The Morel Of The Story!

When I get a thought in my head, it can haunt me. It will perch itself on the edge of my sanity and whisper to me. It can show up in my dreams and dominate my conversations. Sometimes, it even shouts at me and can even follow me on vacation.

Case in point?

These morel mushrooms.

About a month ago or so, I was seeing some chatter about morel mushrooms on Twitter. Knowing these are the rare gems of the mushroom family, I was definitely enchanted. I even thought what a nice addition they would make for this dinner that I hosted on vacation. I checked out Earthy Delights, a great little artisanal/wild/traditional foods company. I exchanged a few tweets with David, the great guy that works at Earthy Delights. That just fueled the mushroom obsession in my head. I tried to leave it behind as I went on vacation.
Damn thoughts!

Fast forward a few days:
While on vacation, my girlfriend and I stop at a little convenient store for a soda. While she went into the store, I stayed outside in the car with the dogs. I noticed a hippy looking guy sitting in a lawn chair on the side of the building. It looked rather strange to me and got my attention. Then a Volkswagen van pulled up and out hopped a woman.

In her hand was a mesh bag full of morel mushrooms.

I almost fell over. I recognized her bounty immediately. She approached the hippy man and they exchanged mushrooms for money. I felt like I was watching a drug deal go down. I had never seen that scenario.

My girlfriend went up to the hippy guy and asked what the deal was. He was there to buy morel mushrooms from the local gatherers for $10.00 a pound. I couldn't believe it. I knew those mushrooms sold for about $40.00lb. But the hippy guy couldn't sale any and couldn't tell us where those mushrooms were headed. He said try the farmers market. We'll I've never seen these mushrooms anywhere and not at any farmers markets I had ever been to. That was just throwing fuel on the mushroom obsession fire going on in my head.

After I got home from vacation, I told David about the hippy guy and the morels. He told me he could of been a guy working for a company like his own. Who knows where those mushrooms were headed or who the hippy guy was working for. I just found the whole exchange very interesting.

After a few more tweets and a phone conversation, David sent me a box of fresh morels and a few other goodies. I was in mushroom heaven. I was so excited I could hardly stand it.
So I started planing a very simple yet delicious dinner. I was going to just go with a big steak and the mushrooms with a side of fresh spring asparagus.

A meal to celebrate Spring with some of it's seasonal bounty.

Then I saw the recipe for asparagus risotto from Recipe Girl and knew that would be my side dish. A simple food perfectly fitting to celebrate the spring season. And I would throw in some sauteed morels and a few fava beans. (Fava beans have been whispering to me as well.)

This risotto went perfect with the morel feast. You can substitute any wild mushroom in this dish or leave them completely out. I recommend you skip the fava beans because they get lost in the dish. They need to be the stars of their own recipe in my opinion.
You can find the recipe here.



Thank you David for the morel feast and the other goodies.
I appreciate it so much!

If you haven't checked out Earthy Delights,
I recommend it!

From the web site of Earthy Delights:

Earthy Delights is America's premier supplier of specialty foods to quality conscious American Chefs. We pioneered the use of overnight delivery to get fresh produce from the farm to the kitchen in the shortest time possible. We are leaders in offering wild-harvested and hand-crafted foods from small harvesters and growers to a larger audience. Now we are bringing this same selection of fine products to the adventurous home chef, using the power of the internet.

We offer wild mushrooms and other seasonal wild-harvested items, fresh specialty produce, fine hand-crafted cheese, aged balsamic vinegar, exotic spices and hard-to find ingredients to the professional chef and the at-home culinary artist. As the palate of the American public becomes more sophisticated, our catalog of fine foods is constantly expanding to meet and anticipate the needs of the adventurous professional and at-home chef.