Oyster mushrooms, how I love thee...

From the country...

Last Saturday Mark brought home some beautiful oyster mushrooms from the bartering floor of the Green Barns Farmers’ Market from Mycosource Inc/ Fun Guy Farm’s. They are a local mushroom grower from Goodwood Ontario and are super passionate about their jaw droppingly gorgeous product. They have an array of mushrooms (shitake, different types of oysters, wood ear etc), which are all a little taste of heaven. The first words I ask when Mark comes home from market, “Did you get mushrooms?”
So here is what I did with these beauties. There were almost too beautiful to cut (almost being the operative word here…) but I did cut the mushrooms in half, place them on a baking tray, drizzle olive oil, dusted with sea salt, herbs (dried sage, marjoram, savoury) and finished with a couple cracks of black pepper. I put them in a 350-degree oven until they were nicely roasted. I roasted them a little bit longer then desired to get some smaller pieces the oven dried effect. My thinking on this one was that the flavour would be that much more intense. When they were done I pulled the mushrooms out of the oven to let them cool and while that was going on I diced up onions and pan-fried them in olive oil and butter. When they were nicely browned, I chopped up the shrooms and added them to the skillet. I then added couple glugs of Kawartha County Wines 2006 Golden Rod Dessert wine to add a hint of sweetness to the mix and add some moisture to the mushrooms.

Then Mark came home, pan seared a grass fed sirloin steak, we toasted up some bread, steamed the broccoli (I know shame shame..) and crumbled some blue cheese. We put the mushroom mixture on the toasted whole grain bread, added the blue cheese and returned the whole lot back into the oven. When the cheese was melted, we ate!

It was one of the best meals ever! Oyster mushrooms on toast with blue cheese, pan seared steak and steamed broccoli. I rarely make dessert during the week but last night was on exception. A monkey bread recipe had inspired me on the http://www.smittenkitchen.com/ food blog and so we had that to boot!

Needless to say I will be having leftover mushrooms on toast with poached eggs and some monkey bread with tea later… and then a long, long walk.