How To Cultivate Mushrooms, Best Methods To Prepare Fish, Understanding Diverging Polls

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• Fear Not, Growing Mushrooms Is Easier Than You Might Think

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  Tomatoes, peppers and zucchini are eagerly grown by many home gardeners. But perhaps less obvious to grow yourself are mushrooms.

  With a little patience, care and know-how, growing your own mushrooms is easier than you think, said Tavis Lynch, author of “Mushroom Cultivation: An Illustrated Guide to Growing Your Own Mushrooms at Home.”

  Lynch has been growing his own mushrooms for 15 years, and on a commercial level since 2010.

  “It’s just been a lifelong hobby that turned into a little bit more than a hobby,” he said. “I’ve been picking mushrooms since I was a kid, picking them up and studying them and wondering what they were.”

  Home growers have dozens of mushroom varieties to choose from, Lynch said. All you need is the mushroom spawn and something it can grow on — either wood, compost or straw.

  “Choose a mushroom that you like to eat or one that you think is pretty to look at, and then start looking at the ingredients you would need to grow that mushroom,” he said.

  Mushroom spawn, the mushroom organism, can be purchased at a variety of mushroom companies, like Field and Forest Products in Peshtigo, Lynch said.

  The spawn is first spread on a small medium, like sawdust or grain, then moved onto a larger medium — wood, straw or compost, depending on the type of mushroom — so it can colonize it.

  
  Shiitake mushrooms. Photo courtesy of Tavis Lynch

  Mushroom cultivators aren’t limited by Wisconsin’s growing season — which runs from about early April through the first frost — they can also grown them indoors and they don’t require much space, Lynch said.

  “You can do it on a large scale, or you can buy a small kit that you can grow right on your kitchen counter,” he said. “It only takes up about a square foot and you can get fresh … mushrooms in just a matter of days.”

  While white oak is Lynch’s favorite wood to grow mushrooms on, he primarily uses ironwood, though different mushrooms take better to different kinds of wood.

  He has also had success with sugar maple, particularly with shiitakes. However, red, silver and boxelder maple varieties tend to decay quickly, leaving their production window short.

  This past year has been extremely successful for mushroom growers because of the excess of rain, Lynch said. Drought, on the other hand, is more difficult to handle. Mushrooms require about an inch of rain every 10 days,

  “You don’t want to water them every day,” he said. “If they were to stay wet all the time, there would be problems with other invading fungi or microorganisms finding a way in through that wet bark.”

  As for eating them, Lynch prefers to let the mushroom flavor shine by simply cooking them in a pan with butter, salt and pepper.

• How To Make Sense Of Polls That Show Different Results

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  A poll out Wednesday showed Governor Scott Walker with a slight lead in support, but another released the next day showed his Democratic challenger Tony Evers with as much as a 10 point lead over Walker. We’ll talk to a polling expert about what to do when poll results say drastically different things.

• How To Grow Your Own Mushrooms

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  You can find them at restaurants, grocery stores and farmers’ markets. And with some know-how, care and patience, you can also have fresh mushrooms right at home. We’ll talk about how to grow our favorite fungi and prepare them for dinner.

• How To Cook Fish: Only Flip Fillet Once When Cooking And Other Advice From A Fishmonger

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  Joe Gurrera has a few rules for cooking fish, and one of them is to flip the fillet only once.

  Fish is a delicate protein, said Gurrera, owner of seafood shop Citarella Market in New York City and author of a cookbook published in June, “Joe Knows Fish: Taking the Intimidation Out of Cooking Seafood.”

  “Once you keep on flipping, it will fall apart,” he said.

  Flipping a fillet once is one of his seven rules or “Commandments for Successfully Cooking Seafood,” as he calls them.

  Gurrera, who sells saltwater fish to customers all over the United States via his website, advises cooks to use fresh ingredients, depend on a timer instead of a thermometer, rinse and pat fish dry, and preheat the pan or grill to ensure it’s hot enough when the fish makes contact with it.

  Cooks also have to be careful not to get distracted; sometimes cooking time can take just a minute on each side, he said.

  “People just have to give it the effort and the tender loving care to cook it,” Gurrera said. “You could eat a meal in five minute.”

  Gurrera categorizes his book by the different ways to cook fish, beginning with grilling, which he said is the easiest.

  The book also covers baking, roasting, broiling, sautéing, poaching and frying.

  “Each category … requires a little bit more effort to do,” he said.

  Striped bass is the star dish of one of Gurrera’s recipes. He describes it as the “poster fish of the east coast.” Poached wild striped bass with tomato and garlic is started by cooking the fish in a pan in a quarter-inch of water. Depending on the thickness of the fish, it could take five to eight minutes to cook, Gurrera said.

  As for Friday favorites in Wisconsin, Gurrera offered some ideas for a homemade fish fry.

  He said the oil should be heated to about 375 degrees, and the fish will be cooked from two to four minutes, depending on its thickness.

  “The key is not overcooking it,” he said.

  Gurrera said dill sauces tend to work best with fish and can also pair well with raw vegetables. To create the sauce, Gurrera recommends mixing dill together with scallions, parsley, mayonnaise, sour cream, Dijon mustard, vinegar and salt and pepper.

• Food Friday: How To Take The Fear Out Of Cooking Fish

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  If you’re intimidated by cooking and preparing fish, our Food Friday guest will help take the fear out of seafood. Joe Gurrera, author of “Joe Knows Fish” and owner of the New York-based Citarella Market, joins us to give tips and tricks to take the hassle out of cooking fish.