Chanterelle Toast with Herbacious Vegan Cream Cheese

In Sweden chanterelles are the gold of the forest. It is by far the most searched for mushroom and the one mushroom most people know how to identify in the woods. Now is the time to pick them and most of my fellow country people will be frying theirs to pop onto toast and this I want to share with you as well of course.

The last few weekends Rob and I have been out with my sister Flo to scour the woods for mushrooms and we have been lucky this year. Our last excursion yielded 1,5 kg chanterelles and 350 grams of winter chanterelles. What a joy! We made pasta, topped a delicious grain bowl and made chantrelle toast. This particular version of open faced sandwich I am sharing with you here is a little bit of an elevated version if you will though.

I saw a Swedish chef do something similar on youtube and thought I needed to try combining cream cheese with chanterelles in my next sandwich and the chef was right – it was delicious. Of course. So here is my vegan take on classic chanterelle toast with a twist. A cream chees-y twist with herbs. Enjoy!

Malin x

Chanterelle Toast with Herbacious Cream Cheese

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

The mushrooms:

400 g chanterelles

3 tbsp vegan butter

Salt and black pepper, to taste

The cream cheese:

150 g vegan cream cheese

1 tbsp fresh chives, finely chopped

1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped

To serve:

4 large slices of bread, preferable something rustic like sourdough but use gluten free if needed

Finely chopped fresh chives

Finely chopped fresh parsley, optional

METHOD:

Heat a dry pan over medium heat. Once warm add the mushrooms and sweat them out, allowing all the water come out of them and cook off. This can take anywhere between 5-10 minutes.

In the meantime add the cream cheese, chives and parsley to a small mixing bowl. Also toast your bread.

Once the mushrroms are dry in the pan add the butter and season with salt and black pepper to taste. Melt the butter in the pan and stir it through the mushrooms. Take about a fifth of the mushrooms out of the pan and place them on a frying pan to cool a little. Fry the rest of the mushrooms for 3-4 minutes more or until they have golden and crisp edges.

Finely chop the mushrooms on the chopping board and once they are mostly cool add them to the cream cheese. Mix the herbs and mushrooms through the cream cheese well.

To assemble spread the cream cheese mixture over the bread generously. This is best done when the bread has cooled a little so the cream cheese does not melt straight away. Top the creamy spread with the fried golden mushrooms and finish off with some fresh herbs. Enjoy immeadiately.