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Now welcome to my little chicken recipe for vegetarians and if that sounds strange it's
because it's not chicken at all, it's chicken of the woods. We're doing mushrooms, one of
the best mushrooms, and I bet all of you at some point have walked passed these things
growing on tree trunks. Lets look at them.
I've got two chicken of the woods. I've got this one which is super young and fresh and
tender and that's beautiful, that is like prime eating chicken of the woods and then
I've got one here which is from an older chicken of the woods, still edible but not as good,
this is the one we want to cook.
There we go, now that's my lovely piece of farmhouse bread, I've cut the edges off it,
cut the crusts off, and I've popped it in a pan with a clove of squashed garlic, a sprig
of rosemary and some goose fat. It's the most decadent fried bread, all I'm doing here is
mushrooms, garlic mushrooms on fried bread old-school but this is going to be the best
garlic wild mushrooms ever. Right back to my main event.
While my bread fries I'm going to prepare my chicken of the woods. Now I've got my mushroom
knife, I'm just going to brush and stuff off it. So let's take it down here, trim it. It's
so young and tender. Let's take some lovely, long slices. Look at that! It looks just like
chicken breast. Gorgeous, gorgeous. Tiny bit more.
There's are chicken of the woods prepared. Right, courgette. I'm going to cut it on the
angle, a little bit thin. There we go, it's going to be ready and now I've got leek. Theres
bad boys. I'm going to cut the leek down the middle, reach in, grab the little tough bit
in the centre.
Lovely.
Okay, clove of garlic.
Here we go. Make sure it soaks up the fat. Okay, there is our beautiful, crispy, goose
fat rosemary infused fried bread. A big ol' lump of butter going in now for the mushrooms.
This is such a simple recipe that there really isn't that much left to do. Add the mushroom
slices to the butter and begin frying. Then, add the courgette and leek, making sure to
separate those layer of leaves so they can cook through thoroughly. Finally, add the
garlic. Now I'm cooking on induction and these De Dietrich induction hobs are stunning. They
have just got so much power and they don't take up any space. I've got a big one over
there, small one here, brilliant. Now I'm just going to let all of these cook down.
There is something amazing about the colour of these chicken of the woods and it just
looks like chicken. It's got that golden outside, white inside, it's got to be the meatiest
mushroom of the lot.
Okay, a little bit of seasoning.
Now some black pepper, loads of black pepper.
Now all the vegetables and mushrooms are at the right stage, two minutes of cooking. I'm
now going to add some white wine. Now I'm going to add some double crème, I know it's
a bit decadent but hey it's going to be amazing. Right, now we stir that in. Wine and crème
and mushrooms, it's the way to go. Bring it up to heat, let it bubble and I want to let
that get really thick and delicious.
Now to finish this off it's all about fresh basil and loads of it. I'm just going to coarsely
chop them up like so. Oh hello. This is the final flavour, it's fresh basil and lots of
it. There we are. It's just gorgeous, lets have a little taste, here we go.
That is heaven. It is vegetarian heaven.
Now it's just a matter of serving up. Lay the lovely mushrooms and veg and their lovely
rich sauce onto that fried slice of bread we prepared earlier and don't be stingy. Finally
a light sprinkling of paprika adds a further dimension to the dish and we're finished.
A stunning but simple vegetarian meal using chicken of the woods and vegetables from my
own garden. Fantastic.
Don't forget, you can watch more of my episodes from Mike's Wild Kitchen on YouTube just by
clicking on the links below.