Meatless Monday and the Chicken Fish Mushroom

Sometimes it’s difficult for me to experiment with new foods or combinations of foods.  I, like anyone, get into a food rut fairly often.  Fortunately, two factors help shake me out of my rut periodically:  meatless Mondays and Claybank Farms’ Farmer Greg.

Meatless Mondays are a way to incorporate more vegetarian entrees into your diet, but without a huge commitment.  I’m always on the lookout for simple vegetarian fare for Monday evenings, and often a fun recipe will catch my eye from my regular email, blog, or Facebook feeds.  Not so yesterday, though.  I was looking for vegetarian comfort food, and not finding it.  And that’s when I thought of the chicken mushrooms.

Greg at Claybank Farms has started a new CSA-type buying club this summer for some of his quick-to-go farmer’s market items.  You pay a certain sum up front (say, $100 or so), Greg calls each Wednesday and gives you a list of his “special offerings” for the coming weekend, then deducts the amount from your card each week. Mushrooms are often on this list, because normally if you don’t make it to the market by about 8:00 a.m., they’re sold out. This way, I can come to the market any time before noon and get my pick of whatever he has available.  Last week he called with an offer of a brand new item:  chicken mushrooms.

Chicken mushrooms?  Chicken mushrooms, I ask?

I google it of course, and find out that chicken mushrooms, Laetiporus, are indeed a common variety of mushroom, and have a texture and flavor similar to white meat.  Mushrooms are rich in B vitamins and hard-to-find minerals, and it seems that this particular variety has the benefit of inhibiting the growth of staph bacteria. 

Greg laughingly told me he was accused of serving his vegetarian guests fish when he cooked the chicken mushrooms into a pasta sauce.  So I needed to find out for myself if they tasted like chicken or fish…

I chopped them into thin slices.  It looked more than a little like cooked salmon.  I was leaning towards fish.

I started out with sautéing them in a bit of butter, olive oil, and a couple of minced cloves of garlic.  But I had to add more oil, as they stuck to the bottom of the pan.  I coated them with a bit of flour, then added some chicken broth, a cup and a half of half-and-half, and a half cup of shredded Italian four-cheese blend.  I guess tonight’s dinner wasn’t going to be light vegetarian fare after all.  In hindsight, I should have cooked the mushrooms in broth to start with, as their texture really is quite dense and a bit dry.

 

I combined the creamy garlic mushroom sauce with a package of cooked farfalle, and served some roasted kale on the side.  My son sat down to dinner, took a bite and asked, “is this chicken?”  A few minutes later my husband sat down to eat and said, “I didn’t know we were having salmon.”

I guess the jury’s still out.  I think they taste like mushrooms.