Maple-Flavored Mushrooms, And The Man Who Cooks Them

Though Todd Humphries has been cooking with candy cap mushrooms for years at his restaurants in Napa Valley, few people outside the area are familiar with these unique little funghi.  Candy caps (lactarius rubidus) are tiny bronze-colored mushrooms that grow wild in Mendocino, the Oakland Hills, and mushroom-friendly places north. 

Their claim to fame?  Candy caps smell and taste uncannily like maple syrup.

The (Mushroom) Man.
Photo by Ashley Teplin.

I sat down with Todd at his Napa restaurant Kitchen Door to learn more about these strange little beasts and their many delectable possibilities.  For those who don't know, Todd Humphries is the ultimate mushroom chef of Napa Valley, who not only cooks them in shockingly delicious ways, but also gets up pre-dawn to forage his own in the cold, damp wilds of northern California.

During his Martini House days, Todd used to offer seasonal all-mushroom tasting menus spotlighting beautiful and arcane varieties most people will never see again.  I was lucky enough to discover candy caps at such a dinner, just a few days before Martini House closed (check out my article on WineCountry.com for pictures and full report).  Fortunately for me and other candy cap lovers, Todd now runs his candy cap mushroom bread pudding on Kitchen Door's menu every day of the week... and he graciously agreed to share his recipe with you, my loyal blog readers.  You're welcome.

No one seems to know how or why the maple aroma and flavor is present in these mushrooms, but it's unmistakeable.  Fresh candy caps have a fainter maple scent than the dried versions -- which quickly dominate any airspace they're exposed to -- but can still be distinguished from similar-looking mushrooms by the milky fluid they exude when punctured (hence the Latin name "lactarius") and the rough cat's tongue texture of the cap. 

Fresh candy caps are very fragile and highly perishable, but also delicious to cook with if you have the opportunity, Todd says.  He recalls serving a rouget dish at Martini House with a curry reduction sauce and fresh candy caps sauteed in butter, where the mushrooms' spice and sweet aromatics complemented and amplified the sauce in a truly unique way.

The Kitchen Door candy cap bread pudding. They also
sell it to go, so you can ravish it in the privacy
of your own home.

Because of the perishability factor, though, most candy cap dishes in restaurants are made using dried mushrooms, which also have the strongest maple flavor and that slight hint of spice.  It takes 10-12 pounds of fresh mushrooms to yield one pound of dried, so dried candy caps tend to be pricy propositions.  Fortunately, they are potent little buggers and a little goes a long way.

Dried candy caps can be pulverized into a powder to use in pancakes, cookies, or spaetzle, but most commonly Todd uses them whole to infuse cream or milk for desserts (think panna cotta, anglaises... and bread pudding).  He recommends either a cold soak in the liquid overnight, or a slow, gentle warming of the liquid -- but boiling liquids, as in a reduction, seem to muddy the flavor somehow.  Another tip from the pro: don't try to rehydrate dried candy caps and use them whole like you would dried porcinis.  The texture just doesn't work. 

The maple flavor infuses warm liquid at an astonishing rate, as I discovered when playing at home with some dried mushrooms.  My 10-minute candy cap syrup proved a very interesting cocktail mixer for Calvados and fresh lemon juice, and Todd tells me he has seen other candy cap syrups on the market -- as well as candy cap-infused oil out of Oregon.  I'm thinking that would be amazing on crostini toasts with cheeses or charcuterie.

Curious to get your hands on some, for your own experiments?  Try Connie Green of Wine Forest Mushrooms, who supplies Kitchen Door and many other amazing restaurants on a wholesale basis, but also now operates a retail pantry store online.  

And please let me know about your delicious concoctions by commenting below.

Sneak Preview of Oxbow's Kitchen Door

Last night I scored a fabulous sneak preview of Todd Humphries and Richard Miyashiro's Kitchen Door, which is slated to open to the public next Tuesday, June 14th.  I'd previously spoken with the dream team behind this new restaurant while it was still under construction, and you can read all about the background in the resulting Tablehopper.com article.

The lovely and enchanting Beef Carpaccio

The menu has a lot of variety, from the legendary Cream of Mushroom soup ($7), Kobe Beef Burger with wine-stewed onions and Swiss cheese ($13.95), and Beef Carpaccio with Himalayan truffle puree, crispy potato confetti, arugula, and lemon aioli ($10.95), to the new Korean Style Short Ribs in Soya Glaze with spicy mushroom, veggie, and bacon fried rice ($14), and Alsatian Flammeküche flatbread topped with ham, onions, gruyère cheese, watercress, and frisée ($13.75).  Fans of Humphries' mushroom soup should also check out the Hen of the Woods Mushroom Flatbread ($13.95), whose delectable blend of parmesan cream, provolone, mozzarella, starch, and mushroom is essentially a pizza version of the soup, and the ideal vehicle for gathering up any traces of shroomy love still in your bowl. 

Juicy duck + tangy carrots and daikon + Sriracha mayo = WINNING

As a Vietnamese food fanatic, I was delighted to also spy Vietnamese Chicken Noodle soup (pho ga) ($12) and a Roast Duck Banh Mi Dip ($12.95).  This version of the classic sandwich combined the usual magic assemblage of pickled veggies, rich meat, and spicy mayo with a little dunking bowl of tasty duck broth and perfectly cooked sweet potato fries.  It all vanished in short order, with only a few drops of broth remaining.

Hen of the Woods Flatbread: one of the many tasty things
coming out of Kitchen Door's wood-burning oven.

Sides like 4505's Chicharrones (a.k.a. "Piggy Puffs" here) ($3.75), Roasted Shishito Peppers with lime and Korean chili flakes ($6.75), Charcuterie from Fatted Calf ($11.95), and Burrata with olive pesto and herb flat bread ($8.25) clearly take aim at the gnawing, ravening, rich-toothed beast within.  This is comfort food at its best, with layers of sophisticated flavor and loads of satisfaction for your base, reptilian brain.


Desserts mostly center around the softserve ice cream from Straus (sundaes with tiny marshmallows, fudge, candied nuts; or dulce de leche and fried churros; or marinated strawberries; or espresso, $3.75-$6.50), but there's also a Candy Cap Mushroom Bread Pudding ($6.95), Panna Cotta with summer berry compote ($6.50), an assorted cookie plate ($6), and Napa Cakes Panforte ($3.50), loaded with nuts, fruits, and spice.

Looking towards the south wall.
The dessert station is where the Oxbow Wine Merchants' refrigerated
high-end wine room used to be.

In terms of beverages, I was loving on their Rosso Fazekas Sangiovese, which is available on tap for $8.00/glass, $17.00 for a half-liter (2/3 of a bottle).  Balanced and earthy, this was for me the perfect food wine.  A total of eight wines and four beers are available on tap, with 20 more bottled wines available by the glass, half-liter, or bottle, and nine more beers in bottles or cans.  Every single wine is available by the glass, too, so you can truly order only what you want to drink. 

Some might gripe that the wine selection is fairly simple, but Kitchen Door is not Martini House.  This is supposed to be a place you can visit any night of the week, every week.  A place for Tuesday night wine, not $75 Napa cabs.  In my opinion, the list has a remarkable range of food-friendly varietals: Vermentino, Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, Arneis, Grenache Blanc, and Viognier, in addition to the usual big three whites; Tempranillo, Grenache, Petite Sirah, Sangiovese, as well as the obvious reds.  And, the most expensive bottle is $42.  That works just fine for me....

Kitchen Door is planning to be open for lunch and dinner every day of the week starting June 14th.  I can't wait to go back... but I think it's safe to say the place will be mobbed.  And deservedly so.

Dim Sum Charlie's is open... and they will love me long time

Thursday, September 23, 2010: NBC Thursday's season premieres of Community, The Office, and new show Outsourced; and, just as exciting to Napa residents (if not more), the night Dim Sum Charlie's opened its serving window to the public.

In case you missed my earlier post about this awesome place, Dim Sum Charlie's is Napa Valley's first Asian food truck.  It's also Napa's first dim sum eatery.  And Napa's first food truck that's actually an Airstream trailer. 

This 22-foot, classic 1958 Airstream has tortured dim sum loving locals like myself since it was spotted parked next to the railroad tracks at 728 First Street near the Oxbow Public Market.  Who is Charlie? Why is he never there when I stop by at lunchtime? When will he start doling out the dim sum and loving us long time?

Some of these questions remain unanswered, but the guys behind Charlie are Andrew Siegal and Clayton Lewis.  The idea for the late-night dim sum social scene was hatched on one of Andrew's trips to London, when he visited a rockin nightlife hotspot called Ping Pong Dim Sum, a place people gathered to socialize, drink, and snack on dim sum late into the night.

Andrew, the finance guy, hatched a plan to create what he describes as a "Route 66 meets Bladerunner" dim sum operation for downtown Napa, which until very recently has been utterly devoid of nightlife activities outside private homes.  He procured the battered Airstream and found the perfect property near the Oxbow Public Market on which to park it.  The Airstream and the dining area are set back off of First Street, and conveniently just east of the intersection with Soscol.  Yes, that is right next to the ongoing construction, which is currently limiting them to serving only after 6pm on weekdays (they open at noon on Saturday and Sunday, however, for your dim sum brunch needs). Stylin sail shades protect the long row of picnic tables from the sun, and decorative light strings and an outdoor fireplace keep things lit up after dark.  The location is entirely visible from the street, but feels delightfully secluded. 

Clayton Lewis is the funky glasses, chef-side of the Dim Sum Charlie's equation who helped Andrew restore and remodel the trailer into a shiny and fabulous dim sum steaming machine, and who now controls the kitchen operations day to day.  The entire menu is steamed to order (so all you fried lotus ball lovers like my mom are SOL), and uses  100% organic ingredients.  To ensure top-notch dim sum quality, they've partnered with one of SF's dim sum house elite--which shall remain nameless--and also plan to start collaborating with Napa rockstars like Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller of Fatted Calf.

In the four days they have been open to the public, I've been twice, and others have been there daily. Obviously, it's an instant addiction.  Tender rice flour coatings are neither too thick nor too thin, with just the right amount of chew and transluscency to please the eyes and the mouth.   Seafood, veggie, and meat fillings are pristinely fresh, perfectly seasoned, juicy, and truly delicious even without the standard condiment accompaniments (which are of course available on every table).  And, delightfully, the menu changes frequently to keep you coming back for more.



Clockwise from top left: scallop-garlic, shrimp-pea sprout, and lobster-sea bass-shrimp

 Some of my favorite things--so far--are the Country-style Shrimp Almighty dumplings, the Scallop and Garlic dumplings, the White Fluffy BBQ Pork Bun, and the mysteriously named Barbecue Pork Rice Noodle "Snotty."  I can only guess at the origin of the Snotty's name, but I will say that the slippery, goobery texture of this layered noodle item is deeply satisfying.  And the barbecued pork has just enough naturally caramelized sweetness to carry the dish without requiring an off dry wine as a beverage choice.


BBQ pork bun says, "We love you long time!"


Speaking of which, what wine DO you drink with dim sum?  The Napa Twitter community certainly had a lot of pairing ideas this past week, and will be putting those ideas to the test this Thursday night (September 30th) for a Dim Sum Charlie's tweetup party coordinated by the Tweetup Queen herself, @CordairGallery---a.k.a. Linda Cordair of the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery in downtown Napa.  I'm inclined to bring a dry Riesling or new world sparkler, but I may just grab a bottle of Mahoney Albarino from the neighboring Taste at Oxbow wine bar for something a little different... or maybe I'll just bring a six-pack of Tsingtao. 

Definitely RSVP here if you plan to attend this Thursday's tweetup, though, because the dim sum has been selling out every night since they opened, and is sure to vanish in a flash unless you let Andrew and Clayton know in advance how much food to prepare.  So RSVP, now.  And don't fret if you can't come after you've said you would, because I will eat your share for you.

For the time being, Dim Sum Charlie's is BYO with no corkage, and they sell waters and a couple of sodas--including Jarritos Tamarindo.  No bubble tea in sight, though.

If you can't make Thursday's tweetup, Friday October 1st is the Grand Opening party, and I'm sure much delicious merriment will be had that night as well.

The Airstream opens for business at 6pm WEDNESDAY through Friday, and at noon on Saturdays and Sundays (closed Mon-Tues) for now.  Follow @DimSumCharlies on Twitter for more updates, and to stoke the fires of dim sum lust until your time to get some arrives.