Ah, we do love winter! The air is crisp, the heater is on high, and we’ve got all the reasons for that second serve of our favourite cold-weather comfort food. For your home cooking inspiration this month, we changed things up for our A-Teamers, Iron Chef Shellie and Jo from Second Helping, putting together a Mystery Bag filled with a few of the weird looking guys from this time of year: those with bumps, moulds, fungus, and ferments.
First up – Bumpy! Organic Jerusalem Artichokes from the shelves of Paddlewheel. Root vegetables love the coolest months, and we particularly love the knobbly skin and nutty, sweet flesh of the Jerusalem Artichoke. They’re also a great source of iron – winning!
Winter also calls for all the ‘shrooms, so naturally a trip to the ‘Mushroom Man’, Damian Pike, was on our list. We’ve been eying off the locally grown King Oysters from Outer East Victoria, and decided to throw a few bunches in. Did you know that Mushrooms are Fungi and also a type of Mould?
Extra (tasty) mould came in the form of a wedge of Berry’s Creek Riverine Buffalo Blue spotted in the window of The Cheese Shop Deli (#getinmybelly). Finally, we added some black garlic butter from The Essential Ingredient, and of course Black Garlic is fermented.
‘That should challenge them’, we thought!
What we got back is a mix of weeknight winners that are sure to spark some creativity for your winter menu, including a great how-to on pickling your own shiitake mushrooms at home. See all the recipes below – happy cooking!
