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

The grapes of waves. Okinawa’s green caviar.

海ぶどう umi-budo is an Okinawan delicacy. The name is literally a “sea grapes” and it’s a tasty seaweed. No, it’s the tastiest seaweed I’ve eaten so far, and I’ve tried a few in Japan.

It’s caulerpa lentillifera. It’s also called the “green caviar“. It’s not cheap for a sea produce here, but still affordable. Yes, the taste and mouth feel are caviardesque. It has some resemblance with salicornia or samphire too.

It is loaded with nutrients, particularly minerals like iron and others vitamin. That’s one more Okinawan super-food. But anything they graze there would have magic powers, so they have no merit to still look like kids in their 90’s… You can feel it is loaded with iodine, and very salty too. If you like strong taste seafood you’ll love it, but that’s surely not for everybody. It’s usually eaten raw, with some sour or vinegar sauce to contrast it.

with tofu

in sushi

Try it some day !

Flower power pasta

Two flowers and a dish of spaghetti. Happy !

My beloved nanohana are back on the market. They are the unopened blossoms of rape (the plant to make rapeseed/canola oil) and the greens around.

Lots of leaves… They sell some like that, with lots of stalk, cheaply. It’s possible to buy only the blossom part and the first leaves, and it’s more expensive.
The pasta dish is very simple. I blanched the nanohana in the pasta water (1 minute before the end). Then added on the pasta, with parsley, salt, olive oil.

There are still some edible miniature chrysanthemum. I think it’s good to eat flowers to fight pollen allergy. So I just placed them as toppings.

A side dish : natto, kimchi, and cut shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves).

New and fresh Japanese apples

Nature’s presents. Delicious Autumn fruits and other produce are overflowing. Well, they are natural to a point. You wouldn’t be impressed by wild apples that are randomly sweet, irregular and tiny like walnuts. The big juicy pretty fruits are the results of centuries of cultivations, grafts, crossings. Japan is very recent in the game as apple cultivation started seriously only from the 1920’s with a few imported trees. But they have really done great in the last decades, particularly for table apple (to eat raw, not cooking apples). These two have been created in the 1990’s.

This apple is　秋映 akibae (reflection of Autumn) from Nagano. The skin is incredibly dark red. It’s quite unusual and a bit pricey.

These are 黄王 kiou (yellow king). They are more common.

Maybe there are puns included in the names as kiou is homonym with “chess king” and akibae can mean phonetically “in direction of Akihabara”, the computer/electronic shop town inside Tokyo.　So the red ones are people that play chess, and the yellow ones for nerds ?