Champilège 1 : Paris in salad, and Japanese mushrooms

Mushroom of Paris . Mousseron de Paris.

A florilège is a book with a collection of poems. A champilège is a blog with a collection of mushroom dishes. It’s the full season, get ready for the series.

This Paris mushroom was one of the first cultivated from 19th century and it was produced in the underground tunnels of Paris. Besides the name “mousseron” used for the wild version passed into English as “mushroom”. So now that you are more knowledgeable, you can eat some…

Sliced and sprinkled with lemon-juice (otherwise they turn dark, which is not bad, but not pretty). Add to your Autumn salads. On the first photo, they are topping shredded cabbage, and covered with a vinaigrette sauce.

Family photo :
Maitake -Bunapi (shimeji)- Awabitake
Shiitake -Eringi

You will see them in the next 3 posts.
These are some of Japan’s mushrooms. All cultivated.
They are called kinoko or ~take. I think both are cute as “ki no ko” sounds like children of trees, and “~take” sounds like mount~ . So baby trees or mini-mountains for insects.
Some other Japanese fungi :
nameko

hanabi-take

yamabushi-take

kikurage

enoki

shimeji

There is only one wild mushroom, that is very expensive :

matsutake

Sansai. Japanese mountain vegetables in a meal

Here is the meal that completes the black tofu and agedashi taro in the previous post.

Let’s talk a little about 山菜 sansai mean litterally mountain vegetables. That’s a generic name for many plants wild or cultivated in small amounts that are used in Japan, but also in Korea and China. The hermit Buddhist monks were counting on them to diversify their dishes, and they are often used in the shojin ryori (monk fasting meals) and kaiseki ryori (refined meal before tea ceremony). You can go and gather yours if you live in the countryside. I’m not sure that what I’d pick up near Osaka would be edible particularly with the current level of air pollution. So I usually find mines in the store, and they are cultivated.
There is no complete list of the varieties of sansai. It’s whatever you can eat. 　

I had a mix containing nameko (orange mushrooms), enoki (white long mushrooms), warabi (in green, it’s fern sprouts), zenmai (in brown), small takenoko (bamboo sprouts, slices), kikurage (in dark brown, wood ear mushrooms). And I had renkon (lotus root).

They were boiled. So I rinsed and reheated them with dashi (fish broth), a little mirin and soy sauce.

Grilled komochi shishamo fish, with yuzu-kosho citrus pepper condiment.

Pastel salad : cabbage, kabu turnip and vinegar pickled ginger.

And genmai (brown rice). Well, that makes a nice Japanese meal. That’s not so long to prepare as the tofu was made in advance, the rice is done in the cooker, the veggies were pre-cooked.

Where do you hail from Miss Doria ?

Kinoko Doria. Mushroom Doria.

It’s a hot comforting dish totally adopted by Japan… but where does that come from exactly ? Big mystery !

It seems Miss Doria arrived, without her luggage in the port of Yokohoma, at least 100 years ago.
I never got an explanation from where it comes. What country ? Wikipedia says it’s from mine.
Roughly, their tale :

At the origine, the dish was created in a restaurant in Paris and name from the noble Italian family “Doria”. That was a dish with cucumber, egg, and tomato to represent the flag of Italy…. Then in 1925, it was made in Yokohama, by Swiss chef Saly Weil , with shrimp bechamel…

Logical ? Plausible ? Saly Weil arrived in Japan in 1927, they also say.
There is a little more on that chef on the web.
Saly was a man… I liked the idea of an international woman chef in the 1920’s. Too bad.

I have not found anything about Doria in Europe.

So you were born in Paris, Miss Doria ? Champignons de Paris, mushrooms. Why Paris ? Because they started growing some mousserons wild mushrooms in the caves under Paris. Probably at the time of the supposed Doria invention.

Make a 3 step doria

1. Make rice :
Rice pilaf or refried in sauce… any flavor is OK.

2. White layer
Top with white sauce and cheese. The layer can be… very thick. I am little player. I don’t want to be able to say it’s as thick as my waist and hear people giggle and say : “Oh yeah !”.

3 Gratinage
In the oven, 10 minutes. Serve hooooot ! You can even serve it on a keep-me-hooot brasero.

Kobe being a copycat town of Yokohama, it has a number of Doria Restaurants. All over Japan, it is served in the Yoshoku Restaurants. Yoshoku is old-style “Western for Japanese” food that started from Meiji Era. The Doria shops offer countless variations.

Types of Doria

Common colors of rice sauce : yellow (butter and “saffron”), red (tomato), orange, brown (meat sauce), green…
Common types : plain doria, chicken doria, seafood doria
Optional topping : I have seen some topped by : a hamburger, an egg, a big shrimp, tons of cheese, an omelette, sausages, meat-balls, fried items like croquettes…

Sunny sides.

Well, today’s flavor… it is a Milano-fu Doria (Doria Milanese)… totally un-Milanese, of course.

Mushrooms, onions, garlic, stir-fried brown rice, with lots of tomato paste, nutmeg, turmeric, herbes de Provence. I made 2 layers of rice. In between : raw spinach and Asian napa cabbage.
A thin layer of simple white sauce with a little Hokkaido cheddar. Flakes of aged parmesan (very hard…).

(meal with double serving of rice)

Cal 726 F25.9g C112.5g P28.6g

Shapeless creamy okonomiyaki : ika to kinoko

Ika, calamari. Kinoko, mushrooms.
Today’s okonomiyaki owes its shape, well it lacks of to my laziness. I didn’t bother getting the plate and grasped that old frying pan, remembering too late that it sticked so much. Also, I cooked a huge one in one time… In spite of all that, it was delicious.

Les okonomiyakis gourmands (compilation)

That starts with good crunchy cabbage.

A little red onion, a little calamari (sauteed before), a few enoki mushrooms, minced stalks of shiitake mushrooms…

The batter contains naga-imo for the creamy texture, powdered dry fish for the flavor. I added an egg.

Shiitake mushrooms. And a second egg :

Sauce (Ikari Worcester), fish flakes, nori, a little turmeric. It’s not usual to use the last topping, but turmeric, ukon in Japanese, grows locally and is a common spice and food preserving additive. It regain a new popularity as recent research says it has big health benefits.

The big one (3 servings)
Cal 696 F18.6g C92.4g P45.9g