Ah Mushrooms, natures great gift, a brain underground, connected for miles mimicking our own neuro-pathways. If you’ve never seen the TED talk by Paul Stamets about 6 ways mushrooms can change the world, do so now, it’s absolutely brilliant.
Tis the season for morel mushrooms around these parts, though I have yet to find any. Elusive little gems they are, but my eyes are always scanning whenever we go for our walks. Morels would work well for this Forest Risotto as well. My lovely friend Aya gifted me with the dried chanterelles I used. She harvested them from her top secret patch nearby. We’ve only just met but she knows the way straight to my heart. I love wild mushrooms so much I even have one tattooed on my back…yep can’t get mush more hardcore than that.
Her gift inspired me to combine the small efforts of this last week- homemade goat cheese & foraged spruce tips into a heavenly faux risotto. Now I suppose you could definitely just go ahead and use arborio rice if you wanted. However the cauliflower rice is light and easy to digest, plus you can eat more of it, soaked in delicious creamy mushroom sauce. Most definitely you have some spruce tips or pine tips nearby (If live in North America, or Europe). It’s the one time of year you can eat a tree, aside from broccoli. Harvest the new lime green growth, give it a try, it should be soft and citrusy. There’s so many things you can do with these, many people make spruce tip syrup. You can also pickle them or make a jelly. Indigenous people made tea with them for the high Vitamin C content. I like to add them to certain dishes for a really unique forest flavour.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups dried chanterelles or morel mushrooms, soaked for 6 hours (reserve liquid)
- 3/4 cup goat cheese
- 2 Tbs spruce tips, finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 Tbs ghee or butter
- 1 small head of cauliflower
- 1/2 tsp good salt
- lots of fresh cracked pepper
Instructions
- In a frying pan, melt ghee or butter and add garlic to sautee for a minute. Add drained mushrooms. Cook on lowest low.
- Break the cauliflower into florets and add to a food processor or blender (if using a blender do it in batches) pulse until cauliflower resembles the size of rice, do not over process.
- In another large skillet, add some ghee or butter to coat the pan and add cauliflower. Cover and let cook for about 6-8 minutes. Keep stirring intermittently, making sure not to over cook.
- In your frying pan with the mushrooms, add goat cheese and 3/4 cup reserved mushroom soaking liquid. Stir and cover on medium heat for 5 minutes.
- Add salt and pepper to your sauce, mix in cooked cauliflower rice, and spruce tips.
- Bon appétit!
