kinoko and kaki

It is mushroom season here. The supermarkets are filled with all sorts of different kinoko (mushrooms).

Satoshi had to work on Saturday, so I made dinner. I used to meet him in Umeda for dinner, but his job doesn't always end on time, and sometimes I would have to wait until 8:00 pm or 9:00 pm, so instead of waiting around for him to finish, I started making dinner so that I can eat when I was hungry.

Saturday's dinner was beer clams...except that I used white wine and added some maitake (hen of woods) mushrooms. I served them on toasted french bread. (The best part was dipping the toasted bread into the sauce...)

I also made some carrot cucumber salad and marinated some red onion and red bell pepper in the mustard seed vinaigrette.

Monday's dinner was adapted from the French Market.

Pork with eringi and porcini mushrooms (Serves 2)
213 grams (7.5 ounces) thinly sliced pork
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 eringi mushrooms, thinly sliced
handful of dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted, saving some of the mushroom "juice" (strained)
pinch of dried garlic slices
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
salt & pepper to taste
flat leaf parsley

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil and cook the thinly slice pork.
In another pan, heat the other tablespoon of oil and add the mushrooms.
Cook the mushrooms for about 4 minutes then add the vinegar and garlic.
Add the mushroom mixture to the pork after the pork is no longer pink.
Simmer for about 5 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper.
Garnish with flat leaf.

Serve on toasted french bread (again dipping the bread in the sauce was the best!).

Simple and delicious.

It is also kaki (persimmon) season here. Recently my MIL gave us 3 bambucha (huge) kaki...each was about 300 grams (about 10 ounces).

Actually, I've never purchased kaki in the supermarkets because I didn't really like them. I think I've had persimmon in the past that was not ripe and really hard.

But after eating them over the past couple of days, they sort of reminded me of ripened papaya. I'll try picking some up the next time I'm in the supermarket.

We've started the weekend early here, be back to tell you about it soon.