White forrest of mushrooms (via Gourmande in Osaka)

They are not aliens, but mushrooms… with funny names. Yamabushi-take. Mountain monk mushrooms. The Yamabushi mountain monks are old men, they have long hair and beard… well in the legend. Under the kimono. This is a hanabi-take. A firework mushroom. These are called bunapee. The full name is "white buna-shimeji", so they shortened it. Addition : They all grow in a farm. They are totally white. Recently new colors have been created for nearly … Read More

via Gourmande in Osaka

Rice-cooker mushrooms and beef wine stew (via Gourmande in Osaka)

Last year…

Beef marinated a few hours in red wine, with lemon peel, garlic, laurel, cardamom. Forgot it all day in the rice-cooker (rice porridge mode) with red onion, shiitake mushrooms, konnyaku noodles. Added enoki mushrooms. While I prepared bifun (rice noodles) stri-fried in olive oil, with bok choy and topped with lots of Italian parsley. Bok choy and Italian parsley bifun. Enoki mushrooms. White konnyaku noodles colored by the sauce. Red onion. Cal 5 … Read More

via Gourmande in Osaka

A tray of ingredients to hot pot… (mini sukiyaki dinner) (via Gourmande in Osaka)

Last year…

Evening is fresher… nothing better than a small informal sukiyaki to warm up the night. Here you have carrots, konnyaku noddles, green leeks, fine slices of lean beef, shiitake mushrooms, "fu" (gluten croutons) shaped in balls and flowers, small brown "enokidake mushrooms" (their name is "yamacha" mountain brown) and a sudachi (forrest fragrant small green lemon) that I don't add into the pot but as a final seasoning for the mushrooms. For the … Read More

via Gourmande in Osaka

White forrest of mushrooms

They are not aliens, but mushrooms… with funny names.

Yamabushi-take. Mountain monk mushrooms. The Yamabushi mountain monks are old men, they have long hair and beard… well in the legend.

Under the kimono.

This is a hanabi-take. A firework mushroom.

These are called bunapee. The full name is “white buna-shimeji”, so they shortened it.

Addition :
They all grow in a farm. They are totally white. Recently new colors have been created for nearly all cultivated mushrooms.

I think the hairy one, yamabushi-take can be seen in the woods, in shaded places, on trees, but the shape is less round :
yamabushitake

The “hanabi” is a variation of “champignon noir chinois” (“wood ear” ?) that is sold dried in Asian stores :
kikurage, champignon noir, wood ear
“White wood ear” is commonly added to syrup fruit salads in Taiwan. We find it easily dried, but the fresh ones are original in Japan.

The shimeji can be seen in the wild but it’s brown and larger. It grows on the ground.

Wild mushrooms are rare now in Japan, or there are too many people that went to take them before you arrive. No chance of gathering any.
On the many varieties we can buy, only two have a strong flavor, the shiitake and the matsutake, which is very expensive.

Nameko the sticky/jelly mushroom

Al dente folie. All that in my pasta ?

I was craving for good old thick pasta… To get those that are supposed to boil 14 minutes, I did 2 shops, OK both less than 100 m from home, but well, just for pasta. I usually like the fact shops adapt supply to seasons, for fresh products. For pasta less, they had many on display, but all were “special salad pasta, cooked only in 5 minutes”. Great consensus.

Then, I had lots of shellfish… but that doesn’t make so much to eat in the end.

While the clams were bathing and the pasta starting to boil, I opened the fridge to find :
red wine, basil with its flowers, grapes of green sansho, leftover of nameko mushrooms, chili pepper, new onion, garlic… and not on the photo, organic lemon.

All that added in the right order… That turned out really great.

The melty nameko mushrooms.

Sansho, and it’s sour and bitter taste. Difficult to describe. That scraps the tongue without burning, which is pleasant when it’s hot. I’ll soon tell you more about that plant that is the Japanese species of Sichuan pepper.