Edible Home-Grown Mushrooms!

These were the wild edible mushrooms from the summer that Joe foraged.
Chanterelles, black trumpets, chicken of the woods,  crown-tip corals!

Went down to the Pawtucket Indoor Farmer's Market in Rhode Island the other day and picked up a shitake log!  Do you know what this means!?!?!  This means I can grow delicious, edible fungi right in my home and eat it as fresh as possible!


Disclaimer: You should NOT eat any mushrooms without cooking them first and you definitely should NOT eat any mushroom you are not 100% sure is edible.

In nature, Shitakes grow wild at the base of oak trees in the fall.  We had to simulate the high humidity and cool temperatures of these conditions in order to have a successful harvest.  Farming Turtles (the farm that produces the Fungi logs) composes the logs of Red Oak sawdust, millet grain, rye grain, wheat bran and gypsum.  The logs are then infused with Shitake spores.

To simulate the natural conditions the shitakes grow in we filled a giant pot 1/3 high with water.  Then we placed a small platform for the log to sit on so it did not actually touch the water, but instead benefited from the humidity.  As an added security that the log did not touch the water, we made a small barrier between the log and water with some cellophane. We also covered the top with cellophane to trap the humidity.  We placed the pot with the log in the basement to mimic the cool and dark conditions necessary for growth.  We made sure that the lights stayed off, unless we were checking on the mushrooms.  Every day we would go downstairs and mist the log with water from a clean spray bottle.

This is what happened over the next few weeks:

When each mushroom cap was about 1-2 inches in diameter, we snipped them at the root of the stem and cooked them up.

This week we made:

• Shitake, caramelized onion and goat cheese omelettes
• Shitake pilaf
• Shitake, onion, pepper pasta with a red wine sauce
• Good ol' Shitakes with butter

It was a delicious couple of weeks with mushrooms, but it got to a point where the mushrooms started to sporelate before we could eat them!  Not to worry!  They are super easy to dry!

All we did was place them in a woven basket by a window that gets a lot of sunlight...

Voila!  Dried mushrooms that I can either reconstitute in some water or cook with some rice, lentils or quinoa to plump right up!  

This is only round 1.  Now the log goes in to dormancy and we get to start all over for at least 2 more rounds!  You know you're jealous.  I would be, too.  ;-)

~Shreena