When dinner starts to scare you

Visiting the farmer's market yesterday in a different location, felt like a whole new experience. There was one girl there selling nothing but morels. Tray after tray of the strange brown spongy mushrooms, revered by cooks and gourmets alike. They were the best bargain I could have hoped for. $10 for an entire tray, an amount that would have cost me five times as much in my local supermarket where they are selling for $50 per pound. She informed me that they grow in areas where forest fires have been and even shared the secret spot where she finds them, way in the north of BC. I went home with them carefully packaged in a brown paper bag and balancing on top of the heirloom tomatoes and artisan cheese, so as not to get squashed, like a delicate little peach. Once home, I immediately set about undertaking some research to find a recipe to do them justice. I decided on a morel and sherry cream sauce to accompany some steak and recalled a recipe for stuffing them which seemed a good idea. 

I sauteed them slowly in some butter and oil, adding a splash or two of Marsala and a little rich beef stock, reducing it down to a syrup consistency and adding some sour cream. The air was fragrant with the woody, earthy smell while I stuffed three larger specimens with a mixture of mayonnaise, sour cream, truffle butter, cheese, mustard and saffron. I popped them in the oven, mistakenly on their side and waited for the cheese to melt. 

 

It was some time later whilst I was eating them, that a small memory seed started to grow. I suddenly remembered that morels were deadly poisonous raw or undercooked, dire warnings of thoroughly cooking them ringing in my head and I began to ponder, how thoroughly is thoroughly? Even as I was eating, I began to swear I could feel a strange fluttering sensation in my chest and immediately decided it must be the poison working it's way through my hypochondriac body.

 This alarmed me so much I went straight to the computer to search out the facts, although I made sure dinner came with me and ate mouthfuls from my lap as I googled 'how deadly are morels'? 

As I searched, certain phrases started to hit me between the eyes, 'acute kidney damage after 1 - 3 days, total liver failure, vomiting, palpitations.....it put me in mind of a book I once read called Hothouse, by the British sci-fi author Brian Aldis. The story, based thousands of years in the future, features primitive plants and organisms that have evolved into higher life forms. Guess what he used as inspiration for the supreme being? That's right, the morel. All this was beginning to feel a little 'Day of the Triffids'. Through bite after bite of juicy, medium rare strip loin and rich sauce, I had convinced myself that these small, delicious fungi wanted to kill me.

After much googling, I couldn't find out exactly how well they should be cooked and so I couldn't bring myself to eat any more. Incredible though they are, even now, as I write, I can feel rumblings of the stomach and chest pains. So, to save anyone else from kidney or liver damage or even acute paranoia, cook your morels very thoroughly, whatever that means.

Recipe : Stuffed morels

3 or 4 large morels

1 tbsp mayonnaise

1 tbsp sour cream

1 slice smoked or unsmoked Prosciutto or bacon, diced

1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

A pinch of saffron

1/4 cup grated cheese
1/2 tsp truffle butter (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400oF. 

Cut the stalks off the morels to give you a stuffing area.

Mix the rest of the ingredients together well and stuff into the morel cavities. Top with a little of the truffle butter on each.

Place snugly upright in a small baking dish, (sideways will allow all the stuffing to escape) and bake in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes. 

Recipe : Morel and Marsala sauce

1/4 cup of sliced morels

1 tsp butter and 1 tsp oil

1/4 cup Marsala

1 tbsp beef stock

1 tbsp sour cream

Heat the butter and oil over medium heat in a frying pan and saute the morels until softened.

Add the Marsala and beef stock, reduce the heat a little and simmer to reduce until syrupy, but not too thick.

Add the sour cream, mix well and serve over steak, pork chops or chicken.