Sautéed swiss browns on toast: A simple pleasure
Hiya!
In an effort to try to make ‘home’ the source for more of the things we eat, Glenn and I recently attempted growing mushrooms ourselves. As we’re beginners, we have started with a “Grow Your Own” box rather than diving straight into the fungi cultivation we’d like to get into later on. We set it up in our bathroom and though it wasn’t particularly cost effective, it was exciting and fascinating to watch the fungi fruit and grow, and in all honesty we have never had a better tasting swiss brown. From the box, we got only a couple of handfuls of mushrooms, so it really was for the love and didn’t offer to us a genuine option for home mushroom cultivation given that once the box stopped fruiting we would have had to buy another one to start again. In time, it would be nice to learn how to cultivate mushrooms from spores, like Milkwood does, and become more self-sufficient in the mushie department.
Because mushrooms infrequently come through our kitchen, we were pretty determined to make the most of these SBs. Though a couple of favourite mushroom recipes include Heidi Swanson’s Spinach-Mushroom Quiche and a tofu-mushroom-cashew stir fry, we decided to go simple with these mushies and sautéed them following the Stephanie Alexander style – though we opted to replace the parsley with some home-grown sage.
The method is simple: heat a knob of butter on medium, then tip in the mushrooms (chopped up into nice chunks). Stir and cook for around 5 mins, then cover and leave them for another 2 mins. Uncover, turn the heat right up high and add a finely chopped garlic clove. Stir and cook for another 30 seconds, then add chopped sage, stir through, remove from the heat and serve right away seasoned with S&P.
On top of some toasted and buttered sourdough, these were really so beautiful and the simple method was a nice way to get the most out of our fresh SBs.
-Bec
My mouth is watering, Bec! I hope you become expert mushroom growers real soon!
Yum! we thought about getting one of these kits too, but I agree not very cost effective 😦
I really like the first photo, very artistic Glenn
Thanks Nor and Elise (sorry about the delay! Whoops!). I wish we became expert growers… But as Elise says it’s not very cost effective. I think we’d have to fully commit Milkwood style to be able to make it worthwhile…