wild about chanterelles.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 9:49AM My love for all things mushroom hunting is not new information to any readers of this blog. It's a fortunate inconvenience that Lo and I have been too busy with life and careers to get out in the woods and do some hunting. It's especially frustrating given all of the fungus hunting successes I have been hearing about since the chanterelles started to pop. Yesterday I took some time to check out my chanterelle spot and it happily provided me with a dozen or so nice size chanterelles and one big early season chicken of the woods. Maybe it's a sign that this fall is going to be a jubilee of mushroom picking and hot cider sipping. It seemed like a good reason to celebrate with food. I called up Clancey's butcher shop in South Minneapolis and checked on their rabbit inventory. I was in luck, chanterelle rabbit sausage with basil was on the menu for the night.
Lo was out of town so I was cooking for a friend and I didn't take down a recipe. If you are really interested let me know, I can come up with one.
I had some raddichio and endive laying around so the menu was set - Chanterelle rabbit sausage, grilled raddichio with braised endive, and grilled apricot.
I tend to enjoy apricot paired with chanterelles as I find the mushrooms have a similar scent to apricots and juxtaposed, it really brings out the fruitiness of the shrooms.
I have to say, I think the dish was a success as I designed it, but it was even better when I added a fried egg on top the next night. A good mushroom hunt supplies multiple feasts!
As a side note to the novice shroom hunter - the most imortant thing to remember while foraging for wild mushrooms is to positively ID the mushrooms before you eat them, it's VERY important.
Happy hunting and happy eating.
chanterelle, mushroom, rabbit, sausage 