ibe, NOVEMBER 5, 2003 shrooms Galore Joanne like mushrooms By Joanne Lee While grocery shopping at Save on Foods with my dear roommate, I noticed that they had packages of all different kinds of mushrooms, both fresh and dried. | wanted to try them all. So after finding the excuse of product testing 1 rushed back to the store and purchased as many differ- ent kinds as I could. Since I didn't want to be hogging all the fun I decided to throw a big mushroom fiesta and that way all the other members of the newspaper crew (and ‘We sliced them thinly and then sauteed them with a big of garlic. Yum. These were good” the hang around groupies) could help me rate the taste. Okay, so it wasn’t much of a fiesta, just a bunch of us geeks sitting in a living room playing Soul Calibur I] and eating mushrooms. However, we did rate the taste. So first Off we ‘have fresh Chanterelles. These are the trippy looking neon orange ones. However despite their rather impressive looks they didn’t bring much taste to the table. We chopped them up into medium picces and fried them with couscous and since we didn’t want to cover up their flavour we didn’t put much other then salt and pepper. Sounds boring? Well it was. The chanterelles didn’t really have a taste. It just added a chewy texture to the couscous and that’s about it. Dried Porcini mushrooms. We put these guys into a miso soup along with some seaweed and tofu cubes. The soup was good but the mushrooms weren't welled liked at all. It had a mild earthy taste to it with a chewy texture. I’m not sure if it’s that’s the way they package all dried porcinis but they were very dirty and needed to be thor- oughly cleaned unless you like the taste of grit, so be warned, Fresh Portabella mushrooms! We sliced them thinly and then sauteed them with a big of garlic. Yum. These were good. Many people said this were their second favourite dish out of the ones we had that night. These guys looked really. big but after we fried them up there wasn’t very much to go around. | found that they tasted a lot like reg- ular white button mushrooms. They even had the soft tex- ture of button mushrooms. However they have a stronger more flavourful kick to them. Fresh Oyster mushrooms, we sliced these ones up and also sautEed them with a little bit of garlic. This dish was also welled liked by many. I think it may have been tied for second place, but it’s hard to tell as some people left early, so we never really got an official count. These had a more unique taste then. the portabella ones and had a chewier texture. The Shiitakes. Dried vs Fresh 1 made a little mistake and didn’t realize that we reviewed 2 of the same mushrooms. We had the shiitake mushroom in both its dried and fresh forms. The taste of these 2 forms were truly different, many people did not even realized that the 2 had anything in common. Therefore | did a little bit of research into shiitake mush- rooms and found that many people agree that by drying these mushrooms it brings out the taste and flavour more. However this comes at the price of the texture, after hydrating dried shiitake mushrooms it attains a tough “By drying these mushrooms it brings out the taste and flavour more. However this comes at the price of the texture, after hydrating dried shi- itake mushrooms it attains a tough chewy texture.” chewy texture. Dried Shiitake mushrooms was the favourite of the night, hands down no doubt about it. We fried them up with couscous and a bit of light soy sauce. It was a hit, the belle of the ball if you will. It has a very strong earthy taste but with a zing. Most people described it as very flavour- ful but kind of salty. Some people even commented that they thought the texture was meaty. I personally just think it is chewy. Flydrating these fellows take a long time. They need to be soaked in water for about 4-5 hours. Fresh Shiitake mushroom. For these we baked them whole with tofu cubes and olive oil. 1 enjoyed this dish but many found that it was just mediocre. Both it’s taste and texture was a combination of the portabellas and dried shiitake. It was a little chewy but still soft and tast- ed a little bit like regular mushrooms but has a hint of that flavour the dried shiitake is so rich of. The mushroom fiesta was absolutely a fun night. If you enjoy mushrooms as we do, I'd recommend going out to the nearest grocery store and try some of the more exotic kinds. There’s some tasty fungi out there.