Well, it's called "Chicken" of the Woods... plus the color contrasts are great!
Complex & rich flavors with a light feel.
Straight-forward yumminess in the Italian tradition.
Good, and good for you. The strong green flavor is well balanced by the smoky umami of the maitake.
Here is a great recipe with a bit of a tropical Thai twist. It is not hot, but savory, salty and slightly sweet and meaty all at once.
Mushrooms with coconut milk might not sound very good, but the soup is wonderful. We ran across a very immature chicken mushroom (Laetiporus sulphureus) this week, and brought home about 15 pounds of it to cook with. Much will be frozen, but some will be made into something tasty right now. The mushroom was growing on a dying deciduous tree, rather high up. Robert cut off a large portion and carted it home in a grocery shopping bag. It was so fresh, it soaked through the bag onto the floor of the car, and gave off a lot of moisture when cut and sautéed. Lambs\'s quarters (Chenopodium berlandieri) is an abundant weed probably growing in your yard or an open field area, but you could substitute spinach.
At a recent weekend mushroom foray with CVMS, Robert was lucky to find a small, fresh sulphur shelf, or chicken mushroom (Laetiporous sulphureus). This is a common autumn polypore found growing on dead trees and stumps.
When fresh, the colors are bright orange with a bright yellow underside on each shelf. This specimen was fresh and quite wet. We brought it home and decided to make a stuffed braided bread. Sulphur shelf is a firm, meaty mushroom, and I made a substantial filling along with sautéed onions and brie. We shared some the next day at another foray. I usually make a standard pizza dough with a bit of whole wheat flour, but you could use pizza dough from the grocery store. To make it easier to dice the brie, I freeze a chunk of it first and then toss the diced brie in a pinch of flour once cut. If you don't want to make the filled braid, you could also make a stuffed pocket or calzone with the filling.
Hen-of-the-Woods (Grifola frondosa) is an autumn mushroom we love. We received our first Hen from Russ Cohen in a trade for some jellies made from foraged wild foods, after we took a walk with him last year.
Since then, we have been dreaming about the hen season. Joining the Connecticut Valley Mycological Society has taught us a lot about how to look for this beautiful polypore, such as preferred habitat, correct timing, and how to determine a desirable specimen vs. a too old or too young specimen. When cleaning the mushroom and separating the parts for drying, freezing, and eating fresh, we usually end up with a lot of very solid stems from the cores of the mushrooms. These solid cores form the base of a spread that is highly flavorful and almost meaty. We like to make a grilled cheese sandwich with a heavy layer of tapenade, or eat it just spread on crackers.
