Use the Easy Dough recipe for round pizza (found in the right sidebar). The best rule is: If you wonder whether it’s a chanterelle, don’t pick it.Ĭhanterelle Pizza with Grilled Duck Breast and Apricotsġ tablespoon chopped Italian flat leaf parsley Jack O’Lanterns grow on wood in large clumps, and in the dark. False chanterelles have sharp gills, thinner stems and more orange brown than the funnel-shaped real ones. They were small, beat-up and dirty, but chanterelles nonetheess, perfect on pizza with an organic duck breast.Ī word about chanterelle hunting: Beware of false chanterelles and Jack O’Lanterns. Just as we approached the top, Sam shouted, “Shamdrell…er… kantrell!” My eyes followed his point and sure enough, on an almost vertical, moss covered wall above the trail, he had found chanterelles. I had checked all the low-lying swampy forest but found no chanterelles so I gave up, caving in to my boys, who ranted about going to a large rocky ridge they call “Indian Rock.” A drizzle of mushroom jus and brioche toast points made it a superb dish.īack on planet earth and 22 hours after deciding to hunt, I struggled up a ridge in my usual mushroom hunting grounds. In front of guests, I cut the bag open with great finesse, releasing the herbal steam into their receptive faces. As he yelled epithets like “Hurrrry, you Amer-eee-Keeen Dog,” I scurried out of the kitchen and brought the bag and a sharp knife to the table. He baked the package at 375 degrees until the steam from the wine-soaked mushrooms bloated the air-tight bag into beautiful Hindenburg-like ball. My own chanterelle memory brings me back to Le Ciel Bleu restaurant in Chicago in 1988, where I was a dining room captain and served hundreds of appetizers called “Champignon en Papillote,” or mushrooms baked in parchment paper.įor this dish, our belligerent yet talented Chef Dominique folded a round piece of parchment paper around a pile of chanterelles he had tossed in a bowl of white Bordeaux, paper thin slices of garlic, chopped thyme and parsley, and sea salt. Since 1893, it has been the favored mushroom to throw into thick-ass bechamel for Maxime Gaillard’s famous Croutes Aux Champignons (baked mushrooms on toast) at Chez Maxim’s in Paris. Often the simplest preparation is the best: sauteed in butter with chervil or flat leaf parsley and shallots. The mushroom’s firm, eggshell yellow flesh has the fruity taste of apricot with a peppery finish, which is why the Germans call it pfifferling. In France, it’s known as the girolle in Italy as canterello, galletto, gallinacci, finferlo, margherita and garitula. The name chanterelle comes from the Greek cantharos, meaning cup. The lure of free booty taken easily from mother nature, and all you have to do is hunt. Now, nothing tweeks the goon’s brain like the challenge of a forest forage. “On the north side of ridges with big oaks,” came another. “Under big beech trees,” came one response. Within the next 30 minutes, three more people said it was a bumper year for the chanterelles, and I goaded them on to tell me where to look. “Well, you gotta get your head out of that pizza oven and get out there dude, there poppin’ everywhere!” He walked away. “Aaaaaaa no,” I said, my response sounding more ignorant than usual. “No kidding John, you haven’t been chanterelle hunting yet?” my astonished foodie-friend asked while buying a hunk of pizza from me.
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