I love shrooms

Enoki steak

I discovered this recipe while watching a morning program that had a segment on enoki mushrooms. I'll admit I was skeptical when I first heard about it. enoki steak? how good could that be? I never expected it to have the taste, let alone texture of real meat. one day I actually tried it and was blown away. it is full of flavour, and juicy, like meat, but unlike actual meat I wanted to eat more!

as you can see... it even looks like real meat, even though it's 99% unprocessed mushrooms. I also made some miso gravy from scratch. it went really well with the steak.

Here's what you need.

- a bunch of enoki mushrooms (buy at T&T or any japanese/asian grocer)

- a couple tablespoons of soy sauce

- flour for dusting

- oil for light frying

for the gravy:

- a bit of extra oil

- the flour left over from dusting

- the soy sauce left over from seasoning

- miso soup (just the soup, no tofu or onions)

when you get the mushrooms, they will look like this

to get the steak, first cut off the dirty part at the very bottom (about 3-5 mm thick). then notice there is a section where the stems are stuck together very close and a section where they start to separate from each other. the section where the stems are stuck together very close is the steak part. slice it off, it will be about 1-2 cm thick.

season this steak with soy sauce. it is very porous so it can absorb as much or as little as you want. the main reason for doing this is to allow the flour to stick. of course, you could make the steak with no flour and no soy sauce, but it's good this way so just live a little! if you are worried about heart health you could go with a low sodium soy sauce, but go with a decent japanese brand, not the store brand.

douse the steak on all sides with flour.

heat the pan to medium and fry the steak for about a minute on each side, then lower the heat and let it cook through. I don't know how long I cooked it, maybe 10 minutes.

for the gravy, add a bit more oil to the pan and add the flour, and stir until it is a paste. then slowly add the remaining soy sauce, stirring constantly. then add a ladleful of miso soup. continue adding soup or soy sauce until it is a gravy-like consistency. or if it is too watery, let it reduce a little bit (or sprinkle on a bit more flour). I find roux-based sauces are quite tricky to make well (as you can see my sauce is a bit lumpy). so make sure you take it off the heat the moment it's perfect.

I imagine this gravy would also go well with anything. it's really that good.

please try this recipe and let me know how it goes!