Todd took the mushrooms to the nursery across the street from his work today to make sure we identified them correctly. Turns out we did a pretty damn good job: The slightly phallic-looking mushroom in the foreground is indeed a black elfin saddle (helvella lacunosa if you want to get all fancy-pants), and the yellowish mushrooms behind it are yellowfoot chanterelles, also known as winter chanterelles or cantharellus tubaeformis. And yes, both are very edible!
You can guess what we had for dinner tonight.
The black elfin saddles were amazing -- wish I had found more, but they were pretty hard to spot. (I still have no idea how I lucked out and found these. They were barely visible -- peeking out from under some wet grass.) We cut them into rounds (because of the hollow stem, they kind of reminded me of okra), fried them in butter and finished them with a touch of sea salt. Holy freaking crap -- they were fabulous. They tasted like really savory potato chips, only not quite as crunchy or as oily, but with the same snack-foody-goodness as potato chips. Todd told me that some people like to dry them out and then crush them into a powder and use that to season food. I can definitely see how that would work -- these mushrooms just had so much flavor.
After our black elfin saddle appetizer, we cooked up the chanterelles in a pasta with garlic, onions and a splash of Chardonnay. I think I overdid it a little on the garlic, though -- right now the garlic we have here at home has gigantic cloves, so one of these cloves is like adding four normal-sized cloves. Still, it was a great dish. The chanterelles were much milder than the black elfin saddles, but they were still very good. I imagine they'd be pretty versatile with a number of different recipes because they seem like they'd go well with various ingredients.
Tomorrow, we dine on the candy caps. I can't wait!
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