Jujube Fruit and King Oyster Mushroom Sauté (Eating Direct from Farmers with Barn2Door)

Subtitle: Get Your Produce Direct From The Farmer

Jujube fruit and King Oyster mushrooms sautéed with a bit of farm share onion in roasted garlic-flavored olive oil and butter. An elegant appetizer made from produce direct from the farmer.

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Today's recipe uses rare-to-me ingredients that I got directly from the folks that grew them but in different ways. Disclosure: I received the jujube fruit from Barn2Door in exchange for writing about this new way to buy directly from the farmer. As a dorkily passionate supporter of keeping sustainable farmers in business, I am delighted to help spread the Good Word.

Last weekend was the last local farmer's market of the season. We walked down with a big bag to stock up on long-storing local apples and also picked up some candy onions to caramelize and freeze for Fall and winter stews. The mushroom folks had a nice array of King Oyster/Trumpet Royale mushrooms, so with my remaining small bills [pay cash for local businesses whenever possible, please] I picked up a container. The lovely lady manning the booth offered me recipe tips and I headed home thinking I'd make some kind of mushroom appetizer for my spouse.

We returned from a Saturday afternoon bike ride to this sight--boxes on the front stoop, watched over by ⅔ of the canine population [Vincent is too little to look out]. I'm not usually one to get excited about printer ink, but the other box, from Fairview Orchards, did give me a little thrill. The folks at Fairview Orchards picked these organic jujube fruits and I got them from California 2 days later.

If you think, when you visit the farmer's market at 10 am on a Saturday, that all of the product on display was freshly picked that morning by an army of minions in fields with football stadium lighting--well, you've got another think coming. Farmers like to sleep just like the rest of us, and plenty of weekly offerings are picked in the days before and stored until market day. Heck, the garlic and onions were harvested and cured before being offered at market. A mere 2 days for jujube fruits all the way from California? Amazingly fresh in my book!

With two exotic items staring me in the face, I knew I wanted to combine them. After biting into a jujube fruit (we all tried them fresh out of the box, a crunchy light apple-pear kind of flavor with a date-like pit in the middle), I thought of the Trumpet Royale Mushroom, Apple, and Walnut Sauté I'd seen on the recipe sheet from the mushroom folks. I adapted that recipe to use the jujube fruits, and my spouse and I enjoyed this gourmet date night appetizer at home.

This got me thinking about the power of the internet and how Janelle and her folks at Barn2Door are harnessing that power to enable farmers to sell directly to a wider audience than just the local folks who choose to visit their market stall. There are small pockets of local supporters all over, but their reach is limited to their local areas. I mean, the grocery store down the street also supports local farmers--they spotlight the family who supplies their sweet corn in summer and the folks who grow their turkeys for Thanksgiving. To give their customers greater access to seasonal items, Hatch chiles are trucked up from New Mexico and wild caught salmon is flown in from Alaska. Yeah, and I can walk to all of this seasonal abundance. But what if you don't live near my fabulous grocery store? You've got an online resource in Barn2Door.

My town is known for the electric car starter and the pull tab for beer cans. We are not at the cutting edge of the local food movement. However, between in person and online interactions, I was able to sit down to a savory appetizer of exotic produce direct from the farmers who grew it.

Want your own organic jujube fruits? Click here to order!

Jujube Fruit and King Oyster Mushroom Sauté

Ingredients

• 2 to 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 to 2 Tablespoons roasted garlic-infused olive oil (I drop a frozen clove into a dish of oil and let it hang out for a while. Here's how I roast my annual garlic crop)
• 4 cups chopped King Oyster Mushrooms (use the whole thing)
• 2 cups chopped pitted jujube fruits
• ¼ to ½ cup diced onion (I used a yellow from the CSA farm share)
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. In a large skillet preheated over medium heat, melt the butter and oil. Start with the low end of measurements if you're concerned about fat content, you can always add more. 
2. Toss the mushrooms and jujubes in the skillet as they are prepped, and stir to coat with fat. 
3. Add onion and stir again. 
4. Sauté until everything is softened, about 7 to 10 minutes, adding additional butter or oil as necessary. Season with a healthy pinch of salt and pepper (at least ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper). 
5. Taste, and see if you need a bit more seasoning. Serve warm.

For more recipes using mushrooms, please see my Mushroom Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This is a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, and seasonal abundance that shows up on my doorstep. I'm pinning recipes from all over to my Pinterest boards, and post photos of what's happening in the kitchen on my Facebook page. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.