I have the utmost fortune of knowing an outdoorsman who also happens to be an excellent mushroom hunter. He hooked me up with a big bag of these beautiful chanterelles, freshly picked from somewhere in the Big Sur. They smelled soooo good! To me they smell like roses, but I've heard people compare their fragrant aroma to peaches or apricots. I spent close to three hours washing and trimming all these mushrooms and I couldn't get their scent off my fingers. When fully cooked they loose much of the aroma but they have a nice firm texture and a lightly peppery finish to them.
I was tempted to melt a big hunk of butter and saute them, but begin close to the end of their season I wanted to preserve them for the summer time when they'd be no more. I've seen a few mushroom pickling recipes in a magazine here and there, but none of them really specified how long the mushrooms would stay good for. I found a pickled mushrooms recipe on the Food Network website by Michael Symon who claims his mushrooms will hold for up to one year, so I've adapted his technique and mashed it with a preserved mushroom recipe found in the August 2010 issue of La Cucina Italiana to come up with my own pickled mushroom recipe.
I love the Italian recipe because the mushrooms are preserved in white wine vinegar and dry white wine. I was concerned that I'd loose all the aroma of these beautiful mushrooms, but I think I've figured out a way to shove all the fragrance back into them. I had recently picked up a bottle of Stanza gewurztraminer 2008 and Gallo's Extra Dry Vermouth. I think the two of them will work well with the pickled chanterelles. The gewurztraminer has a nice aroma of roses and ripe mango and tasted like peaches, lychee, honeysuckle and a bit of spice. The vermouth has a nice creamy vanilla aroma, light body and suprising smooth for only $2.99.
I won't know for at least a week if my recipe was a success or a flop, but I am glad that the chanterelles retained their beautiful golden color. I can't wait to cook up a nice piece of meat to serve the mushrooms with. Or a big bowl of pasta with cracked pepper and pickled chanterelles... mmmmm.
Recipe: Yields 2 pints
1/4 cup salt
4 cups water
2 pounds mushrooms ( A bit over 2 cups cut into pieces)
2 cups white wine vinegar (7 percent acidity)
2 cups dry white wine
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Garlic cloves, peeled and lightly crushed (1 or 2 per pint jar)
Bay leave (1 per pint jar)
Peppercorn (A few whole peppercorn per pint jar)
Cloves (2 per pint jar)
Optional herbs (Thyme, tarragon, or mint)
1. Prepare the mushrooms by cleaning off the dirt, trimming off any moldy spots, and scrapping off the bottom stems. Cut or tear them by hand into large pieces.
2. Mix the salt and water, and pour the brine over the mushrooms. Let the mushrooms sit in the refrigerator, covered for 24 hours.
3. Remove the mushrooms from the brine, rinse, and then lay them out on paper towels to dry. (I had to change the paper towel a few times over a period of an hour while I sterilized all my equipment and jars.)
4. Dry saute them to heat them up (and drying them up a bit more), then drop them into a bath of boiling white wine vinegar. After 1-2 minutes pack about 1 cup into dry, sterile pint jars.
5. Place the garlic clove, bay leave, peppercorn and optional aromatic herb on top of the mushrooms.
6. In a saucepan, add the wine and oil to the vinegar; bring to a boil and pour the boiling mixture over the mushrooms. Leave 1/2 inch room from the top. (The mushrooms will absorb the mixture as it cools.)
7. Screw on the lid. Invert the jars on a kitchen towel and allow them to cool to room temperature. When they are cool, tighten the lids and refrigerate.
*Warning: Your house will smell like feet from all the vinegar. Be sure to keep all doors closed to prevent flies from wandering in. The last pickling fest I had at the end of summer, I left my front door open to let some cool air in and ended up being plagued by a hundred flies in my apt.
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