Hey everyone,

For me, Spring is nothing more than an excuse to eat fresh morels. While you should be able to find them at your local gourmet food shops, if for some reason they haven't stocked up, there's a great website called http://www.marxfoods.com that has all of your morel needs totally covered.

When you're hunting for fresh morels, you're looking for unblemished, whole mushrooms with white stems. Steer clear of any funky scents or slimy stems. Once home, it's ideal to cook your morels that evening, but they can stay fresh and dry for about 3 days; be sure to store them in a paper bag, refrigerated - use of any plastics will make your morels taste strange and will completely change the texture.

When selecting your morels, I recommend really going through them carefully, because a bruised morel's texture can be rubbery once prepared and cooked. If you're feeling intrepid, you can sign up for a morel-hunting group - but be absolutely sure you know what you're doing. As you know, morels must be cooked and never eaten raw. As for cleaning and cooking techniques, there are a million different ones out there, but for me the finest way to eat a morel is:

TO PREPARE:

-Hand-pick a collection of white-stemmed, fresh morels.

-Bring home, slice length-wise, brush away dirt and/or bugs.

-Let sit out until ready to eat.

-If it's a particularly clean batch, you're ready to cook, if they're buggy or dirty, use a damp towel to clean.

-If the towel proves to be not enough man-power, as a last resort you may soak your morels in a salt-water bath for a maximum of 15 minutes - rinse thoroughly and then pat dry with a cloth.

TO COOK:

-Melt a giant knob of butter in a cast iron skillet until butter is sizzling but not darkening - a medium heat is roughly right.

- Add your sliced morels, plain* and unsalted, to the butter

-Cook for about 4-7 minutes, or until softened. You're not looking for any crispness, but softness.

-Using a slotted spoon, transfer directly to plate, season with salt (Maldon, please) and eat.

*The only acceptable variation when eating straight morels, in my humble opinion, is to lightly flour them before frying.

Let me know how they turn out.

-Michael