(upbeat music) - [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Announcer] The following episode of "Charlotte Cooks" is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Coming up on this episode of "Charlotte Cooks," we have Chef Julia Simon with us, and y'all know her from Plant Joy.

She's making us some lion's mane steak tacos today.

(cheery music) Welcome to this episode of "Charlotte Cooks."

I'm so glad you're here today 'cause we've got a really fun show.

Julia, thank you for joining us again.

- Absolutely.

- And I'm just amazed at these beautiful, beautiful mushrooms.

- Aren't they something else?

- [Pamela] They really are.

I mean, the texture.

This is a lion's mane mushroom, right?

- [Julia] It's a lion's mane mushroom grown right here in Charlotte, North Carolina.

- [Pamela] These are unusual mushrooms.

What can you tell us about these mushrooms, Julia?

- So they're beautiful.

They grow.

They do actually grow in the forests of North Carolina, too.

If you're a mushroom forger, you can find them, typically January.

They're cold weather mushrooms, but they're said to be neuroregenerative, which is a really interesting quality for food, right?

When we talk about neuroregenerative foods, we're talking about foods that can help heal our brain from some of the damages of just being human in the world, right?

So it's really fun to be able to eat things that are super delicious, but also aid in healing our body over time.

- Absolutely.

- And these are a really great example of that.

We're gonna do some interesting things with them today.

I feel like this is a mushroom that confuses home cooks.

It carries a lot of moisture with it.

It's a really strange texture.

It's not really like any other type of mushroom.

- Yes, it's not.

It's not like any other thing I've seen except maybe a head of hair.

(laughs) - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Sometimes people will do things like shred the lion's mane mushroom into little bits and make crab cakes with them.

But today what we're gonna do is, I'm gonna show you guys a time-tested technique.

This technique actually comes to us from a chef in England.

We're gonna take them, we're gonna break them down into kind of like steak, steak-size pieces, and then we're gonna compress them between two big pieces of cast iron steel to kind of squish all of their beautiful liquids out and have that caramelized back around the mushroom and then deglaze with the beautiful little marinade we're gonna make, right.

So we're gonna put a nice sear on them and then add a little flavor, a little color, and then we're gonna make a gorgeous salsa verde to go with that and make fresh corn tortillas.

- [Pamela] There's nothing like fresh corn tortillas.

- [Julia] I agree.

Yes.

- So what is the flavor of this mushroom?

Does it have a distinct flavor?

- That's a good question.

It doesn't.

It has that beautiful earthy aromatic flavor that all mushrooms help and carry.

This one we're cooking, we're looking for that interesting flavor, but we're also adding some umami and some garlic and some other flavors to kind of like support that, but also add a deeper umami flavor on top of it.

- [Pamela] So next we're going to make some steaks out of these.

Show us how to do these.

Do you need this one?

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

Let's do this one too, 'cause these actually are two different distinct kind of sizes and types of mushroom that you might get from Hiram or any other person growing lion's mane at the farmer's market.

If you were to find these in the wild, just to note, it probably would be more like this shape, a small guy kind of growing on a tree.

But it's really nice to have these really robust shapes.

So we wanna keep those robust shapes intact as we trim.

So really not gonna do much to these mushrooms.

I really basically am looking for, I would say this is a six-ounce, four-to-six-ounce piece of mushroom.

We're looking for about two inches thick, just like that.

There's really not a lot of fancy knife work to do here.

- Look at that.

- We're just gonna make some little filets.

- Let me hold one of those guys.

- You have your little trouble.

Yeah.

- They're just so cool.

- They're cool, yeah.

- I mean, they're just marvelous.

- And they're bouncy.

- Yeah, and they're fluffy, and not, well, like I'd think of a mushroom to be at all.

- Yeah.

I think they're great.

I love that they're so dense.

They're so like light and fluffy right now, but we are gonna bring them to a denser state.

We're gonna compress them.

This, you know, you might keep this for another application, either making stock or just doing maybe little bits and pieces, maybe like the crab cake idea we were talking.

- Because it's too small?

- It's too small.

Yeah.

We're really gonna put some heat on these guys, so we really want big robust chunks.

So you know, these guys kind of flaked off into those steaks pretty easily.

- [Pamela] Texture.

- [Julia] Yeah, I mean, that looks very familiar mushroom, right?

- [Pamela] That's texture.

- It really gets interesting on the outside of this mushroom.

So you can see that density of the mushroom right there where it was growing on the substrate and then it kind of gets more interesting and hair-like from there.

So this one we're just gonna bisect.

This will be our thicker steak.

When I'm cutting this mushroom, I tend not to cut all the way through the mushroom because you end up, just like when you're cutting broccoli, you end up with all these florets and detritus.

So if you just cut where the main core of the mushroom is and tear, you kind of keep as much of the mushroom as you possibly can.

And so we have these pans that we've been preheating on the stove a little bit.

So this first step is going to be very high heat.

So we know, we're chefs, right.

We're knowledgeable.

We know that if we throw a bunch of olive oil into these pans, it's gonna smoke immediately, and that's not what we're looking for.

Today we're gonna do a little avocado oil's a great high-heat oil.

There are some really interesting algae oils hitting the market these days.

- Oh, interesting.

- [Julia] I dunno if you've gotten to work with any of those.

- I have not.

- Yeah, they're flavor-free.

Much like avocado oil, they don't really carry a lot of flavor, but they do, they are tolerant to up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit and they're great for high-heat searing, yeah.

- I know a lot of people nowadays are looking for alternatives to seed oils.

- Yes, absolutely, and even coconut oil is starting to get a bad rap.

We have enough data on it now that we know.

- Red palm oil, all that's gone.

- Yeah.

Not great.

Not great.

- Nope.

Not at all.

- So we don't wanna overcrowd the pans.

We're actually just gonna do four of these bad boys.

And like I said, these are going into the pan plain, right.

We're not seasoning these yet because of how high heat this process is, we don't wanna have tamari or other carbohydrates sort of, you know, sauces and oils burning on our pan yet, really.

We really just wanna get these compressed.

So I've got about a tablespoon, two tablespoons of oil in the bottom of the skillet.

I just sprinkled a little bit over the top because we are gonna hit it with this other hot skillet.

- Let me give you another towel to grab that edge.

- Thank you, chef.

I appreciate you.

And so we've been preheating this skillet for about as long as that one.

The bottom is what we're really looking for here.

We want this piece of steel that's closest to the heat to be very, very hot and we're gonna bring it over here and compress.

Obviously, we're being very careful and we're not touching the pan, right?

We're trying to use our towels to prevent us from burning ourselves.

- And watch your arm here, guys, when you're doing this.

Watch your arm.

- The steam, you're watching the steam come out.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's kind of why this technique is so effective for lion's mane.

They are such moisture-carrying mushrooms, which can make them difficult to pan fry.

They end up losing all their liquid in the pan and then you have mush.

- And then they're boiling.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

- Yeah, and that doesn't make a good mushroom.

- Let's just see how we're doing, and we're getting a little bit of stick, which is okay.

- And that's why you had the spatula handy.

- That's correct.

And you know, we might use a little bit of oil next time we do a compression on this guy.

- [Pamela] Oh, look at that already, and that's why that pan is so hot.

- Yeah.

- Oh wow.

- So we're starting to see some of that caramelization that we like.

We're definitely looking for the beginning of a crust being built by the bottom of that pan.

But really what we're interested in is what's happening underneath.

So let's give it a flip.

Not there yet, so let's give it a couple more minutes with the heavier pan on top.

- How long does this whole process take?

- A couple of minutes, usually, yeah.

It depends on how hot your pans are, and if people, if home chefs are doing this, they're probably using a smaller circumference pan.

It would be a little bit snappier.

- [Pamela] Ooh, now look at all that moisture that's come out.

- [Julia] That's what we're looking for.

Now they look like brains.

(laughs) - Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

- Yeah, and we can see all of this beautiful mushroom juice kind of coming out of the side.

So you can see it's lost a lot of its height and its width.

So exactly what we're looking for.

We're gonna flip.

Beautiful.

- [Pamela] They are beautiful.

- And you're kind of, it's almost, you know, I've never cooked meat so I don't really know, but there are many techniques where you're basting that protein in its own juices, and this is not that dissimilar to that's.

Let's go ahead over here and make our marinade.

And so we have this beautiful mushroom.

It's not to say that they're not delicious in this state.

We can just salt and pepper them and enjoy them.

They're super tasty.

But you know me.

I like to play the vegan unami game.

We're gonna do a little bit of liquid aminos or tamari.

- Now tell us what aminos are, 'cause we see a lot of liquid aminos in the recipes for, especially for vegetarian or vegan cooking, and I don't think a lot of people understand what aminos are.

- That's a great question.

I actually have some fermenting in my home kitchen right now.

Aminos are a fermented product.

They are made with typically koji spores, which is a technique from Japan.

Basically what you're doing is you're using fungus, you're using mold spores to help develop the flavors in a carbohydrate into a more densely flavored sauce.

Miso, these are all techniques from the same sort of culinary tradition.

So there's a company called Braggs, been a lot, you know, this is '70s vegetarian stuff here, you guys.

- Yes, absolutely.

- We love this.

I love Liquid Aminos because they carry a bit more sugar flavor, I think, than tamari.

So that's what we're gonna use today, but tamari would be delicious as well.

We're gonna do a little olive oil just for the flavor of olive oil.

One of the things, I think, to keep in mind when I'm doing this technique is, you know, mushrooms don't really carry fat.

And what we're looking for when we're eating steak or like meaty things is fat, so adding some is very welcome.

This is a little bit of minced garlic.

This is a key ingredient.

I use this in a lot of the food that I make.

This is nutritional yeast.

Two things here.

It'll carry some vitamin B12 and protein.

And it'll also help coat those beautiful steaks with the marinade because it helps thicken and adds protein to the sauce.

- So this isn't like yeast you make bread with?

- No, this is completely deactivated.

But it does carry great nutrition and it does help.

Molecularly it is very close to MSG, so it helps to boost that umami flavor while also helping the sauce stick to the mushrooms.

- Now tell us about that red thing you just put in there.

- I just threw a little beet powder in here.

This is a fun trick with this.

So we're adding an organic source.

There's obviously vitamins coming into our recipe here.

But it's also turning our marinade a really nice red color.

And if we're, you know, making lion's mane steaks for our grandpa who's laughing at the idea of these being steaks, if they carry a little bit of red, we might get him to try it a little more easily.

- 'Cause it looks more just like a piece of meat, right?

- Exactly.

Exactly.

We don't want a ton of marinade, right?

There's a bunch of beautiful things happening there already.

- Oh yes.

- So...

This guy's getting crispy.

Oh yeah, that looks great.

- [Pamela] Oh my, I'm so hungry.

- [Julia] I wanna eat these right now.

- I know.

They're fabulous.

Yes.

- So we're gonna give 'em a flip.

I'm really happy with the texture on both sides.

- Oh, look at that.

- You want want a little bit of texture.

Yeah, you wanna see it's dry out a bit.

- [Pamela] That's beautiful.

- And then once it's drawn up most of its beautiful like mushroom liquid, we're gonna go ahead and deglaze, and I want this on a nice high heat.

Really with deglazing, right, guys, we want the pan to be hot enough that what it does is instantly start evaporating that sauce.

We want that sauce to instantly coat our mushrooms and evaporate in the pan.

So we're just gonna give it a couple of minutes.

- So you wait till your liquid is evaporated completely, right?

- Pretty much, yeah, and you're seeing not lots of smoke come off the surface of the pan.

I'm just putting a little black pepper in here.

I think that would be nice.

- Okay.

- Why not, a little garlic and a little onion.

- You can't go wrong with either one of those.

- I think, you know, as a younger chef, I was snobby about garlic and onion powders, but I do think they add a nice flavor set and I like to combine them with fresh.

I think it's fun.

- It's a different garlic and it's a different onion flavor.

- Exactly, it hits your palate in different places too.

It helps to deepen that flavor.

Yeah.

So you guys can see it's a little thick, this marinade.

We're seeing smoke, so we're just gonna go for it.

That's what we want to hear.

Beautiful sound of our marinate instantly evaporating.

- And you can see that bubble coming up and that's what you're looking for.

You don't want it to sit there and wait for it to come up to a bubble.

- Absolutely.

And I think we were wise also to leave the marinade or leave the mushroom juices, really let them evaporate as well so that we could just hit the outside with this beautiful marinade.

So I'm pretty happy with this.

My sauce is evaporated.

My steaks have been coated.

We've turned them a few times in it.

You can see that mushroom, the beet colors kind of like seeping in there.

These look savory, these look delicious.

They're gonna make great tacos.

I'm gonna go ahead and cut the heat.

Just a minute, and a note on this marinade.

This is a base marinade.

If you were doing things like you really wanted to taste chipotle or you really wanted to sell traditional steak, you might add rosemary and thyme.

You might add a bit of the butter, a bit of vegan butter to the pan right now to add a little extra fat.

I am gonna dribble this with a little bit more olive oil.

- Okay.

- But these are complete as far as I'm concerned.

We're gonna move on to our next portion.

- [Pamela] All right.

We've got to make a salsa verde next, don't we?

- Yes we do.

So traditionally, salsa verde is based in tomatillos.

So we're gonna use a green tomato, kind of like friend, neighbor.

Typically you char them first to bring some of that acidity down and like develop some of the flavors in the tomatillo, so it's got a nice sweetness as well as that acidity.

We're gonna do some jalapenos.

If you are a braver human, you could go habanero on this.

It's up to you.

It's up to you.

But I like salsa verde picante but not mouth-frying, so we're just gonna stick with one jalapeno here.

This is what is called a molcajete.

So it kind of looks like a mortar and pestle.

But we were discussing earlier how there is some distinction.

Traditionally it is made with lava rock, and it is porous, so you do usually have to season your molcajete before you really get into it.

It usually comes with a really heavy kind of pestle to help break down whatever's in it.

So we've got our whole jalapeno in there.

I like mine a little spicy.

I left the seeds in.

If you weren't a spicy person but wanted to do this technique, you could take the seeds out, and you basically just wanna use the weight of this piece of rock, volcanic rock to take these peppers down, right?

- And also the texture of it helps break it down too.

That's why it's important, isn't it?

- Absolutely, and I think there is a lot of conversation, culinary conversation, I'm sure you've had it with your students, what the use is of this over a blender.

- Yes.

- And there is a lot of conversation about how, you know, a blender, you're basically, and I'm just gonna salt this a little bit to help get some of that water out, but the blender, you are basically slicing a million different pieces of vegetable or whatever's in the blender.

Here, you're actually crushing.

So if we're talking about like cellular structure and cell walls, right, you could see where there could be quite a distinction in flavor and texture from this technique versus cutting things up with a blender.

All right, so we've still got a couple of chunks, but I think that's pretty good.

We're gonna proceed.

You know, I have a little minced garlic and olive oil here.

If it was raw garlic cloves, we would've added those with the jalapeno and broken them down together.

So I'm just gonna mix this in.

This is about three cloves, a little olive oil in there, and I've just got a nice, you can tell it is delicious, a nice little garlic chili paste happening in there.

- Oh look at that.

Yes.

- We've got a little salt in there already.

Just adding a little bit more.

And I think at this point we're gonna add our cilantro and then we're gonna add our tomatillo and then we have our salsa.

If you were a cilantro-negative person, we'll just say, you could go parsley on this if you really wanted to.

But, you know, this is traditional.

We're gonna do our cilantro.

- I love cilantro.

- Me too.

- So you've got your garlic, you've got salt, you've got jalapeno, you've got cilantro.

What else do you have in there?

- That's it for right now, right?

We just salted a little bit.

We wanted to break down the feistier elements of this salsa before adding our softs.

So I'm gonna just do a nice squeeze of lime.

You know, this is half of a pretty big lime.

We're probably talking about a tablespoon and a half of juice.

Your limes, Mayberry.

And then we're going to do our tomatillos, which is the bulk of the salsa.

- Oh yes.

You want me to get this for you?

- Please, please.

They've been broiling in our salamander over there.

Please be careful.

- [Pamela] So we have taken the tomatillos.

- These are them.

- And put them under the broiler.

And we've taken them, we've just peeled the skins back, put them on a sheet pan, popped 'em under their broiler.

Don't use your best pan because it's gonna get burnt up.

- Just like this guy.

(both laugh) - But then we're looking for this black blister around here.

They still have their skins on 'em.

Why don't you show us what you're gonna do with them next?

- So I'm pulling the husks away and we just basically want the roasted beautiful caramelized tomatillos.

- So you sliced them in half first.

- I did, yes.

That's because I wanted blister on all sides.

It's hard to boil something if it's like kind of rolling around.

- If it's round.

- Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And we're just breaking these down.

And once again guys, right, this is gonna be a much more rustic salsa than if we were to take this to the blender.

But that's kind of what we're looking for here, right?

We're looking for beautiful squish.

We're looking for everything to be nicely integrated in season, but we don't need everything to be perfectly homogenous because that is what a blender does and that is not what we are doing today.

- [Pamela] Yeah, we want a nice rustic look to this.

- [Julia] Yes.

- I like rustic sauces better than just smooth pureed ones.

- Me too.

- I think they just have something to 'em that's just nice.

- Yes, yes.

I really do think there makes a difference if you're squishing, crushing rather than cutting, and yeah, we just have a nice little bit of that.

We don't need a lot.

We just want something to kind of bring out the brightness on top of our gorgeous protein that we made a little while ago.

- [Pamela] And it's already salted so we don't have to worry about that, do we?

- [Julia] That's right.

- All right, so now, Julia, we're gonna be making some corn tortillas, right?

- Mm-hm.

- And we're gonna be using this what you call dent corn.

So tell us about this and your process for making your corn tortillas.

- Absolutely, and so it's really interesting.

This is actually an heirloom corn to the Carolinas.

We got this from Anson Mills.

And, you know, corn grows with a very thick protective covering.

It's called the (indistinct) right?

And it's the thing that protects all the starches inside the corn kernel.

It's one of the reasons why we don't digest corn very easily.

It's not particularly bioavailable.

So there is an ancient indigenous technique called nixtamalization that originated in North America that helps to make that starch and make those nutrients more bioavailable.

- Okay.

- And so I took this corn and I soaked it overnight in a calcified, I used some culinary lime, a small percentage.

It is a weight to volume calculation.

You cannot just dust your pot with culinary lime.

You must measure.

And then I simmered it for about an hour, stirring frequently, and at the end of that process and then letting it sit at room temperature overnight, all of the husks around the corn all were gone, right?

So the culinary lime had kind of eaten that protective outer covering off the corn kernels.

- [Pamela] And this is the result after you simmer it for an hour or so.

- Correct, and then let it sit overnight in that lime water.

Yes.

So you can see these are all these beautiful little kernels and all the starches are readily available and they're ready to be digested.

They're ready to be broken down by our little food mill right here.

But if you just were to simmer the corn without any acid, without any lye in it, you would still retain that outer covering that would become a much coarser texture here and make it harder to digest.

So just be careful anytime you're using a food mill, just be careful where you're putting your hands.

You know, there is grinding action happening here.

It doesn't really have precise measuring ability.

Like you kind of need to go like by kind of feel as to what the right setting is here.

But we want it pretty fine.

We want it pretty, pretty fine.

We don't want big chunks of uncooked corn in our tortillas.

So this feels right to me.

So this is the hopper.

This is where we're going to put the corn.

So I'm gonna go ahead and add it, and I think I can fit everything in one.

So we'll just do that.

And just so you guys know, this is about eight ounces of organic corn that has been nixtamalized overnight.

So about half a pound.

We wanna make sure that our mill is stable on our table.

And you guys can see as the mill is milling, you can see this beautiful texture of corn just kind of coming out from the teeth of the mill, right?

And we're just gonna go ahead and do that until we're out of corn.

- [Pamela] All right.

Look at that texture.

- Yeah.

It's fluffy, you know?

It's like you don't really expect it to be, but it is.

You know, this is an interesting moment, right?

We have this really nice fine granulated masa that we've broken down from scratch corn.

And the question right now is, do we need to add water to get this to stick together?

'Cause what we're about to do is put this in a tortilla press and then put it on a hot surface to get it to be a beautiful fresh corn tortilla.

What we don't want it to do is to be cracking and being too dry on the pan, so at this point you could add a little bit of liquid, maybe a little of the soaking liquid or a couple tablespoons of water.

But let's do the test and see.

So basically you wanna grab a nice handful and squeeze, and it's holding together beautifully.

- [Pamela] And how big do the balls need to be for the tortillas?

- I like a small, like on the smaller size of a golf ball, right?

So this is kind of ping pong ball, let's say.

You don't want 'em too big.

You know, this is a delicate, delicate masa.

The bigger it is, the harder it'll be to get it to cook evenly on the pan.

So I think we probably have enough for probably six to eight nice little tortillas here.

So I'm just gonna go ahead and ball till we're ready.

And then we're gonna go hang out with the tortilla press and see how they cook up.

- So we line our tortilla press with cellophane.

- That's right.

Yes.

So you guys can see it's shiny.

There's plastic wrap here.

You know, it's kind of arguable.

You could do it without doing this, but this makes it, having this plastic coating or even parchment paper means that you can do a bunch at once and get it snappy, right?

Yes.

- Okay.

- So it doesn't stick to your press.

- Exactly.

- So we're gonna do the little tiny baby guy first.

We're just gonna put it in the middle of the press and put the other piece of the press down.

And then it's not, I mean, because of the lever, it's really not any effort.

You don't need to like grind it into your table, but you wanna just make sure you're getting full connection.

You can see there is still a tiny bit of that (indistinct).

The outer coating of the corn is present a bit for some rustic texture, but we did get most of it.

And that beautiful corn, that yellow corn starch is gonna be so sweet and delicious.

- It's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

- Yeah, we did it.

- All right, let's make these.

- Yeah, let's get 'em.

And we actually are lucky enough to have a few different restaurants in Charlotte that are making tortillas from scratch every day.

- Oh, that's nice.

- And that's a new development.

It's pretty cool.

And then we've had tortillerias, Hispanic-owned tortillerias in town for a very long time.

And it's just a beautiful thing to be able to get fresh tortillas in town.

- There's nothing like fresh tortillas.

- Agreed.

- Nothing like it.

- Agreed.

Agreed.

All right.

Our beautiful tortillas are ready to go into the pan.

- All righty.

Let's do it.

- So this is a medium high heat cast iron skillet.

You know, you don't need to do nonstick here.

You just want something that's nice, that's got a bit of a weight to it and that can hold some radiant heat.

I'm gonna have this, kind of pull this up to medium-high, and we just wanna, basically, they're very thin, they're beautiful.

We did a good job with them so it won't take long to cook them all the way through.

You know, I'm watching some edges curl up and so I'm wondering how they're doing under there.

So let's go ahead and give it a flip and see.

Yeah.

Nice.

So we are picking up a little bit of the iron of the pan, which is fine, but yeah, we just wanna see, we basically just wanna see that nice kind of crisp, almost like a sound.

- [Pamela] Oh yes.

- Right?

And we know that that side has been cooked.

- Yeah, so there's no oil.

- No oil, you shouldn't need it.

I mean, really you're just, yeah, you're just looking for a nice hot surface.

You shouldn't have to add any fat to get a tortilla to crisp, even a store-bought tortilla.

Although one of my favorite things to do with store-bought tortillas in order to give them some flavor is to put them over an open flame.

- Oh Yeah, there you go.

- It's so good.

Yeah, I think like that's a nice way to save the regular tortillas from mediocrity is to put some live fire on them, you know?

- Exactly.

- And you could even do that here, you know, if you really wanted to take the time and spend an entire day of your life making fresh corn tortillas for your family or friends, you could get them to this point and then take them over to a grill and get a couple of grill marks on 'em.

It would taste delicious.

Let's talk about what we're doing with them.

So we have a nice little tortilla hold situation over here.

It's just a plate and a towel.

One of the reasons why we do this while we're processing, you know, if we're doing more than one batch of tortillas, is we wanna retain the moisture that we've worked so hard to get into those tortillas.

So we're just gonna wrap it with a nice little towel and keep the moisture from that masa present in the tortilla.

So we have our beautiful steaks, we've been keeping them warm in the oven, and we're just gonna put a nice, basically fajita strip chop on this gorgeous mushroom.

- [Pamela] Look at that.

- Mm-hm.

Beautiful, meaty.

You can kind of see this gorgeous compression that's taken place, right?

And some of the color from the beet in there.

A nice variety of texture.

You can tell the marinade is really kind of coated and crisp and made a really nice kind of outside shell to this mushroom, but that we've also got really gorgeous meaty texture inside as well.

I'll just go ahead and chop these beauties up for good measure.

And that's it.

We have our beautiful lion's mane steak protein ready to go, and we're gonna assemble some tacos.

So we've been keeping our beautiful tortillas warm.

This is hot in my hand.

It's lovely.

We've got our protein all chopped up and we're just gonna pick our favorite little chunks of gorgeous lion's mane steak, put a little of our beautiful rustic salsa verde over the top, and we have a beautiful, gorgeous taco that is extremely locally sourced, no cholesterol.

Tasty and delicious and beautiful.

- It looks gorgeous.

- Mm-hm, thank you, chef.

What's fun about this technique, you know, it really is used ubiquitously for lion's mane mushrooms, but it's really great with other bunched mushrooms too.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

So, great with oysters, great with honey mushrooms, all of the guys that have a nice little base where they connect.

You can apply this technique too.

- And thank you for joining us.

- Thank you, chef.

- Thank you, thank you, thank you.

- It's good being here with you.

- So thank you for watching this episode of "Charlotte Cooks" and we're gonna catch you next time.

If you wanna grab our recipes and you want this one, you wanna get it off of our website at pbscharlotte.org.

And thank you for watching this episode of "Charlotte Cooks" and we're gonna catch you next time.

(cheery music) - [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.