Recipe:Amanda's Meyer Lemons and Thomas's Mushroom Confit
I'm leaving for Dallas tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. and will be gone for a week. This evening I faced a refrigerator full of spoilable food and was reminded why people starting canning in the first place: to preserve the good stuff before it rots. That's why this blog is Saving the Season, ya'll.
The first thing was to use the extra Meyer lemons, ABOVE, for GUEST BLOGGER AMANDA MILLER'S SALT-PRESERVED LEMONS. It is the most pleasantly fragrant work you can imagine.
And then I did a confit of wild mushrooms, using the stunning wild hens-of-the-woods I got from LA Funghi at the Culver City Farmer's Market on Tuesday. The proprietor is an odd duck, but he's got the best selection of wild mushrooms—all harvested in Humbolt County—that I've seen in SoCal.
A confit is when you cook something in fat, then preserve it by covering it in the cooking fat. In this case, it's a short-term preserve for keeping in the fridge. (NB: mushrooms are a low-acid food and cannot be safely canned using the water-bath method.) I looked at recipes by Linda Ziedrich, aka Linda the Great, and Thomas Keller. His is overly fussy but gives good guidance.
The basic idea is that you trim a pound of mushrooms and then gently heat them for a few minutes in a cup of warm olive oil that has been seasoned with fresh herbs. As you turn them in the hot oil, the mushrooms will sweat and wilt and finally collapse. Turn off the heat, toss with salt, pepper and a good tablespoon of vinegar and let them cool in their juices. Then spoon them into a jar, top up with more oil if necessary and store in the refrigerator for up to a month. The secret is the vinegar.
Reader Comments (1)
Glad to have been of delicious assistance! Enjoy Texas, y'all. (I suppose that's probably as rude as people tacking "eh" onto all things Canadian...but...I couldn't resist)