i bought a kilo of mushrooms
eat with your ears // issue 6
“having people over to eat is about food… and yet it isn’t. meals, no matter how simple, are made by small things: flowers, candles, a pitcher of water. they’re also made bad by small things: salami served in the plastic package in which it comes, poor bread. i don’t like the suggestion—prevalent these days—that cooking is all about ‘lifestyle.’ i think it’s about taking care of the small, seemingly unimportant things.” — diana henry, how to eat a peach
“go till you blow, and if you blow oh no.” - jamie pierre
i bought a kilo of mushrooms last month—morel mushrooms that is.
soon after, i found myself knocking on a warehouse’s thick steel door somewhere in the industrial center of queens. the mushroom dealer—mushroom purveyor—usually doesn’t allow pick ups of fridays, but i was itching for a shroom heavy saturday grill out— what’s a party these days without mushrooms anyways? when it comes to seasonality, i am not a patient person. when the fungi gets bloomin’, michael goes a’shroomin’—and don’t ever stand between me and a ripe peach.
you see, morels are the queen of mushrooms. chefs call them “the sacred mushroom” for their divine flavor and tender texture. their flavor points sharper on the tongue than a truffle’s roundness—and it’s much less overbearing. where truffles work as an ethereal spice with delicate depth atop a dish, morels have a backbone that the tongue can peer deep into. richly nutty, wistfully earthy, and tastefully smoky, morels embody the ethos of a fine veal—dainty and deep in ungraspable umami—but with more humanity. morels taste entirely like a mushroom, but taste entirely different at the same time. a wistful enigma that only comes once a year.
naturally, morels bloom into the shape of honeycomb crown between march and may in the northwest and southwest. they engorge on decaying elm, oak, and pine tree roots and—for reasons still not understood—thrive in areas just after forest fires. since it’s difficult to recreate the conditions of a forest fire, morels are near impossible to cultivate under human hand, and thus, morels are typically forage, as i imagine, by a stout, quirky man with a jolly bearded face and a silly little gnome hat.
impossible cultivation and fantastic flavor make morels all the more desirable, but it’s rare to find grocers that stock them for their brief season. when found, morels go for something between $50 and $100 per pound. so, morels as low as $30 a pound just might make a man do crazy things…
a week before banging on a warehouse door in queens, i was working as a professional cook where chef—more responsibly—ordered his mushrooms direct the prep kitchen where my team received, cleaned, cooked, and served about 4 lbs of morels a week and re-ordered responsibly. as i received a shipment one thursday in late may—the bitter end of morel season—the dealer (sorry, purveyor) casually—no—slyly—no—maliciously reminded me the season ended next week. i could’t buy the sacred shrooms on a cook’s wage, so i thought nothing of it. then, as i signed the invoice and shook his hand he pulled me in, close, where i see his sweat beading and feel his breath when we spoke. “i said… morel season ends next week”. “yeah, i’m a cook dumbass, i know when the season ends” i said to myself nearly bursting with the impatience of a delivery driver wasting 30 seconds of my precious time. “we are offering morels for $30 a pound. make sure your chef—and anyone else that’s hungry—knows” he continued, eyes beading around the crowded kitchen as if he had scattered a bucket of secrets across the blue linoleum floor. suddenly, some sinister snake crept up my innards. a hunger, some forgotten craving simmered inside my stomach, seeped up my throat onto my salivating tongue. a phantom taste overtook me—it was the memory of the idea of a morel. the fleshy voluptuous texture like a meat that didn’t bike back. the well of umami without a bottom. a flavor that stretched wider the further you peered in. the smoky lick of sweet moss transported me to the violet dusk of the rain forests of the pacific northwest. did the purveyor see my eyes roll back—did he know? did he know what swelling pressure of season’s final crop does to a hungry cook?
i stumbled to the bathroom, leaving a barely-begun knife project in a shameful mess for my coworkers to laugh at. i didn’t care, everything was a blur. i would order every morel they had—no—10 lbs—i’d make morel mousse, morels stuffed with lamb and cherries, i’d preserve them in oil for the winter to order. wait, 10 lbs is $300… i can’t afford that! so, bracing myself in the bathroom i ordered a kilo (2.5 lbs) without any conception of how dense a mushroom is. it turns out, morels are quite light and a kilogram is quite heavy. it was a shitload of mushrooms. it was a full flat. 12 pints stuffed to the brim. enough mushrooms to fill two milk jugs until they overflowed. for reference, the restaurant consumed ~2 morel flats of in a 7-day-week. in other words, it took ~500 people to eat 2 kilos of mushrooms in a week, so i would have to eat for ~250 people to finish the kilo before they went bad. i had “dirty dogged” myself as they say.
this month’s recipes were inspired by morel mania. since morel season is now thankfully over, feel free to replace them with dried morels or a flirty ~medley~ of mushrooms. try something new, the mushroom kingdom is full of flavors that is wildly unfamiliar. both the recipes below can accommodate different flavor profiles. find the shroom that does to you what the morel did to me this year.
mushrooms on toast is fairly common british recipe—think fluffy eggs on toast with rich goat cheese and herbs but not really at all. the umami of browned mushroom and charred shallot brightens with the acidic deglazing wine and then cradled in a blanket of rich cream. every bite is a canvas of texture stretched between each shroom unique shape.
this mushroom toast will give you an beginner education on mushrooms, but the next recipe is like sitting down with an expert in mycology. a bistro style burger au poivre— pepper crusted patty bathed in a cream sauce with morels, shallots, and brandy. typically, this sauce belongs on a steak with a side of fries, but it’s summer baby! impress your friends with the best burger they’ve ever eaten and pair with a chilled bottle of grenache-syrah. prep this up to 3 days in advance, just reheat before dolloping onto a patty.
this burger really doesn’t need cheese or lettuce or ketchumustardmayo . it does benefit from some acidity and crunch, so try adoring it with raw red onions sliced super thinly or maybe a slice of tomato.
low key, these recipes are kinda the exact same thing—onion, mushroom, booze, and emulsified fat. somehow, these recipes still taste completely different. the au-poivre style beef-morel-pepper pairing harmonizes in a way that creates a more meaty meatt, a more mushroom-y mushroom, and a more burg-y burger.
i bought a kilogram of mushrooms, and these recipes are just the beginning. there’s nothing like the pressure of an expensive ingredient going sour to fuel ceaseless creativity. the seasonality of ingredients is an age old timer for experimentation in the kitchen. the necessity of preserving the fruits of summer to survive through winter is the backbone of cuisine. culture was born when fruit was dried into leather, when cabbage was fermented into rich, meaty korean kimchis, when meats were salted into prosciutto and jamón ibérico.
be a fool like me— embrace the seasons this year. buy a flat of peaches when they’re juiciest. bury yourselves in blackberries until you’re forced to make jam. as a cook, you must show up for your ingredients with the same vigor that they show up for you. revel in the abundant joys of summer, eat morels until they make you sick—you’ll forget everything but a shadow of a taste by the time their season shines upon you again.
song of summer // potluck playlist iii
september 21st—the autumnal equinox—is the midpoint between the longest day of the year and the shortest day of the year. it’s the end of summer and it holds some cosmic, zodiac, libra signifcance i think…. but more importantly, it’s finally the end of the endless hunt for “the song of the summer.” the bitter end of pitchfork articles and popstar posters screaming “this is the song of summer!!” no one can claim the paragon period piece, but what the hell, let’s give it a go.
summer 2021 seemed about release, hedonism, and a strange forward looking nostalgia for the way were but will never look again. a golden summer with a cold, chrome border— it was studio 54’s shimmering but empty glam colliding with the apocalyptic neon of y2k. everything was plastic for a moment—and that’s all we wanted for a moment. a sweet, synthetic lie to enjoy for a moment while the seems continued to fray around us. nothing captured the summer of love more than cher’s believe. terrifyingly cheesy, uncomfortably popular, but the drum track still kinda bangs and cher’s had pipes in the old days. cher’s believe is frivolous, flirty, and fantastically fake. last summer was more than just a trashy sing-a-long, it was more than a release, it more than just a party—wait no, it was probably just a party lol.
join the potluck playlist, add your predictions for song of summer 2022. feast on the chunes and we’ll revisit the in september to figure out what happened.
what would be your last meal if you died tomorrow? why choose one when you could have them all…
last meal: sliced, raw peaches dressed in cantabrian chilis, olive oil, lemon, and mint. straccitella cheese on the side. think spicy, tangy peaches dipped in the molten core of a burata ball
last album [music for nine post cards - hiroshi yoshimura] - japanese atmospheric music intended to rise above background noise and provide an actively ambient soundtrack to every day life
last restaurant [cervo’s - les manhattan] - high octane spanish coastal cuisine served in a overly-sceney street corner. everythings bright like the pale cucumber salad, served with olive oil, light enough to let their wine / vermouth list shine
last movie [lost highway - david lynch] - a jazz saxophonist unknowingly commits murder and enters some twisted tantric purgatory as he awaits the chair. it’s wacky, it’s cinematic, it’s trippy, and it almost makes sense. bonus points for rammstein and the mortal coil appearing in the same soundtrack
last art piece [j.b. blunk estate] - sculptor influenced heavily by noguchi, focussed entire life on crafting the blunk house and all it’s furnishings by hand. post-modern, yet timelessly organic like the sequoia groves of northern california
last song [un-thinkable (i’m ready) - alicia keys] - i’m such a hoe for melodramatic pop music with female singers. the composition keeps giving and giving! i cried to this like 7 times this month
let me know what resonated this month and share feedback—concept, writing, layout, branding are ever evolving.
next issue will be shorter so i can feed your ears more consistently. eternal gratitude crystals to all you subscribers. share w/ your friends.