Wild Mushroom Risotto

Ladies and gentlemen, last night’s dinner was so good that in our haste to eat it, we forgot to document it!

Fortunately you have a good imagination, and know without even seeing it just how good this is going to be…and trust me, it was good!

This is an all season recipe that can be used with new varieties of mushrooms as they become available throughout the season.  Ingredients like onions, garlic, and fresh herbs are often available straight through the end of the summer season, and are available dry after that. Butter can be purchased from your local dairy farmer year round (co-ops and heath food stores are good sources too.)

The mushroom guy at my local farmer’s market here in Culver City (Dirk, from LA Funghi) had some great looking hen of the woods mushrooms on Tuesday, as well as my personal all-time favorite, morels.  Morels are expensive, and have a flavor that is best not interfered with.  I like to saute them in butter with a pinch of sea salt and a touch of freshly cracked black pepper.  Put a few on top of the portioned risotto for a gorgeous, mouthwatering finish.  Really any wild mushrooms will do for this dish, though some will be better than others.  If you’re not a seasoned wild mushroom eater, ask the person you buy your mushrooms from to recommend the best ones for this dish.  Trust me, he or she will know.

Morals and Morels

Locally collected Morels

It was a feeling of moral necessity that helped me drag myself to the farmer’s market yesterday, despite my steadfast desire to stay seated at my desk in a half-working, mostly time-wasting daze.  Since oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico over a month ago, I’ve grown almost completely despondent.  I’ve long been concerned with the havoc our human systems are wreaking on both the planet and our own societies, but the oil spill has pushed me over an edge of sorts.  We will probably drill again, even with a democrat in the white house, and an environmental catastrophe unfolding.  This reality has caused me to seriously question the fate of our collective future.

What does one do?  You can’t escape oil culture completely, and this dependence makes it hard to try escaping it at all.  From the vehicles that help us navigate modern life, to the clothes we wear and the food we put on our plates; sweet crude is a very real ingredient in the recipe of our modern existence.  But if we passively accept our fate as oil guzzlers by doing nothing to stop our personal consumption, spills like the one happening in the Gulf right now are totally on us.  You can blame BP, you can blame the government; at the end of the day, it is those of us who purchase and consume oil who are ultimately at fault.  That’s a market democracy, folks.  The day we stop demanding ever more energy in the form of oil-intensive products and services, is the day the last drill head is lifted from the soil.

The correlation between oil and food is one of America’s biggest dirty little secrets.