Beer Battered Maitake Mushroom With Japanese Tartar Sauce - Recipe

Batter-fried maitake mushrooms with a cross-cultural tartar sauce

Maitake mushrooms are very common and much-loved in Japan. In the US they are often known as Hen of the Woods mushrooms (not to be confused with Chicken of the Woods, which is completely different - or Chicken of the Sea, for that matter). They are an easy wild mushroom to enjoy; the flavor is pretty much similar to a button mushroom, just more intense.

My favorite restaurant preparation of maitake has always been tempura. Thinking about how I could put a little different spin on that got me pondering about fish n' chips, so I went for a beer batter instead of traditional tempura, and made a tartar-style sauce with Japanese flavors to complement it. So I guess what we have here is a cross cultural vegetarian fishless fry. Fleur de sel with black sesame seeds, a slice of fried lime (or yuzu if you can get it), and a slice of fresh grapefruit round out the plate.

By the way, the Wikipedia page about fish and chips is hilarious! For example, did you know all the names for the little tasty bits of batter that come out of the fryer with no filling? How about: scratchins, scrumps, scraps, scrobblings, gribblings, bits, fishbits, crimps, fishcrimps, or crispy bits. Mmm, pass the scrobblings! And the Tinactin!

I know, I know, most folks just won't deep-fry at home. I don't blame you, because it is kind of messy and may waste some oil, and even be a little unhealthy :), but it doesn't have to be that big of a deal either. This dish is certainly worth making as an appetizer for a dinner party. Or better yet, a cocktail party. Fried stuff goes great with an adult beverage. 

Beer Battered Maitake Mushroom With Japanese Tartar Sauce
Serves 4
Vegetarian; not vegan or gluten-free

For the tartar sauce:

• 1/2 cup high-quality mayonnaise
• 3 green onions, finely diced (white parts and some of the green)
• 1 small dill pickle, finely diced
• 1 tablespoon umeboshi vinegar (or rice vinegar if not available)
• 2 teaspoons wasabi powder (or to your taste)
• (a little minced ginger would be nice too)

For the mushrooms:

• 4 fist-sized maitake (hen of the woods) mushrooms, halved
• 4 very thin slices of lime
• one 12 oz. bottle of beer, preferably a hoppy microbrew
• 1 cup all purpose-flour
• oil for deep frying (at least 3 inches deep in a decent sized pot, or mini-fryer; if you try to use too small a pot, the oil will cool when you add the food and make the batter soggy)

Garnish:

• 4 slices of grapefruit, pith and seeds carefully removed (see picture)
• 1/4 teaspoon fleur de sel
• 1 tablespoon black sesame seeds

1. Combine all of the sauce ingredient and let flavors marry. Taste and adjust before serving.
2. Preheat oil to 370 degrees Fahrenheit. Use proper safety precautions for deep frying.
3. Whisk together the beer and flour. It should be a fairly thin batter.
4. Dip each piece of mushroom and lime in the batter, allow excess to run off, and fry until golden brown, turning occasionally. Carefully remove from the fryer and allow to drain briefly on a paper towel. When removing the mushrooms, tilt in all directions to allow any excess oil to leave the crevasses.
5. You'll have batter leftover and a fryer full of hot oil, so now is the time to raid the fridge and fry some other stuff that sounds good. You don't do this very often, so why miss your chance.
6. To serve, arrange on individual plates as pictured above, or all on one platter with the sauce in a bowl.

Sugar High Friday - Mysterious Cupcakes

When I heard that Fanny was hosting Sugar High Friday and devoting it to cupcakes, I knew  immediately that I'd participate. I first met Fanny when she commented on these Caramelized Pear Cupcakes with Blue Cheese Frosting that I published only a few weeks after I started this blog and we've been pals ever since.

Fanny's enthusiasm and joy for pastry (and art) always inspires me, so I knew she'd make something special for her own SHF. Not surprisingly, these S'more-inspired beauties look amazing. Even more incredible when you realize she's from France and learned about s'mores from a book (!) which suggested you would make them in the oven (!!). I really want one of her cupcakes.

My own entry came out better conceptually than edibly. I was thinking about red velvet cake, a Southern classic which is enjoying a sentimental renaissance among people who surely have never set foot south of the Mason-Dixon line. It is typically made with vast quantities of red food coloring, but it occurred to me that you could get the same color with beets. Turns out I'm about 60 years too late; according to Wikipedia they did it that way after World War II.

Anyhow, with the beet idea in mind, I figured I'd go to a completely savory cupcake. I made a typical olive-oil based cake batter, choosing the extra-virgin option and using minimal sugar and lots of lemon juice, and added pureed red beets. The frosting is made from Laura Chenel goat cheese, in exactly the same way you would make a cream cheese frosting, and they are topped with tiny jewels of red and yellow beet.

[Hey Sugar High Friday visitors - if you are enjoying this post, please spread the word by giving it a Thumbs Up on StumbleUpon. Thanks a million!]

They didn't quite come off as planned. The cake was rather dense, and needed more beet flavor to balance the chevre. Part of that was I just rushed and didn't beat the egg whites enough, which are the only leavening. Rather than cooked beet puree, maybe it would work better to shred the raw vegetable like you would for a zucchini bread. It would have to be very fine to cook adequately. A bit of rosemary in the batter would add a nice complexity too.

I think these could be reworked into a pretty awesome little bite, made in mini-cupcake tins. It would be fun to serve them as a first course to mystified diners, wondering why you are giving them dessert first.

Goat Cheese And Fig Buttons?

I don't really even know what to call these, and I'll be the first to admit that is one sloppy plate. I was just hell-bent on trying out an idea, and since we have a new baby and aren't getting much sleep, sometimes all I can do is to try and make an approximation and file it away for later.

Disclaimers aside, this was pretty darn tasty. I got the idea from an episode of Iron Chef America, Battle Brain Freeze (which was really Battle Melon). I believe it was Flay's side (not Garces) that set some goat cheese with agar, then laid it in a rectangular mold with a piece of melon in the center, and sliced it into cubes.

I wanted to do something similar, but with figs. I didn't have a mold that was going to work well, so I just set the cheese into a ramekin, and used an apple corer to cut out circles of both it and the figs. Then I cut the remaining skin off of the fig cylinders. The figs take on an interesting alien look when cut this way! I want to do something else with that.

The rest of the plate is just some blackberry honey and balsamico tradizionale, plus a few microgreens which I could have at least taken the time to strew prettily!

By the way, Laura Chenel chevre is my favorite widely available brand. Creamy and tangy, with a thorough but not overwhelming goatiness.

I won't write out a whole recipe, but here's how to set the goat cheese - which could be a useful trick for other similar dairy products. Agar has to come to a boil to set, but if you boil the cheese, it will curdle. Yuck. So what you do is bring 1/8 teaspoon of pure agar powder (not the sweetened stuff) to a boil with 1/4 cup of water in a saucepan. Stir thoroughly. Dump out about half the contents (that is just the smallest amount practical to work with), turn off the heat, then whisk in 100 grams of goat cheese. If it isn't fully melted, put back over the lowest possible flame. As soon as it is melted, pour into a mold and refrigerate. It should set up as soon as it is chilled.