Janos’ Non-Elevated Scrambled Eggs.

For those of you in the know, this is a (Severely Bastardized) version of Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Elevated Scrambled Eggs’. (On fried mushrooms and toast in this case.)

This bears no resemblance to Gordon’s signature scrambled eggs other than the method used to produce the scramble.

It’s cheap shit wheat bread, with cheap shit canned mushrooms, with cheap shit grocery store ‘fresh’ herbs which have likely been sitting there for a week after being picked. Ingredient wise it’s embarrassing, really. I’m simply sharing it with you here for the METHOD. Ignore the ingredients.

If you really want to make the mushroom version and only have canned mushrooms like I did, you can drain them, fry them in butter, and season them with salt and pepper, then put them on your toast. I make toast in the pan, as I don’t have a toaster. Simply put some butter in the pan on high heat, sear one side, put a little more butter into the pan, sear the other side, voila, toast. Drain any liquid from the mushrooms via a paper towel, and put on toast.

Also, unfortunately my ‘non-stick’ pan is a VERY stick pan. It worked for about 2 weeks and has been worthless ever since. It’s about 12 years old and I badly need a new set of nonstick cookware.

However the crème fraîche is home made only as of a few days ago, and I added a light sprinkle of Maldon finishing salt that the original recipe didn’t call for.

It’s the only thing I had on hand, was starving, but I wanted to try and practice Gordon’s scrambled egg method, so I figured what the hell. It came out quite tasty, all things considered. If it’s this good using the crappy ingredients I used, it must be beyond amazing using quality ingredients.

I’m interested in trying this recipe with some real Brioche, and perhaps some white truffle oil.

Were I home in PA, the fresh wild mushrooms would not be a problem. Here, I can’t find them locally and purchasing them would be extremely cost prohibitive. Perhaps fresh non-wild mushrooms may be the next best thing.

Recipe is below

Janos’ Non-Elevated Scrambled Eggs.

Ingredients:

5 eggs

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon crème fraîche

1 teaspoon chopped fresh chives (I used a mix of parsley, dill, and chives that I had left over from omelets, it worked great.)

Kosher salt

Black pepper (freshly ground)

Maldon finishing salt (optional)

Equipment:

Small Non stick saucepan

Heat safe rubber spatula

Instructions:

Crack eggs one at a time separately into a small bowl, so as to make it easy to get out any eggshells if you happen to get a piece in your eggs, then pout into your unheated pan.

Add the butter.

Turn the pan on to medium heat.

Constantly stir with rubber spatula, scraping down the bottom and sides of the pan.

You will have them on the heat for 90 seconds, off the heat for 20. Repeat as needed.

You want the eggs soft but not runny.

As soon as they are soft, add in crème fraîche, chives, salt and pepper directly into pan and fold.

Remove from heat and plate immediately.

Sprinkle with Maldon finishing salt if you like.

It isn’t pretty, but it did come out delicious.

Fall Foraging and Quincely Woes

Well it’s creeping into fall once again. That lovely time of year following summer, where all kinds of harvest fruits are usually available for preservation and nomming.

To that end, there is a bumper crop on my quince tree this year. This would usually be cause for celebration here, as we pick, clean, slice, and freeze the fruit for use over the winter.

The problem is that the weather has been very odd all year. Whilst this has resulted in beautiful fruit up until now, it’s now hot when it should be cold.

It’s 83 degrees and very wet today, and will also be thus tomorrow. In October. In Pennsylvania.

Why is this a problem?

Because quince is a fall weather harvest fruit. The week plus of 80 degrees and extremely wet has meant that the ground is too soft to safely plant a ladder to harvest the fruit, and said fruit is rotting on the tree from the heat instead of being all nice and preserved as it should be by cooler temps. The first week of October is usually the first time I pick any fruit from this tree. I’ve had tons of fruit drop on their own over the last two weeks. And it’s ripening unevenly. One side will be shock green and the other side will be literally rotten. Not cool. Literally.

The next semi dry day here is forecast to be four days from now. At that time I’ll be harvesting all I can. They have to be hand picked. If they fall the impact bruises them very easily and ruins wherever it impacts.

The warm weather has also put the kabosh on fall mushrooms thus far. I’ve only found a half dozen mushrooms the past month. The only things that have been coming up have been either unknown or toxic varietals. No boletus. Well, there was ONE stray slippery pine boletus, but it was so bug eaten by the time I found it that I didn’t bother. Slippery pine boletus usually require shade of some kind to come up in any kind of proliferation, and it’s typically in the form of leaves that fall from other trees. When the leaves from the neighboring maple falls on the area of the roots of the scotch pine, is when these things will be popping up en masse. But the leaves haven’t fallen yet. The warmer temps mean that all the trees in my yard (save the barren walnut tree that got the clue early as usual…), haven’t dropped very many leaves at all yet. Two of my maples are still 100% green! The one closest to the house, the oldest one, has gotten the hint and the leaves are starting to slowly turn yellow.

So what’s it like in your neck of the woods, and has the weather been good or horrible for your local foraging preferences?

Why Forage?

A poster over on Green Deane Jordan’s ‘Eat the Weeds’ forum got me to thinking about this topic. http://eattheweeds.com/forum/index.php/topic,504.0/topicseen.html

I figured I’d share the answer here as well. 🙂

I forage for several reasons. I enjoy it, primarily, and secondarily, I get between 60% and 85% of my food from nature, depending on the season. I do eat oatmeal for breakfast every morning, with fruit if I have it, and I don’t get the oats from the wild. I also tend to eat at least one bowl of rice a day, (Sometimes brown rice, sometimes white rice), which I also don’t get from nature. So the majority of my ‘carbs’ come from the grocery store. Other than the oatmeal and rice, I don’t eat very many commercial grain products.

During the Spring, Summer, and Fall, I collect and freeze extra greens, fruits, mushrooms, etc, which then make up the majority of what I live on in the winter-time. In the winter I practically live on soup of various kinds and flavors, which make for a much warmer winter, and a much more nutritious meal, with drastically reduced components.

In other words, I can make ONE meal with the amount of food that I can use for a pot of soup to feed several people for 2-3 days. So it’s a no-brainer. I also put greens in my soup that I’ve previously frozen. I blanch and make little ‘soup packs’ consisting of thistle, plantago, dandelion, dock leaves, and wild garlic greens. Sometimes they’ll even have some violet blossoms and leaves thrown in there for a pretty mix.

In the warmer seasons of the year, I also fish quite often, and will incorporate whatever fresh fish I catch into my meals. I also freeze some for the winter. I don’t currently hunt anymore, but could easily do so again if I needed to, in order to supplement my protein intake. Currently farm raised chicken and the occasional piece of beef work just fine.

I started out eating wild foods from a very young age, as my father would always forage a few things that were in season and bring them home to eat. This was just the norm. He would bring home mustard greens, wild mushrooms, and he was also a very avid hunter and fisherman.

But perhaps the main reason to forage, in my estimation, is getting back to our foundational roots and being independent upon anyone or any thing. To reconnect where we came from and to be able to stand on our own two feet and not be dependent upon any system of supply or government entity for our meals.

Having that knowledge is liberating. Knowing that you can go anywhere on the planet, and not starve, and not worry too much about where your next meal is coming from, vs being utterly and totally dependent upon a global supply chain for your next meal, is the best feeling in the world.

Be a rebel. Eat the weeds.

How to Properly Freeze Fresh Wild Mushrooms

You will need:

1 large cookie sheet
wax paper to cover cookie sheet (optional)
Ziploc sandwich bags and/or gallon sized bags for large quantities.
fresh mushrooms

TO FREEZE:

First, clean and rinse the mushrooms.
Cut them into the appropriate sizes for whatever you plan to do with them, if they are very large or dense mushrooms, such as a giant puffball. In which case you’d want to make slices that were ¼” to ½” thick.

Oyster mushrooms can typically be frozen whole, as they thaw very nicely, and one large one is usually enough for an entire dish. The wax paper is good for these, otherwise they will stick to the cookie sheet. Toss the whole sheet in the freezer. Once they are completely frozen, you may now bag them in the Ziplocs. Gallon sized bags work well for this if you have a lot, as the mushrooms will be individually pre-frozen and won’t stick together.

I typically cut large mushrooms into halves or quarters. If I know what I am going to be using them for, before hand I don’t worry about using the cookie sheet and wax paper, and I just put them into the Ziploc baggie as it. Smaller specimens can just be frozen whole.

TO DEFROST:

Place the mushrooms in a bowl of cold water for about 15 minutes.

When they are mostly thawed, you can then slice them as you normally would for whatever dish you are preparing.

Cook them as you normally would…

And your favorite dish comes out just as tasty as if you were using the fresh mushrooms!

Pictured is Macaroni and oyster mushrooms with wild garlic, dandelion and chicory greens. Delicious!

Enjoy!

This and all future How-tos will be cataloged under the ‘How-to’ tab up on the top menu bar.