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.