Today we're just a couple of stupid sack fungi who are super metal, afraid of foraging and very Pro-Canada. We discuss non-spooky graveyards, memorize The Canterbury Tales and get ripped off by these delicious Ridges and Pits before learning to avoid festivals and false morels.
morel pasta with cream, parmesan and thyme
Matthew's Now but Wow! - Goodnight Tokyo, Atsuhiro Yoshida
Molly 0:00
Music. I'm Molly, and I'm Matthew, and this is spilled milk, the show where we cook something delicious, eat it all and you can't have
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:10
it. And today we're talking about morals. No
Molly 0:13
morels. Oh,
Speaker 1 0:17
did I prepare the wrong stuff? I was gonna go on a fiery rant, like, my hero, Sylvester Graham. Was that the guy who,
Molly 0:23
oh, yes, was it? I think it
Speaker 1 0:27
was, yeah, cuz Mr. Graham, right. It was the guy who, like, the only thing he cared about was, like, masturbation, but yeah, like, how do we how to rid us of this scourge? That's right, yeah, I'm about to go on my fiery rant, because I've decided that I'm flipping the script. We're going sex negative, music positive. Okay,
Molly 0:47
okay. Well, hey, wait, hold on, you're in luck, because this episode is all about a sack, fun guy, which, to me, seems, seems like like a good way to keep people from, like, touching testicles, to be like, Oh, that's a sac. Fun guy, you
Speaker 1 1:02
know, I gotta say, I think you're right. Okay. I mean, speaking as the human sack, yeah,
Molly 1:08
yeah. Oh, my God, you're bringing up our old bit, the human sack, right?
Speaker 1 1:12
I was thinking about that whole body. Why? Yeah. Why was I thinking about this recently? It was because. It was because someone was saying how, like, bodies are gross. And, like, yeah. I was Yeah. Like, my friend Molly calls them the human sack.
Molly 1:23
Just like so much liquid sloshing around. It all that's all it
Unknown Speaker 1:27
is 75% and growing, instead of drinking this glass of water. Me
Molly 1:33
too. Today's episode, which is on morel mushroom, okay, was suggested by listener Nicole, thanks.
Speaker 1 1:39
Listener to call this we've already eaten a bunch of morels, and I'm very happy about it.
Molly 1:44
Me too. We just had pasta with Morel cream sauce. Yeah, oh, I'll talk about the right. I have been rendered completely, I don't know, just stupid by it. Yeah, no, I can hardly talk. It was so delicious.
Speaker 1 1:57
I know you'll definitely, you'll definitely be able to tell that today, today, our show is stupid. It's
Molly 2:03
gonna be so different from usual. So what's your morale memory lane? First, I was thinking that I I first maybe kind of learned about them around the time I moved to Seattle, when you and I were both on Eagle. It Right. Okay, so this would have been like 2002
Speaker 1 2:17
ish, 2003 Yeah. Eagle, it a long forgotten food Forum website.
Molly 2:23
But then I remembered, as I was typing that into our agenda, I remembered, actually that before that, the year that I lived and and had a job in Paris, so that would have been 2001 to 2002 right? I think that actually was when I really first encountered that
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:41
would make sense. I definitely had a morel, I think maybe a morel soup the one time I've been to Paris, yeah, yeah. These
Molly 2:48
are especially prized in French cooking and in European cooking in general, Catalan cooking, Provencal are
Speaker 1 2:56
they? They're called like Molly in French. Is that right? Yeah, nicely
Molly 3:00
done. Thanks. So, yeah, I think I became aware of them during that first year that I was, like, living in Paris, like, as an adult with my own apartment and buying groceries, and you would go out foraging, foraging, yep. And then I think that my awareness of them was, like, further bolstered by the fact that my dad was very enthusiastic about them. Oh, of course, he was, of course, he was so endive. Man, morale man, inventor of Altoids. He did it.
Speaker 1 3:27
There were several, several other things on that list that we've forgotten. Yeah, but
Molly 3:31
then and maybe this. I don't know if this is surprising or not, but I remember a couple years later, being in Oklahoma at some point in the springtime, and I remember this woman named Loretta, who was an old family friend, dropping off for my mom, like a paper bag full of morels that she had foraged nice somewhere nearby. So I never think of morels as something you could forage in Oklahoma. But I mean, I think that you can really forage them, sort of throughout North America, in the most temperate areas where there's at least some moisture. Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:10
that makes sense. My morale Memory Lane, yeah. I think definitely I learned about kind of the concept of wild mushrooms, like around around the early 2000s or maybe like the late 90s, because I was, like, getting interested in food and watching a lot of food TV. It also seems
Molly 4:25
like, like something that might, might have come sweeping in with the Northern Italy trends. For sure, you know, Northern Italian food, I remember,
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:33
like, people in Seattle talking about chanterelles, yes, which I feel like in Seattle, like you don't really say the first e that's like chanterelles, maybe I think of Jerry Cantrell. I'm
Molly 4:44
always thinking about Jerry Cantrell. Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:47
well, he always pops up like a mushroom. Morels were like, were considered like one of the fancier like morels and what like the bolitus mushrooms. Portini, yes, those, those are considered like the fan. Easiest ones, I feel like
Molly 5:00
we're going to talk more about that, or at least why that is for morels, why they
Speaker 1 5:06
have this I'm excited to know, because I have not yet revealed to you how much I paid for the morels and that it were into our pasta today. Okay,
Molly 5:12
okay. You mean how much of the show's money to spend? Okay, yeah, so,
Speaker 1 5:18
so I attempted to go foraging for Morales on Saturday morning, in the sense that Watson, wife of the show, Lori, and I walked down to Pike Place Market to see if they had any fresh Morales, like at Frank's or so CEOs, and both of them told me, our forager is coming by this afternoon. We'll probably have some like three o'clock. I wasn't I wasn't going to go back down to the market at three o'clock on a Saturday. Sounds terrible. Do you want me, like, draw this out as a teaser? Yeah. Okay, great, okay. Oh, so
Molly 5:46
we're gonna leave it there for now. Yeah. Oh, okay. Wait, but there's something else you wanted to say about your memory lane.
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:52
Oh, right. The other thing I learned so, like, that would would have been back when I first tried Morel. Like, yeah, I had some in Paris, which would have been 2001 I probably like, bought, bought some, like, from like, forged, and found and cooked them at home for the first time. Around that same time, that's also when I learned that some people don't like Morales because, and I remember someone saying this, but I don't remember who quote. They spit the sauce back at you. And I totally get what they mean. I get it. I love that texture, but I get why someone wouldn't, yeah.
Molly 6:20
I mean, they are a very spongy mushroom, yeah? I mean, they even like look, they look like a sponge, yeah? So it does make sense that, yeah, if you hit it the wrong way, they will squirt at you. But that's never bothered me. Is Mr. Botany gonna come in to tell us that morels are, I guess it would be Mr. Mycology, right? That Morales are closely related to sponges, the sea creature. Oh, I didn't even think of that. But probably not, probably not. Okay, so I want to say, first of all that the Wikipedia entry for morels is long. If you think that that we do a fair amount of talking about like taxonomy today, no, it's nothing compared to what's in the Wikipedia. Oh, I'm so excited. I love taxonomy, yeah, okay, well, so the first thing I want to say is that more cella is the genus name for morels, and
Speaker 1 7:13
they are, is it like Marcella esculenta or something? It is
Molly 7:16
more cella. Hold on, where is it? Yes, there you go. Marchella, esculenta. I feel
Speaker 1 7:22
like escalenta means, must mean, like edible in Latin or something. There's a lot of things that are escalente. I think of, I think of something like, if it has eleta as this, as the specific names, it's probably tasty. I don't know if this is true at all. I may have this totally wrong. I don't
Molly 7:37
feel super confident about this, but the genus name morcella might be derived from moorhel. I don't know if I'm saying that right or more. Shell
Unknown Speaker 7:45
might be derived from moyal,
Molly 7:49
an old German word close to how would you pronounce this?
Unknown Speaker 7:52
M,
Molly 7:56
O, umlaut, H, R, E,
Speaker 1 7:59
M, O, umlaut, T, O, R, H, E, D, does Motorhead have an A? I think it does. I think it does. Okay, but
Molly 8:10
okay. But anyway, it seems that, like the word Marcella, the genus name for these things, might be derived from an old German word that's close to the word for carrot or beet, maybe because of a similarity in shape. So basically, we don't know, we don't know anything. But what we do know is that botanically speaking, Mr. Etymology,
Speaker 1 8:27
it was like taking a nap on the couch, just like raised his head, looked over like, I'm not getting into this
Molly 8:32
one. We do know that botanically speaking, these guys are a sac fun guy. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:39
I was not familiar with the term sack fungi, but it doesn't surprise me, because they are sack like, yeah,
Molly 8:45
yeah. Well, let's go a little further into this. So, you know, one thing that is unmistakable about morels is that they have this honeycomb appearance, and this is because their caps are composed of a network of like, ridges and pits. Yeah, they still are not sounding any better than sack fungi. I
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:01
mean, they should. They should advertise with, like, the, get your ridges and pits, like, what was the Thomas's nooks and crannies? Yeah, there
Molly 9:10
we go. So the caps range widely in color. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So sometimes they're kind of a pale, creamy Brown. Sometimes they are, like, yellow or tan, pale brown, grayish brown.
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:24
I kind of think of them as always. The ones I've encountered as being always kind of grayish brown. I think
Molly 9:28
those are probably black morels. And we'll get more into it. The stems are always white, and both the caps and the stems are hollow. I guess, like all mushrooms, they're technically the fruits of the fungus. Yeah, it's a fruiting body, yeah. Morels, in particular, grow for just a short period each spring, although in the Pacific Northwest, I think the season is pretty generous. You can find them between April and August. Ish depends, okay, yeah, one thing that's really interesting is that, of course, they like to grow around two. Trees, but different types of morels in different places like to grow around different trees. Okay, yeah, all right, so yellow, they're like symbiotic Yes, yeah, yellow morels are most commonly found under like deciduous trees instead of conifers, while black morels, which I think is what we ate today, are most commonly found in coniferous forests that makes sense, or on disturbed ground, or areas where there's recently been a wildfire, disturbed ground, disturbed ground, like a cemetery. Like this sounds like a Motorhead song, doesn't it? So I tell a little cemetery story. I have a very, very curious seven year old niece, who I taught to play cribbage and wife of the show, Lori, took our niece to the cemetery, the one next to volunteer Park. Oh yeah, because she was curious about the cemetery and had a good time, like saw Bruce Lee's grave and stuff, but was disappointed because the cemetery was not spooky. And I think, I think she imagined it was gonna be like dark with, like, like, you know, swirling eldritch vapors and stuff. Oh, I mean, that is what happens, usually, when you enter a cemetery, all of a sudden it gets dark.
Speaker 1 11:11
Yeah, no, this is, this was a like, like, noon on a sunny day. Oh,
Molly 11:15
disappointing. So, yeah, like, where we are. Morels are most often found near pine fur, larch or Douglas fir. Have
Speaker 1 11:25
you ever found one? I've never found one. Me neither. I've never looked for one either, but I've never found one. So
Molly 11:30
apparently, centipedes sometimes make their homes inside morels. Oh, that makes sense. And like, turned into a little apartment. Yeah, totally and infested. Morels usually have like a hole in the top.
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:42
I feel like, some things I get at the farmer's market, I will often find like a caterpillar in them, like, like fava beans, I think often have caterpillars like, some some other kind of greens, like, often find like a plump caterpillar in there. We
Molly 11:55
find so many cute little bugs in our CSA over the course of the CSA season. It's quite charming. So something that's interesting about morels, and that isn't necessarily true for other mushrooms, is morels are really difficult to cultivate. So
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:09
what do you have any idea what makes something difficult to cultivate? Even though, even though Mr. Botany sometimes like, possesses my body and forces me to, like, share botanical facts, I myself, Matthew, don't really know anything about botany.
Molly 12:24
Wow. I'm glad we cleared this up, because I think our listeners have been thinking that you and Mr. Botany were just one in the same I mean,
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:31
we're buds, but like, We're different people. Oh, okay, okay.
Molly 12:35
Well, so did you get it? Buds? Good. One. Are you guys droops? We're
Unknown Speaker 12:40
a total couple of couple of total drapes,
Molly 12:43
so I don't really know, except that basically efforts to like culture them, or like grow them on a medium, like, just don't work, huh? There is some method I saw on Wikipedia, but was not able to find more information about it. Is some sort of Danish method for cultivating morels, okay? And they can grow them in, like, quite a nice density, like, per square meter. However, it does not seem like that's being widely used, okay, yet, but it does seem like they've maybe, like, cracked a code or something, all right,
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:17
well, we'll keep an eye on that. Like, should we? Should we update people? Like, maybe once, once a month, yeah,
Molly 13:22
we should. We'll definitely like, let's put it, let's put a calendar reminder. Okay, great. Anyway, so in the areas where morels grow wild, there is, like, a very lucrative market for foraged Morel, sure. So this is, you know, throughout temperate North America, Turkey, China, the Himalayas, India and Pakistan, all these places, morels grow really well. To get back to more cella, escue lenta,
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:48
I love I love more cells cookbooks.
Molly 13:52
I love her tomato sauce with butter and onion. Anyway, this Morel was was identified in 1794, and it's kind of what we think of as, like the Morel, right? It's known as the common Morel, the Morel, the yellow Morel, the true morale, the Morel, mushroom and the sponge Morel, all right. You've got to be careful, though, to not confuse it with a false morale, which can be poisonous. So once again, I don't think you and I should get into foraging, no.
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:19
But like, when you're getting started, like, there's like, some mushroom whisperer that you like bring your mushrooms to and they tell you whether they're poisonous or not. I think so. I'm not sure if this is like someone you go out foraging with, or you have to, like, pay them. I think
Molly 14:32
a friend of the show, Ashley Rodriguez, a fellow Seattle resident, is a mushroom whisperer. Is a mushroom whisperer. She recently wrote a whole book about foraging, specifically, I think, for mushrooms. Okay, we should check that out. I should have looked into that maybe before I did this episode. But as I, as I promised, this episode is going to be even stupider than usual. Yes, that's right. There we go, because of the cream. Yeah. So these guys are, like, really recognizable, but there are some like you. Scary mushrooms that look a lot like
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:03
them. Yeah, no, I'm definitely scared of poisonous mushrooms. I am
Molly 15:07
too. I found this really fascinating. There is a tremendous amount of controversy. Here's what we're gonna get into, like taxonomy. There is a huge amount of controversy about the actual number of species there are within the genus Marcella, ah cladistics, some mycologists recognize as few as three, and then others recognize more than 30.
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:29
Oh, so would you say there are lumpers and splitters? Sure? Okay, sure.
Molly 15:34
And this is not only because morels vary tremendously in shape and size and color, making it seemed like there are lots of different ones, but also because different morels look very similar under a microscope. Okay, so it can be difficult to figure out which ones are truly biologically distinct. Current molecular phylogenetics indicates that there might be over 70 species of Marcella worldwide. I don't
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:01
even know enough about, like, fungal reproduction to know, like, how you define a species in the world of fungi? I don't know. I don't even know if it's fungi or fungi. I don't really know anything. I
Molly 16:13
think it's both. Okay. I did learn, though, that a lot of morels are endemic to really small territories. Okay, that
Speaker 1 16:21
was so. So there's like one, one species that, like only lives in Kent. That's right. Okay, that's
Molly 16:25
exactly right. Oh, and I guess people who are really conscientious foragers, when they go foraging for morels or maybe other mushrooms too, but they'll collect them into some sort of a porous bag so that spores can kind of shake out behind them. And they sort of, you know,
Speaker 1 16:41
I really liked your hand gesture for porous bag, like, no, no, even before that, when you were like, sort of gathering them, like, like, holy, yeah, cradling a baby to your bosom. Yeah,
Molly 16:52
okay. But something important to know about morels is that you really have to cook them. And you need to cook them well, while you're in luck, I cook them great, because they've got a toxin that can be, you know, like, disabled with heat. Okay, you can't eat them raw or undercooked. I
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:08
don't, I don't think I knew that, but also I don't think I would try. Yeah,
Molly 17:12
I feel like with most mushrooms, I don't want to eat them raw.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:15
No, I'm really not a fan of, like, raw button mushrooms show up like in salads. Yeah,
Molly 17:21
I feel like they all need heat and fat to kind of get their flavor going. So let's talk about cooking these bad boys. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:35
I cooked these bad boys. Okay, what did you do? I wanted just like a really basic Morel cream pasta. I just Googled something up, and I came I ended up with Indy Hampton's blog with spice, and the recipe is called Morel pasta with cream, parmesan and thyme, perfect. And so for the full recipe, I made like a third of the recipe for just two of us, but the full recipe starts with three ounces of dried morels. Okay, you reconstitute them with boiling water, and you save and strain the soaking liquid, because that's that's like, where a lot of the flavor is. It's like, like with clams that, like, you know you want, you want the clam liquid as much or more than you want, like, the little bit of clam totally. Then you saute some shallots and garlic, you throw in the soaked morels. Can
Molly 18:21
I ask a question when you're working with reconstituted morels? Yeah, do you have to worry about the liquid that is like, do you squeeze the extra liquid out of them?
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:31
Did squeeze the extra liquid out of them? Which was very satisfying. I'm glad you brought that up. Like, to pick up a big handful of mushrooms and squeeze quite a bit of water, out of liquid, out of them. It really fun. Made me feel like I was getting blood from a stone, kind of, oh yeah, uh huh, uh huh.
Molly 18:46
Like you are so metal today. Oh yeah, Motorhead blood from
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:52
a stone. And yes, then you simmer those with with some cream, heavy cream, and some of the soaking liquid for a while and, like, cook that down and some fresh thyme, and just cook that down into really thick sauce. I did that ahead and put that in the fridge, and then when you came over, I boiled some. What was that pasta?
Speaker 1 19:14
Yeah, something like chic chiole. It's like, like, like, kind of, kind of rigatoni, but the elbow, yeah, it's like, big shells. Big shells, yeah, yeah, jumbo shells. Actually, I have, this is not even a joke. I've heard these called Shell bows. Great shell bows, shell bows. So boiled some shell bows, and then, like, loosened the sauce with some with some pasta cooking water, and then you stir in and the cooked pasta with some parmesan cheese, and that's it. Oh,
Molly 19:43
my god, so good, fabulous. Hold on. Did you say the full recipe or the amount that you made called for three hours. The
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:50
full recipe called for three ounces. I used one ounce, which was the size of the bag that I got at Central Co Op. Was What's your guess for how much I paid? One ounce? Ounce of dry morale. I did later look up and find that this was, this was like the go to your natural food store, premium price. Like you can get them for less online, but $19
Molly 20:11
$35 No,
Unknown Speaker 20:17
we ate them all.
Molly 20:19
No, that is insane. So if
Unknown Speaker 20:22
I'd made the full recipe, it would have been over $100
Molly 20:26
Whoa. Matthew, that, no, that is not right, but,
Speaker 1 20:29
but there had they were good. Oh, they were so good. I got there, I looked at it. I'm like, you know, fuck it. Oh, man, okay.
Molly 20:37
I went to the grocery store this morning, and now I wish I had looked at the price at like, PCC, yeah,
Speaker 1 20:44
I had some dried ones at socios, but I didn't check the price because I wanted to continue looking for fresh ones that I didn't end up finding. Honestly,
Molly 20:51
I feel like, in a minute, I think we should call socios and find out. All right, socios is one of a couple of really fantastic produce vendors at Pike Place Market. Wait, should we pause and do that? Okay? Man,
Unknown Speaker 21:09
two ounces for 25 bucks. But
Molly 21:11
I think most people would still be like, I mean, that's a crazy amount of money for a tiny little
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:19
Yeah, but they, I mean, they do, they do grow a bunch when you when you rehydrate them, they're growers, not showers. They're growers not showers. And they're, I mean, it's a premium ingredient, and they're very tasty. Oh,
Molly 21:29
and they are, you're not gonna use them every day. How would you describe the flavor of a morel compared to, I don't know, a cremini
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:37
more, like, deep and foresty and complex. Like, I feel like, you know, when people talk about an ingredient that has, you say this word, it's T, E, R, R, O, I, R, T, H, O, A, yeah, like a wild mushroom and a morel in particular is like an ingredient that has that
Molly 21:53
thing you said. Do you think it really varies, though? Oh, I don't know place to play or No, it has a flavor. It has a flavor of the Earth, yeah? Oh, my God, a morel is hands down my favorite mushroom. I was just gonna ask. It is so fragrant. And I really like mushrooms. I can be I can be turned off by the texture of them. Actually, I don't always love the texture of a chanterelle, but for me, in every way, a morel is perfect because it also has a really lovely texture. Yeah, no,
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:22
it soaks up that sauce, yes. Like, like we said, it spits the sauce back at you, and either love it or hate it, yeah, absolutely, like, honestly, I would say, overall, my favorite mushroom is probably cremini, but my favorite wild mushroom is certainly Morel.
Molly 22:37
These have been prized by cooks in Europe for a very long time. And apparently people used to even like, burn parts of their own land just to try to encourage the growth of morels in the next season. Would they don't do that at
Speaker 1 22:51
home? Would they then like, stand in front of the burning forest and like, laugh like a pyro? Yeah, for sure. Cool. Hey, that's how Motorhead started.
Unknown Speaker 23:06
Thanks, Lemmy. Okay,
Molly 23:07
so for any of our listeners near the Great Lakes, I want to make sure you know that every spring, hundreds, if not more of Morel enthusiasts meet up in Boeing City, Michigan, boing for the National morel mushroom Festival, which is celebrating its 65th anniversary this year, 2025 so unfortunately, well, you may we don't
Speaker 1 23:32
know exactly when this episode is coming out, because it's a spring ingredient, so Abby might push the episode earlier, but what I was going to say is, in our next episode, I'm going to be describing a summer festival that's happening around the time of that episode? Wow, we've clearly entered festival season, and I am here for it. Tell me more about the morel mushroom Festival in boyoin City, Michigan.
Molly 23:55
So on Wikipedia, there was this dumb quote about it that one observer said, if there is a modern North American reenactment of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this is it. I love that. So what does it mean? Yeah, no, guys, I had to go look. I mean, I haven't read The Canterbury Tales since my sophomore year in high school. You've
Speaker 1 24:13
gotten like, so gotta love him. There's the like, priests, maids,
Molly 24:21
the jesters, yeah, whatever. Okay, well, I don't know what the heck this guy was talking about, because I looked at the schedule for the May 2025 festival, okay? And it was just full of jesters. There's a battle of the bands, okay, just like in Chaucer's time, there are food trucks. There's a skate park fundraiser, country rock band. So there's also a competitive mushroom hunt, which you know could be sort of Canterbury. And, yeah, sure. And there's also a paint and sip at which you can create your own one of a kind painting of a Michigan Morel. And those things that seems pretty medieval to me.
Speaker 1 24:58
Yeah, did the average person? Paint and medieval times. I mean, I'm sure they sipped like, Mead or grog or something, yeah, wow. What? What did that person mean? Did they mean by that? I mean, I think I feel like that's what you would say to describe just like a Ren Faire, right? But, but, like, but the Canterbury Tales is such a specific reference. Like we did read some of the Canterbury Tales when I was in like high school senior English, I think I had to read it my sophomore year. We had to memorize the introductory paragraph when opera, with his sure suite the druk of March have parasit to the Ruta. Why do I man, if Twas brillig
Molly 25:42
Geier and gimbal in the wave, yeah, see where the Bora goes and the mom
Unknown Speaker 25:46
rats out grape. I hate it when my toes get too sly.
Molly 25:52
That's my least favorite part about foraging. Exactly.
Speaker 1 25:56
Okay, so, yeah, so possible future retreat, Boyne, City, Michigan, that's right.
Molly 26:00
Oh, okay, and then I just wanted to say that. So my very favorite place to eat, morels, other than here at your table, is a restaurant called bistro Paul bear, or bistro Paul Burton. Paul
Speaker 1 26:12
Burton, right next to Bistro Paul Ernie. So dumb, but you warned him. You warned me that I was gonna be gonna be stupider than usual. Anyway,
Molly 26:25
this restaurant has been around for a while, and I am no longer afraid of, you know, blowing up your spot, blowing up my spot, because this spot got blown up so long ago. But I'm here to say that I have had veal with morels there. Wow. Sounds really good the first time, maybe 20 years ago. And then I had it again this past April, and it is incredible. They it used to be, I could swear it used to be a veal chop. Now it's more like, like a pounded veal, okay, but you
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:59
said in the description fried eggs. How do the fried eggs work? Oh,
Molly 27:02
so the fried eggs, that's a different dish. Oh, okay, have a starter fried eggs and Morel sauce. Okay, so you could straight up go there, and you could just have, like, bread and fried eggs in Morel sauce. Oh,
Speaker 1 27:14
that sounds incredible. It's okay. I'm gonna make the same sauce that I made for the pasta, and I'm gonna have it with, like, toasted rustic bread and fried egg sometime. And I'm certainly gonna get the brows from socios.
Molly 27:29
Oh, and, I mean, I guess it's, it's good to remember that. I mean, we can get these, these things year round, because the dried ones, I would have never known the ones we had today were not fresh. Oh yeah, yeah. If anything, I feel like they're a little easier to work with, because they're often, you don't
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:43
have to clean them as much. Yeah? Because, yeah, like any, like, any mild, mild rush room, like any wild mushroom morels can harbor a lot of dirt and centipedes. Is that what you
Molly 27:55
said? Yeah. How do you clean that when you get fresh ones? Um, just, like,
Speaker 1 27:59
in a couple of changes of water, like, like, oh, there, yeah, okay, okay, and then, and then dry them pretty well. Okay, how about, how do you do it? It's been a long compressed air
Molly 28:14
now. I think I've like, taken a paper towel and sort of like, swiped at them a little bit, or, like, a pastry brush. Yeah, I
Speaker 1 28:20
don't know when the last time I bought fresh more. I mean, I know when the last time I tried to was, it was two days ago, but, yeah, like, when will I next succeed? I don't know. I mean, they said they might be getting some tomorrow at socios. You're just gonna use the rest of the
Molly 28:33
show. Do you feel like hemorrhaging our entire paycheck into, uh, into mushrooms? I do. Yes, blood from a stone? Exactly. No, it turns out you can, you can get blood from a stone. That's right. Matthew, You know what? It's time for segments.
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:48
Okay, we're like the segmented sack, if you think about it, that's right,
Molly 28:51
yeah, we are a couple of fun guys. We're a couple of fun guys, and we are. We've got some, some mail in our in our sack. Now, if
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:59
you think about it, we do have some male or sac in our male sack. The the human body is not, it's not just the human sack, although it certainly is like sacs within sacs because you got like a, like a pericardium, that's a sac. Well,
Molly 29:12
I mean, fascia. I mean, isn't that kind of moon? What is that? Oh, your fascia. It's from what I understand. It's sort of like almost, sort of this like thing that encases your muscles, okay, yeah, sort of like under your skin. It's not just muscle. There's like a layer of fascia that's sort of okay listener,
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:34
if you're a listener who's like, a doctor or, like physio, anatomist, anatomist, yeah, like, how many sacks Would you say there are in the average human? Well, I mean,
Molly 29:44
are we going to talk about alveoli? Because, oh, there are countless sacks. No, oh, yeah, that really complicates things. Are you talking like macro sacks?
Speaker 1 29:55
Macro sacks? How many macro sacks are there? That's.
Molly 30:02
Okay, all right. Well, hey, Matthew, we have some spilled nails. Yes, this
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:13
is from listener Michelle, who writes, Hi me again. Michelle from Canada. We used to live way, way up north in Canada, in Iqaluit, none of it. It is a small fly in city with no trees, lovely people and lots of snow. Our apartment was on the road to nowhere. Legit, that was our address, and it really did go nowhere. If you ever have a chance to visit, please do. It is such a stunning place full of culture and history. Michelle, the thing that really struck me about about this is no trees. I was not wild too, like that makes me want to go more. I'm
Molly 30:43
also, it took me a minute to really register that it is a fly in city. Yes, I'd never heard of that before. I mean, I guess I'm a real city pumpkin isn't
Speaker 1 30:54
me, isn't like Juno a fly in city? Maybe like
Molly 30:59
there are no roads, going to it. I think maybe I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I guess plenty of islands are flying, oh, yeah, because on Baffin Island, I mean, I get that like Hawaii is a fly in state. It is a fly
Speaker 1 31:14
in state or or a boat in Yeah. But yeah, you can vote in, but anyway, yeah, fly in city with no trees.
Molly 31:21
Yeah?
Matthew Amster-Burton 31:22
So I think we will. We will definitely, I'm not gonna commit to a collow it, but we'll, we'll definitely be doing, like, future Canadian retreats, right? Yeah.
Molly 31:30
We are very, very pro Canada, yeah, if you're, if you're that
Speaker 1 31:34
person from, from, like, the Canadian tourism board who was gonna, like, send us on tour in Canada before COVID happened. Please do, please do get back in touch. We're still here. Contact at spilled mug podcast.com and we could use some spilled mail, even if you don't work in Canadian tourism, which I know a few of our listeners don't. Okay.
Molly 31:51
Unfortunately, Matthew, I hear you've got it now, but wow, you
Matthew Amster-Burton 32:04
I'm about halfway through a book called Good night Tokyo by atsuhiro Yoshida, which is a cozy collection of like connected short stories centering on a nighttime cab driver in Tokyo and is very eccentric passengers. There's a Loquat thief, there's a guy who might be an actor or a great detective, or totally delusional, or all three. It is, I use the word cozy. And I would like, you know, this is, this is, like, one of those. I feel like there are a couple of kinds of Japanese books that get translated. There's the like, before the coffee gets cold, sort of like, goes down easy. Everyone's gonna enjoy this. And then, and then there's like, more, like, intense, hardcore stuff, like, like, convenience store. Woman, this is very much on the cozy side, but I'm really enjoying it. He has a real eye for detail, and I'm curious to see how everything ends up intersecting. Delightful. That's good night Tokyo. By atsuhiro Yoshida, wonderful.
Molly 32:59
Okay. Our producer is Abby sercatella. Molly
Matthew Amster-Burton 33:02
has a newsletter called I've got a feeling that I would recommend you check out. It is@mollywisenberg.substack.com it's great writing delivered directly to your door.
Molly 33:13
Wow. Knock, knock. Matthew makes music under the name early to the airport, which you can find on band camp and all the other places where you find music, they are releasing new songs all the time. We
Speaker 1 33:28
some of the time we are releasing new songs some of the time we have an album coming out. Sometime Great.
Molly 33:35
All right, you can rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts, and
Matthew Amster-Burton 33:39
you can debate your favorite mushroom over at reddit.com/r/everything, spilled milk. It's a place where people on the internet go to talk mushrooms and other things. Well,
Molly 33:51
thank you for listening to spilled milk,
Matthew Amster-Burton 33:53
the show that spits the sauce right back into your ears. Oh
Molly 33:57
yeah. I'm Molly Weisenberg And I'm Matthew Amster
Unknown Speaker 34:08
Burton. Go ahead. I.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai