Fun with Slippery Jacks!

 

Frozen chickenfats

We are fortunate to have, where I live, a great profusion of suillus mushrooms, locally called "slippery jacks," during the mushroom season. Russians, who I think have a greater appreciation of mushrooms, call these fungi "chickenfats," possibly because of their color.

My fondness for them is, locally anyway, a minority opinion. Most foragers walk right past the chickenfats because they have a high water content and, when just thrown in a pan and sauteed, have a sort of slimy consistency that many find offputting.

Their loss, and a gain for those of us who know what to do with our chickenfats!

So one option is to go with the texture. Saute and serve them up with an escargot butter and the texture will be right at home.

Another is to harvest and dry them. I have found that when reconstituted, the chickenfats have lost any textural issues and have, on top of that, a fuller funkier flavor than their more respectable bolete cousins.

The third way, inspired by NOMA, is to freeze the fresh shrooms, and then later thaw and lacto-ferment them.

I freeze them in a vacuum seal bag until needed. Then I weigh the bag, snip a corner, add two percent sea salt by weight, and seal the bag shut again. Leave it out on the counter for at least a week, until the bag inflates somewhat.

Having done that, you get two products. The first is lactofermented mushroom juice, which is absolutely a secret umami weapon in the kitchen.

The second is the mushroom solids. You can dry these and they take on an incredibly complex flavor, with everything from salty to sour to shroomy to smoky going on.

You can also make a lactofermented mushroom ketchup, which would be familiar to the English of two hundred years ago, and which IMO deserves reviving as a culinary tradition.

Of course, know your mushrooms, and if you don't know for sure what it is, don't put it in your mouth.