The mushroom hunter's year begins with morels (Morchella esculenta), beige or charcoal and honeycombed with crevices.
Morels first appear when the snow has just melted and the sap has run.
But morels are the treasure everyone's really looking for, rare as gold and priced much like it.
Between that and the forest fires, it's turning out to be a post-apocalyptic binge year for morels.
No droughts, no weeks of unending rain, no forest fires, no dead elms and few morels, until next year.
Stuffing morels, it turns out, is a favorite springtime strategy among chefs and one that adapts easily for home kitchens.
With the ensuing savings, I will buy a whole pound of morels.
Morels are a chef's mushroom, opulent and earthy tasting, delectable in cream.
At Hearth, in New York, Marco Canora makes a loose lamb sausage, stuffs it into morels and then roasts them.
Dinner selections include Brittany lobster with truffle oil and crunchy vegetable salad, and braised veal cheek with morels and asparagus.
Online at MorelMania.com, you can find maps tracking the seasonal progress of morels as they appear, south to north, across the country.
He says that morels work particularly well because of their spongy texture: They soak up and amplify the flavors of whatever goes in them.
Last year, thousands of elms died of drought, and on the nutrients from their carcasses a bumper crop of morels has been creeping forth, like wrinkled zombie armies.
Peak season is usually around mid-May, and the best place to find morels is generally the farmers' market, though Whole Foods and other specialty grocers carry them, too.
应用推荐