The livin's good in Bellingham - Beaujolaisorama

I've read this conversation before. I have a feeling the subject was different, though. Hmmm, what was it...?
 
originally posted by BJ:
Just try it for yourself, dude. Try, and become a believer.
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Oh, I will. I was asked about mechanism and I'm trying my best to answer.

Also, understanding mechanism makes one a better practitioner.

I'm also out to my chef pals about the method for color.

And I don't really cook them so often. The ones in the market in NYC are typically ugly and expensive. I don't go to live oak habitat on the west coast for them since they cohabit with poison oak to a frightening degree. So I find them mostly in black chanterelle habitat as an aside. I'll be back to you in February.
 
Plentiful and not too pricey in Vermont, but the high-quality window seems to last approximately one day, and that day is never the same nor predictable based on its position in the season.

Yes, yes, I know I should just go find them myself.
 
Well, there's not much left to say. The Jadot was indeed the Fuesselottes. First bottle I've tried from that vineyard that wasn't the Mugneret-Gibourg. Definitely on the upswing, plan to open my next bottle in 3-4 years.

Great times. Thanks to Marc for hosting.
 
Great lineup Marc, Brad...! ...man, I wish I had come up there now :) When are you guys coming down to Portland?

I have a bottle of '01 Allemand SS in the cellar...if I could only find it...the SS is so sensitive - think it could have been a bad bottle?

Wasn't it someone's Birthday? :-)

-mark
 
You blanch then cut them? Fecking hell, can't think of any mechanism, except perhaps that the mushrooms are at a higher starting temp (i.e. they do not bring down the temp as much). But that's pretty tenuous...
 
Much excitement among my friends about this method. Connie, whose book comes out in a few weeks, had this to say on another forum:

Chanterelle Blanching-
This is pleasing and a tad embarrassing all at once. After all these years of
close chef contact and the mushroom biz, I thought I had a handle on just about
every basic chanterelle cooking technique. Wrong! A dear friend sent a post from
a wine blog about a chanterelle cooking method. The writer had been taught in a
French school to blanch the chanterelles in boiling water before sauting. The
instruction was to blanch the whole chanterelles in rapidly boiling water for
20 seconds, remove, drain, pat with a towel, slice if needed, and then proceed
to saut them until caramelized. The result are chanterelles that have actually
shed much of their excess moisture during the blanching process. The
post-blanching chanterelles saut nicely without bleeding liquid into the saut
pan. I knew that butter poaching has the same effect, but didn't realize that
the poaching was actually removing excess mushroom moisture.

After cross examining a French friend in the French wild mushroom trade, he
confirmed this. They have a lively business in producing little containers of
pre-cooked frozen wild mushrooms. They do this on a large scale, blanching,
draining and sauting in oil, then freezing the mushrooms. He states that this
works very well indeed.
This makes sense also in the case of a master pickle maker that has done some
custom mushroom pickling for me. Our first efforts at heat pickling mushrooms
resulted in a dilute flavor. In our next effort we pre-blanched the mushrooms in
a brine. The result was superior concentrated flavored pickles.

I REALLY wish that I could add this to the technique section on my new book. Too
late- it's already in boxes at the printer. Drat!
 
This sounds great. Having once been a lucky visitor to MarcD in Bellingham, I especially wish I could have crashed to party.

Yes Marc, when are you coming to Portland?

Actually, I'm coming to Seattle on Sat for a solo overnight dropping wine to a bunch of people, if any body's around.
 
wish I'd had this info a few weeks ago when a client sent me 1.5 pounds of fresh chanterelles he'd harvested the day before. He's picking hen of the woods now - any idea whether it works with those as well?
 
Hen of the woods can be washed in cold water. then you toss them in a little melted butter or oil, S&P, maybe a tiny bit of ancho chili powder, put them in the oven at 475 until the edges get crispy.

You can dip in aioli if you are in the mood.
 
Pushed this chantrelle technique to the limit by seeing if it would work on these honkers my son and I found on a walk just outside of Bellingham. Growing in very wet territory these three weighed over a pound combined - very thick, dense borderline soggy shrooms. Sure enough, 20 seconds blanched whole, sliced and sauteed and I was able to brown them. Sorry to be going on about it but this is a culinary revelation in our part of the world.
IMG_0753.jpg
 
We finally cooked that haul shown above - it worked great, though I had the heat a little high for the saute at first. Medium seemed best. Those suckers are filling!
 
originally posted by Marc D:
Also, anyone know the story behind the Foillard Morgon "Premiere" bottle?
It has the same light gray label as the Courcelette bottle, but someone mentioned it wasn't made from grapes grown on the Courcelette vineyard.
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Sam from Kermit Lynch contacted the Foillards to ask about this bottle. They said 2000 was the first year they produced wine from the Courcelette vineyard, and only for that year it was called "Premiere". Every vintage since 2000 it has been labeled Courcellete.

It was a grand bottle of Morgon, and it would have been fun to taste it next to a 2000 Cote du Py.

Sorry for the interruption, now back to mushroom talk.
 
We have a mushroom dish on the menu at the moment and our Chef gets the oil smoking hot. He also uses a very big skillet, make sure that there's no piling-up of the mushrooms.

The idea is that you get it so hot that it instantly steams off any water that gets into the pan, leaving the mushrooms cooked, a little crispy, and not oily/mushy.
 
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