I'm amazed how mushrooms pop up overnight after a good rain. I'm even more amazed how some of them are so incredibly delicious!
1. Foraging Shaggy Parasols
I've been harvesting a lot of Shaggy Parasols this fall. It's the first year I've seen them here at Haphazard Homestead. They have been popping up after every big rain, since the first week of November. It's been great to just go out into my yard and find them.
I made a post earlier this week that showed some Shaggy Parasols coming up underneath a pile of sticks - I used them to make a great salad. But they are more commonly found out in the open grass. That's where I found these mushrooms - just out in the grass in my yard.
There are several different species of mushrooms that are considered "Shaggy Parasols". The ones in my yard are Chlorophyllum brunneum. I'll make a separate post with more about identifying these mushrooms. But it is essential to make sure that the spores for these mushrooms are white, instead of green! Green-spored Shaggy Parasols are NOT good for eating - at all!
2. Prepping the Parasols
Shaggy Parasols seem a lot like a Portabello mushroom. They are substantial, with a hearty, traditional mushroom flavor. They do need to be cooked thoroughly, though. So I thought these would be good for a Stroganoff-type dish.
These mushrooms were in great shape, with no bug damage. And they were clean, since they had been growing in the grass. All I had to do was slice them into strips about an inch wide. That's it. I did have to be a little careful with the gills, though. Those gills are brittle. I handled my sliced pieces pretty gently, so I wouldn't break them off.
I cooked the Shaggy Parasol slices in a medium-hot cast iron skillet, with a little olive oil. You can see how they start off white and fluffy. Don't think that the mushrooms are fully cooked when they turn a golden brown, like the middle picture - No! Shaggy Parasols need to be well-cooked. I kept cooking the mushrooms until they had transformed their texture all the way through and turned a deep, dark brown.
Shaggy Parasols are not full of moisture like many other wild mushrooms. So I did have to add a little water every now and then to braise the mushrooms. Here is a problem - the cooked mushrooms strips are so tasty, I ate about one-third of them right out of the skillet!
3. Cooking the Stroganoff
In the US, a typical stroganoff is beef strips over eggs noodles, in a sour cream sauce. I'm using the parasol mushroom strips instead of beef. The hearty mushroom flavor of Shaggy Parasols really adds a lot! Any strogonoff recipe you have would work just as well, I'm sure.
To make my stroganoff, I sauteed a sliced onion. Added my Shaggy Parasol strips. Now this is where the sour cream comes in, but I didn't have any. So I used flax milk and yogurt - and that's just fine, too. Then I added cooked egg noodles - and salt and pepper. That's it. It's easy.
I served my Shaggy Parasol Stroganoff with some other food from here at Haphazard Homestead -- sauteed onions and wild field mustard, homegrown tomatoes that ripened slowly after my last harvest in October, some fried young Fox Squirrel, and for dessert, slices of a homegrown Large Korean Pear. Thanks, homestead!
What Do You Think?
Did you see some wild mushrooms this fall? Can you identify any wild mushrooms? Do you eat any wild mushrooms? What's your favorite wild mushroom to eat?
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