A little bit of wild forest, a little bit of cultivated garden - all in grilled squash blossoms! So delicious!
A Forest Lobster
Where to start for making a dish from this week's special ingredient - courgettes, aka summer squash? In the forest! I was hiking along the Oregon coast. And what do I find? This:
I got all excited for the Steemit Iron Chef contest! I want to put that in a squash blossom! It's a Lobster Mushroom!
I'm writing a post about how to identify and cook this great wild forest mushroom, for @papa-pepper's "Steemit How-To King" contest. Not because I think I can beat the incredible @papa-pepper in How-To posts for Steemit. But because the Lobster mushroom is such an interesting fungus. Actually, it's one fungus parasitizing another, but the Steemit Iron Chef contest is no place for that sort of talk, lol!
If you want to know how I can tell these are Lobster Mushrooms, I just posted a YouTube video all about it. It's 10 minutes long and shows how to identify these forest-dwelling Lobsters, step by step through an identification key.
Squash Blossoms
Late summer and early autumn are a great time to use squash blossoms, because rain, cold, and mildew on the plants could put a stop to the crop any time. And we've all eaten a lot of zucchini by now, so missing out on one more squash doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice.
If you focus on the male blossoms, though, anytime in the summer is fine for harvesting squash blossoms. I look for the flowers that have only a straight stem at their base. Not a swollen section that will become the squash.
Early in the summer, the first flowers that open on a squash plant are male flowers. They open days before female flowers have even started developing. So spring is a good time for eating squash blossoms, too.
For this dish, though, I used both the male and female flowers. For the female flower, I harvested the flower and the baby squash at its base. These are striped romanesco zucchini. They have been such productive plants this summer!
Stuffing and Grilling
I like simple cooking that focuses on only a few ingredients. This only has a few -- the squash blossoms, lobster mushrooms, and wild chives. With olive oil to sautee the chopped ingredients, butter for grilling the squash blossoms, and a splash of good soy sauce at the end. That's it!
I sauteed the chives, a chopped zucchini that had already shed its flower, a chopped squash flower, and most of the lobster mushrooms. I had already sauteed the lobsters earlier, to ensure they were cooked enough. I kept some larger pieces of the cooked lobsters for the plate, too.
I stuffed the blossoms with the sauteed mix and grilled them slowly, turning them gently. I used a parsley stem to tie the larger blossom. It's a delicate operation grilling these blossoms!
Grilled Squash Blossoms Stuffed With Wild Lobster Mushrooms
Here's the result. I added some blue Borage flowers and 4 little "Candyland" cherry tomatoes. This is probably the fanciest I'll get in putting together a plate of food, lol. I cut the baby zucchini in half so you could see what the stuffing looked like inside the squash blossom.
This is one of the tastiest things I've eaten recently! I had a Fort George Quick Wit wheat beer with this small plate. It's a light, floral beer that perfectly matches the flavors of the mushrooms and squash.
What Do You Think?
- Do you like squash flowers?
- Do you forage for wild mushrooms?
- Have you ever eaten squash flowers or Lobster mushrooms?
- Would you eat my grilled stuffed squash flowers with the Lobster mushrooms?
I eat a lot of wild plants and show you how, because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wilderness.
I would like Steemit to be the premier site for Foraging on the Internet! If you have any thoughts about foraging, or experiences to share, write a post and be sure to use the Foraging tag. And check out the @foraging-trail to see curated quality posts about foraging. Happy Foraging!
Thanks @progressivechef for creating the Steemit Iron Chef contest series. I haven't been able to be on Steemit much lately, but I can't miss the contest series or I would miss out on my 1 point! ;D
Plant List
Lobster mushroom - Hypomyces lactoflourum
Wild chives - Allium schoeneprasum
Zucchini - Cucurbita pepo -
Borage - Borago officinalis - flowers
