Stargazing

 

These are Albino Stargazers, from Nichy Myco. I follow him on Facebook, and he has been awesome - not only a neat source of genetics, but generous with answers to my newb questions. I got a liquid culture, not spores, but the beautiful little albino mushrooms are exactly what I wanted - neat, well-behaved, and BRILLIANTLY visual. Oh - and also, they were delicious. Alan Rockefeller was the one who clued me in to the fact that Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms are pretty universally tasty when cooked properly - and while I thoroughly enjoyed my trip with his first recommendation of roasting with butter and garlic, I have to say that turning some traditional French technique on them was definitely worthwhile. 

I have been aiming for a Johns Hopkins-approximate 25 mg dose  of psilocybin with each trip; this is the dose that most psychedelic therapy studies have supported as doing the most good in terms of treating treatment-resistant depression, which is what I HAD. Please note, past tense... I think of it as a past thing, although I am continuing to maintenance-dose to make sure the fucker is GONE and doesn't come back. That was a bad, sad, gray decade. 

I measured roughly 25 grams - it actually ended up a little less once I cut the feet off - most strains are roughly 90% water, and you can guesstimate that there's something like 1% psilocybin by dry weight... so a consistent therapeutic trip without going into "can't walk, can't talk, need bed" territory, is in this range. 2.5 grams dry, or 25 grams wet. Too little, and you don't get the neuroplasticity benefits; too much, and it's just a LOT. 

Of course, there is a HUGE variation in the amount of psilocybin that each individual mushroom has, and each PART of the mushroom, not to mention the strain-by-strain variations, and psilocybin is only one of the half-dozen or so active chemicals that make up the mushroom entourage effect. Psilocybin, psilocin, baeocystin, norbaeocystin, norpsilocin, auruginascin, ß-carbolines... some of these guys have only even been DISCOVERED (or isolated in mushrooms) in the past decade. Some of them are primary hallucinogens in other forms of plant medicines.

So, what I'm saying here is... you measure, and you aim, and you throw the dart, and it lands where it lands. Whee! I know that modern medicine would really prefer a specific, dose-response treatment protocol where they can deliver a precisely-measured, preferably synthetic and patentable chemical that will have the desired mental effects... and, they're working really hard to make a version that will separate off the hallucinogenic parts from the mental-health benefits. While I'm all for the mental-health benefits, I think this kind of throws the baby out with the DELICIOUS bathwater, removing both the hard work part AND the beauty part, and I'm definitely here to stick up for team do-it-yourself. I read the research, I study the science as much as I can with my layman's understanding, and I try to do my best. Taking my mental health into my own fallible and trembling hands has been the best choice I've ever made.  

I started off with chopping them up; I went for a medium-sized rough dice, although some of the mushroom pieces themselves kind of dictated a little of it. I debated whether the stipes were going to be too woody to be delicious - the stems of some strains of cubes are a little tough to chew, and these were somewhat stiff getting the knife through at first - but I decided to go ahead and put everything in. If I were aiming for a perfect presentation plate, I might have left out one of the woodier stems. As I worked the knife through the mushrooms, the bluing immediately showed up, indicating the psilocybin being bruised; this is unavoidable, but you don't want it to go on for too long. It's also an indicator that they're likely to be STRONG. 

I put the chopped mushrooms into a pan with a couple of tablespoons of butter. This is one thing I'll do differently next time - I'm used to working with button or oyster mushrooms, both of which are very thirsty, and I'm used to working with a lot MORE of them volume-wise, so they soak up more butter. I didn't need this much. PRO TIP: use good butter. Kerrygold is awesome, or any grass-fed butter you can get. You can taste it when you're done. [admission: I am not a pro. I just love good butter. I did, however, LEARN about good butter from pros.]

After the mushrooms were lightly golden brown and the Maillard reaction was kicking in, (as Anne Burell says, "BROWN FOOD GOOD!!") I poured in enough cream. I don't measure; it's enough to make a thin layer across the shallow sauté pan. I would say maybe a third of a cup? It's still pretty hot. It stays pretty hot throughout the whole process. This doesn't work well if you turn it way down. See the bubbles? It should bubble like that, and the bubbles will spread across the pan as the cream evaporates. Stir CONSTANTLY, don't let it sit for longer than about twenty or thirty seconds without stirring. Make sure that everything gets stirred, especially if you've added garlic, because garlic can burn and then it's bitter. Bitter garlic is bad. 

As the water in the cream boils off, it gets thicker and thicker. This is called a cream reduction, because you reduce the cream - meaning that the liquid is reduced in volume by boiling off. It's NOT what I grew up calling "cream gravy," which is a roux-based thing with pan drippings and flour, but this is what I call cream gravy now; it's gravy, made from cream. It is not light. Instead, it is delicious. Wine in this is also amaaaaazing. 

If it goes too far, it breaks - the butterfat separates out, and then it's an oily mess. Still edible, just not as nice in your mouth. You want OMG scrumptious, not something you choke down. So, you watch and you keep checking. What you're watching for, is the point at which the texture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon - it makes a gravy with some covering power, the kind of thing that will stick to a bite of steak, but you don't pick it up with a fork. When you run the nylon spatula across the bottom of the pan, fresh cream will run immediately back across and fill in; as it thickens, it slows down and you can make a clear stripe. 

This is the scrape test you want. You're constantly scraping and stirring with the spatula; make sure that you're getting everything stirred around the whole pan every thirty seconds or so. Don't let it sit for long in any one spot. I know I just said this. It's one of those things... bears saying twice. This is the easy place to screw it up. 

I seasoned mine with Cavender's Greek Seasoning, just because it's delicious - it's got some oregano, a little garlic, some salt and pepper, onion... you can do what you want, but some savory spicing is not going to go amiss. Season it at THIS stage, because if you season it earlier, it's likely to be too salty as it thickens. Also, if you used salted butter, it's going to have that salt in it already. Taste it, of course, to adjust the seasoning. CAREFULLY - lick the spoon, don't taste this stuff a spoonful at a time, or you'll be floating along the ceiling before it's time to walk the dogs. 

When it starts to look like this, it's done. The bubbles start to have little pockets of empty pan in between them, where the cream doesn't flow back even without you scraping. Keep stirring and scraping, and take it off the burner. Especially if you have electric heat, don't trust the burner not to keep cooking and break the sauce. 

I poured mine over two slow-scrambled eggs, which were cooking at the same time as the gravy. The overall effect was a little more oily than what it will be the next time, I promise (see also: started with too much butter) but DAMN, it was tasty. The cream sauce was rich, with the mushroom flavor prominent but not overwhelming the savory notes of butter and spices. It would have benefited from something with some starch, like an English muffin or a biscuit to go underneath, but I didn't have any handy, and I didn't feel like either a grocery store trip or a baking adventure. 

AND NOW... on to the show. 

I have to say... I have heard, and I can definitely agree based on my limited experience, FRESH BEATS DRIED, hands down. DAMN. I know that these are supposed to be a highly visual strain, and I haven't tried them (yet) dried... so I don't have an apples-to-dried-apples comparison to be able to weigh and measure against. I was able to walk, type, reason in clear English, and handle my phone at all times, but when I closed my eyes (and even when they were open) the fireworks show was SPECTACULAR. The thing that I kept saying to my virtual trip-sitting friends on messenger when I would come up for air, and to my husband when I came downstairs, was "I can see through the dogs." What I meant was, that I was seeing the geometrical underpinnings of their shapes, outlined in brilliant traceries of light and linework - it was SPECTACULAR. I have never seen anything quite so brilliant. Fireworks were going off with my eyes open. Granted, I'm new - I tend to test the depth of the river with both feet, and I freely admit my blatant audacity in writing a blog with something like a dozen trips under my belt - but, for me, that figuring-things-out perspective is immensely valuable, and I hope it may be helpful for somebody else. Plus, I haven't seen anybody else make a cream-reduction mushroom gravy, and I had to tell y'all!! This shit, as the kids say, SLAPS. 

The Johns Hopkins playlist came through for me once again - I highly recommend it, if you have the option. This time in particular, there's a song called "Seah Jahan" by Paul Horn, from "Inside the Taj Mahal" - I hadn't read its story, and I was first picturing some kind of cavern where the flutist would have to hike in after hours... and the real story is almost as awesome. 

This trip didn't have the same kind of narrative arc that they sometimes do for me - I wasn't doing a "working" trip in the sense of dealing with a particular emotional issue, and I wasn't working through a particular creative challenge. This one was more of a "Let's look at the beautifulness of all this beauty" kind of trip, and doing maintenance on my neurons. I can tell you for SURE, though, that whenever I've got the option, it's fresh mushrooms for breakfast over dried. The trip is definitely LONGER, and it's slower - but it's so beautiful.