mushrooms Archives - cooking melbourne

Mushroom Risotto With Truffle Butter

It’s wild mushroom time again and pine mushrooms and slippery jacks provide perfect flavour and texture for a risotto. But if you want to raise the bar another notch, a mushroom risotto finished with some truffle butter can add a wonderful extra dimension to your mushroom taste experience. Truffle butter is subtle, adding that special…

Slippery Jack Pithivier It Is

Some of us will have fond memories of Melbourne’s restaurant scene of decades past, where small BYO places produced stunning dishes out of tiny galley kitchens without a sous vide in sight. Others, like Stephanie’s and Mietta’s, were more opulent, cast in the French mould of formal dining and highly worked dishes. It was really…

Forest Pizza

Forest pizza is my name for pizza topped with Slippery Jack mushrooms (Suillus luteus), foraged from Victorian pine forests. This forest pizza will delight mushroom lovers as it really brings out the flavour of the Slippery Jacks. You can also add a few other cultivated varieties such as nameko, shimeji or chestnut mushrooms for added…

Local Fresh Truffles Becoming A Craze

Now is the time to buy some local fresh truffles. There are a few producers around Melbourne now selling their little fungal gems at farmers’ markets, online or as part of a truffle hunt, tasting and cooking masterclass package. Black Cat Truffles, Black Truffle Harvest and Yarra Valley Truffles are just a few producers of…

Pine Mushrooms In Season

Wild pine mushrooms are currently available from farmers’ markets. Pine mushrooms or saffron milk caps (Lactarius deliciosus) are a large, brightly coloured mushroom with a mildly tangy flavour. As the name suggests, they have a yellow to orange milky sap and are delicious. Their firm texture lends itself to a variety of cooking methods but…