tarts gone wild

While I was making potato salad and zucchini muffins on the 4th, a friend of mine was hunting for wild Chaterelle mushrooms. They just came into season in Missouri, and that season lasts only a few weeks, probably. Anyway, he gave me a baggie-full of his finds! Wasn't that nice? It was my first time trying/cooking with Chanterelles. I was gonna do a simple pasta and saute the shrooms with garlic, oil and butter, but Jack (smarty pants that he is) suggested I make a tart, like I did with asparagus. Brilliant! This worked really well. I got to taste the mushrooms without any other strong flavor interfering, it was pretty, and it was simple! You can follow the links to the recipe, originally from fer food, but basically, you roll out a sheet of puff pastry, score around the edges to creat a crust, dock the inside of the score with a fork, pre-cook it for 15 minutes or so, put down shredded gruyere (about 3/4 cup), top it with the mushrooms, some pepper and drizzle it with olive oil and bake the whole thing for another 25 or so minutes.






I ate the tart with a simple salad of romaine, tomatoes and red onion dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Simple but quite lovely with my rich tart.

Apparently, the shroomin' pal is having a lot of luck with his hunting...so I may be getting some more of these earthy, buttery, delicious morsels of fungus soon. So I'll continue doing some recipe research. I am open to suggestions, of course.