King Oyster Mushroom "Calamari"

I have been intrigued by Sarma's recipe for King Oyster Mushroom "Calamari" since I first saw it on page 155 of Living Raw Food.

Have I mentioned that this book is one of my favorite raw recipe books...ever?

Since I may never get to experience dining at Sarma's famous restaurant, Pure Food and Wine, this is the next best thing! Thank you Sarma, for putting your recipes in this lovely book for us:)

The hardest part about this recipe may be finding the king oyster mushroom. If you have an Asian market in your neighborhood, this might be the place to go. Around here, it is the only place I have seen them. If you don't know what they look like, here is a picture of mine.

I almost forgot they were in the fridge, and the cap of one got a bit frozen, but you don't use the cap for this recipe. And yes, they do sorta remind me of...

a peeled eggplant ;) As a matter of fact, Heathy used eggplant when she made this:)

This is what I consider a fun recipe. I get to play with things like cookie cutters. It is easy to make, and is really pretty quick. It is unique, and it tastes awesome! As usual, I scaled the recipe way down since it is just for moi:)

The first thing to do is slice the mushroom stems, and cut them into rings. I have a set of circle cutters of all different sizes that made the job very easy. If you don't have a circle cutter, the tops of small and large spice jars might work, and they are exactly the size of the two cutters I used. My blogging friend, Bitt, used an apple corer:)

I was able to get two or three rings from each slice.

There was a smaller cutter, but I thought it would be nice to make some "scallops" with the solid middle of each slice.

Sarma mentioned in the book that they make scallops at the restaurant. I just marinated mine in lemon, oil, dulse flakes, and some spices. They were delish!

The calamari is marinated for about a half hour, then coated with seasoned flax seed crumbs. After several hours in the dehydrator, they were perfect!

To accompany the calamari, there are two yummy condiments. A tartar sauce, and a cocktail sauce. I made both in a smaller batch (to my own tastes) and they are incredible! I could not decide which one I liked better, so I enjoyed a little of both and a squeeze of lemon on each tender calamari ring:)

A BIG HUGE THANKS to Sarma for sharing this delicious recipe!

Again, a word to my blogging friends...

Google reader is still cranky :(

I am having some issues commenting on almost everyone's blog this week! I can not even leave a comment on my own blog...lol! If you have blog comments powered by "disqus", it will not load for me at all. The problems are most likely on my end, and I hope to resolve them soon.

In the meantime, I am loving all your posts, and really wish I could comment...maybe someone is trying to keep me quiet??..LOL!