Welcome to “Le Morel“, a virtual restaurant and the result of the current 5 Star Cooking Club challenge.

[5 Star is a band of about 25 fearless food bloggers who take on monthly culinary challenges prompted by the evil twins, Natasha and Laz <just joking. No vote-pandering is involved with these challenges. We do it for ourselves. We do it for the love of our art. We do it for fun. And, we do it for the pleasure of our readers.]

So, come on in and take a seat while I introduce you to the other cooks in the Le Morel kitchen and entice you with our 3-course morel tasting dinner.

The Backstory.
Two months ago, the cooking club was broken down into teams of 3. Our directive was to create a virtual restaurant with a secret theme or seasonal ingredient — and, of course, to do our creative best. My team pretty quickly decided on morels which were just coming into season. The name was a no brainer after that and we democratically decided that I’d do the first course (called L’Entrée in France), Jessica La Plat Principal, and Laz Le Dessert.

Being the zealot that I am, I did this dish more than a month ago and have had to ‘sit on it’, anxiously awaiting the big reveal today.

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Mademoiselle, Monsieur, tonight’s menu, sil vous plait.

Isn’t this a great menu? Don’t you just want to see how each dish was made? 

For your first course, we have morel 3 ways … (1) a morel and caramelized onion raviolo in (2) morel broth with shaved asparagus and a (3) morel-salted sweet butter.

I must tell you that my first recollection of tasting morels was nothing less than otherworldly. It was during one of those ‘expense account Wall-Street lunches’ at an exclusive midtown restaurant in New York. I had Cream of Morel soup for the first time. O Mon Dieu!
So when my team picked ‘morels’ as our theme ingredient my mind immediately went back to that soup. But this is a culinary challenge and I wanted to do something different.

Morels ♥ cream and butter.

They also pair nicely with other Spring vegetables like asparagus. So why not sweet onions? I thought it might work and it did!

The morels were woodsy and chewy,
the onions sweet and creamy.
The broth was light and flavorful
and the butter … well, it’s butter and it rounded everything out.

In researching morel for this challenge, I was surprised to learn that a common treatment is breaded and fried … Qu’est-ce que? Sacrilége! 

Please be sure to click through and visit my fabulous teammates, Jessica for your entrée and then to Laz for a creative morel dessert.

On Friday, June 1, check out all the ‘restaurants’ on 5 Star Culinary. You’ll be amazed at what these bloggers come up with in these challenges! And while we don’t ask for votes, we sure do appreciate your visits and comments. 

4.7 from 7 reviews

Morel Raviolo

 

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Ingredients

• 4 pasta squares cut in large rounds (eggroll wrappers)
• 4-6 morels depending on size
• 8 ozs. organic vegetable broth
• 1 small clove garlic
• fresh asparagus shaved
• 1 large sweet onion
• sweet butter
• olive oil
• salt, pepper, nutmeg, dry morel

How To

1. Caramelize onions slowly till they are very soft and then pulse in blender. Set aside.
2. Saute morels in butter.
3. Remove and chop.
4. Return half to pan and add vegetable broth and 1 small clove of garlic.
5. Simmer about 15 minutes and blend or strain broth.
6. Fold the remaining morels into the onion mix, add nutmeg.
7. Roll out pasta square and shape to circle.
8. Press shaved asparagus tip in top half of pasta, spoon on filling, top with another pasta sheet and seal.
9. Gently lower in broth on low boil for just a few minutes.
10. Remove and plate.
11. Add 1 ladle of broth.
12. Add shaved asparagus to garnish.
13. Top with chilled butter.

Notes

Raviolo Butter: Mold sweet butter with apple corer, grind 1 small dry morel and mix with coarse salt, coat butter in salt, and press in asparagus tip. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate. Serves 2.

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