

Jeremy and I also spent our final morning in Crested Butte hunting for chanterelles as they were starting to flush. Normally I would wait to forage after more time had passed so they would be larger, but we were leaving and I wanted to bring some chanterelles home to make a special birthday dinner for my mom. I only took the biggest ones and left the littles to grow and spore and do their happy mushroom thing. If you’re wondering how I prepared them, I sautéed the chanterelles and fresh local sweet corn in butter and served them alongside a small hash browned potato with two seared scallops on top (drizzled with pan sauce, natch). That was the second course of four.

neva likes to sniff chanterelles

a perfectly mossy home

clean and beautiful

toasting mom’s birthday with some bubbles

I hadn’t planned on trying a new recipe with the chanterelles, but we managed to forage enough that I could make some chanterelle ravioli. I’ve always wanted to make ravioli from scratch and by hand. My mother-in-law gave me some ravioli stamps and a ravioli pasta cutter last year, so I really had zero excuse to not try this. Start with the ravioli pasta dough.

flour, eggs, olive oil, salt

Most pasta I’ve made from scratch involves flour and eggs, but this one had a little salt and olive oil added to the dough. The flour doubled as an ingredient and a bowl because all of the wet ingredients went into a well in the flour. I thought that would be terribly messy, but it was actually rather tidy as long as you didn’t breach the well wall. The recipe called for four cups of flour, but you don’t use all of that flour in the pasta dough. I incorporated as much as needed and then sifted the remaining unused flour and kept it around for working the pasta.

make a well in the flour and add the rest of the ingredients

stir flour into the eggs until the mixture is too thick to stir

then work more flour in with your hands

when the dough won’t take on any more flour, knead it

it’s ready when you poke it and the dough bounces back

**Jump for more butter**