Shiitakes and Skordalia

Dinner tonight was centered around the shiitake mushrooms we found at the farmers market today. Thanks to Tomahnous Farm (Mahomet, IL - 14 miles), we had shittake mushrooms cooked in a wine-butter sauce with tarragon (also from Tomahnous). The ingredients were:

butter
onion
chopped shiitakes
salt
tarragon
dry white wine
more butter

The original, full recipe is here. It's actually a recipe for a shiitake and wine sauce, but it worked well as a main dish!

On the left, we have tiny baby potatoes with rosemary, and on the right, toast with skordalia, a greek garlic potato spread.

Another accomplishment of today was paprika. Yes, we oven dried sweet red peppers and put them in a pepper grinder. Much like we did with our dried cayenne peppers to get cayenne:


Speaking of spices, you might think we're eating very bland food. Well, I definitely miss black pepper, but there are plenty of seasonings we do have:

salt (the exception)
cayenne pepper
paprika
garlic
basil
oregano
marjoram
rosemary
thyme
sage
tarragon
chives
cilantro
papalo (bolivian coriander)
peppermint
spearmint
lemongrass

Let me tell you, mint-sage-lemongrass tea with honey in it is amazing!

I'm still waiting for coriander. I planted some non-local coriander (seeds). Now I need to wait for them to grow up into cilantro. Then when the cilantro goes to seed, we'll have local coriander!