- "Washington Grown" is made possible by funding from the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant Program and by the potato farmers of Washington.

Learn why Washington is home to the world's most productive potato fields and farmers by visiting potatoes.com.

- Hi everyone, I'm Kristi Gorenson and welcome to "Washington Grown."

Most of our crops thrive on plenty of sunshine and blue sky.

Well, today we're gonna tell you about another popular Washington crop that is being cultivated underground in the basement of this Seattle apartment building.

I'm learning about mushrooms at MarrowStone Mushroom Farm.

- They're all like my children.

[Kristi laughs] And just like my children, some of them are very naughty sometimes.

- Yes.

And I'm making mushroom ravioli at Larch in Leavenworth.

- We're definitely all about the mushrooms.

We're a bunch of real fun guys.

- You did not just say that.

[laughs] Then Val's learning why Washington's climate is so special.

- Washington State has 10 climate divisions.

That means a real diversity of crops can be grown also.

- All this and more today on "Washington Grown."

[cheerful music] It's a flavor-cation for your mouth.

- Flavor-cation.

- I'm just gonna hold on.

- You got a long ways to go.

- Okay.

Sorry.

I know.

Get with it.

- You were not kidding about a party of flavors.

Wait a minute, where are all my pears?

- Eat two, pick one.

- Exactly.

- I'm gonna stick around a while.

[laughs] - We're changing hearts tonight.

- Yes we are.

- Wow.

I got work to do.

- Yeah, you do.

- All right, let's go.

- In a town famous for its Bavarian theme, bratwurst, and beer, you might be surprised that one restaurant is going against the grain.

Here in Leavenworth, Larch has set its sight on one thing, pasta.

- It is phenomenal.

Like it just feels like it melts in your mouth.

The meat is perfectly cooked.

- So you feel the farm-to-table essence.

It's just here.

Every time we've come here, they deliver.

- Can't go wrong.

Homemade pasta.

- You know, we're always discovering new styles and new pastas that I haven't done before.

There's so many shapes and sizes.

It feels pretty inexhaustible.

- Chef Ben loves everything about homemade pasta, but that doesn't mean his cuisine is limited to Italian styles.

- I'm sure the Italian grandmothers might be a little bit upset if they saw the ways we take pasta in some ways, but I would say it's specifically northwest-infused pasta dishes.

- It not only looks amazing, it tastes amazing.

It's like an explosion.

- It's delicious.

- It's fresh pasta.

It's handmade here.

- Yes.

So we hand-form or we extrude fresh all of the pastas that are on the menu.

- But it's not just the pasta that's fresh.

- We really try to use the bounty of what's seasonal and what's local, all the Washington produce all the Washington fish and all of those things.

- Don't miss later in the show when Chef Ben and I make his famous mushroom ravioli.

- You've got a long ways to go.

- Okay.

Sorry.

I know.

Get with it.

Okay.

[cheerful music] Right in the heart of Seattle, in the middle of the city, there's a farm that would be easy to miss.

Although this basement might not look like much at first, there's something special happening inside.

Here are MarrowStone Mushrooms in Fremont, owner Ben Jaffe is making magic in a small space.

- I mean, we got 1500 square feet here and we put out about 400 pounds of mushrooms a week.

So you can really get a lot of production from a pretty small space.

- While most seeds use water and sunlight as food, mushrooms start with something a little different.

- This is a mixture of grain that we use for our spawn.

- Can I touch it?

- Yeah, go crazy.

I just don't want to like, mess anything up.

- It's all right.

There'll be a little bit of you in that spawn.

- I love that.

After the grain is soaked, it's put into a bag with specialized pellets and heated until sterilized.

Then it's ready for the mushroom.

Is this where you say, "Welcome to my lab."

[laughs] - Come on in.

Yeah.

This is a Petri dish.

Each one of the Petri dishes actually has a tiny piece of mushroom that we biopsied and then put onto the Petri dish and then it continues growing.

So the premise that I would take this sterilized scalpel, cut a little wedge, click that out, flick her in there.

That wedge will eventually colonize the whole bag.

- Incubation.

- So this is about a week after running through the lab and you can see all those little spots.

- Yeah.

- Those are little pieces of grain that got poured into the pasteurized substrate and are colonizing.

And once this bag is fully colonized, it will get rolled over to the fruiting room and we'll cut a little slit in the bag and then the mushrooms will pop out the slit.

This is like a fully colonized bag here.

So the whole thing's white.

Honestly, you can kind of tell that it's colonized 'cause if you give it a tap, it's like, solid.

Reverberates.

It's held together by that mycelium.

- Hello.

I love the mushroom handle.

Oh, so this is a completely different environment in here.

- Yeah.

So keep the humidity in here about 95%.

There's a lot of airflow going in, there's a lot of airflow going out.

Mushrooms are like us, they breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2.

From the time they get in here to when they harvest is about one week for the oyster mushrooms and about two weeks for the lion's mane and the king oyster mushrooms.

- This is the end result.

- This is the end result.

So they come out of the barrel, get inoculated with the grain spawn in the lab, they go back and incubate for two weeks, and then we cut a slit in the bag and the mushrooms come out that slit.

So this takes about a week to grow from when you cut that slit.

- This is a week's worth?

- This is a week's worth.

So the whole process from barrel to finished mushroom is like three weeks.

- Wow.

- The tragedy of doing this is that like, you know, this is like a full, like, 60 to 80 hour work week, and sometimes, I don't have any food in the refrigerator when I get home, but I always have mushrooms.

- Always have mushrooms.

- And they go pretty well with everything.

I love mushrooms.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

[Kristi laughs] My favorite mushroom is probably the lion's mane just 'cause it's so vigorous and so bizarre looking.

It's hard to pick a favorite.

They're all like my children.

And just like my children, some of them are very naughty sometimes.

If there's anything mushrooms hate, it's an ego.

As soon as I feel like I'm really good at growing one of these, they just decide to not cooperate at all.

- [laughs] I love it.

This guy is doing something weird.

- Yeah, this one got harvested and is now a little bit gross, you know?

If you don't like cleaning out that jam jar that's been in the back of your fridge for six years then you're not gonna like growing mushrooms.

- Are you looking for a hot and cozy meal to warm you up when there's a chill in the air?

Well look no further than Tivoli.

This Fremont restaurant is serving up pizzas, fresh salads, and so much more.

And the way Chef Jim McGurk describes it, it's got a little something for everyone.

- We like to call it Italian American-ish restaurant.

- Italian American-ish.

- The Italian part is the pizza and the fact that we're gonna be eating a nice bowl of polenta here today.

The American-ish part is pretty much everything else.

- Being in Washington, the menu at Tivoli takes full advantage of seasonal Washington ingredients.

- It's really great to see those fresh sheets roll in every week and cherry pick off of those and start to formulate dishes around the fresh produce.

- Today, we're trying out a cremini mushroom and kale ragù made with mushrooms that are grown right down the street.

- People usually typically think of a ragù being a meat-based, brazy, stewy thing.

What better to substitute in than a nice, hearty, meaty mushroom?

- Oh, look at all that kale in there.

Oh my gosh.

Right out the gate, that crunch that you get from popping those fennel seeds, wow.

This is so rich and hearty, but it's got some nice spice to it.

This is a perfect cold wintertime dish, but you can eat this anytime of the year.

All right, let's see what the rest of the Fremont neighborhood thinks of this mushroom kale ragù.

[cheerful music] - Oh wow.

- It's so full and flavorful.

- It's cooked solid very perfectly.

- It's kind of stewy almost.

- Yeah.

- It's just rich, smooth, robust with a little bit of spicy after bite.

- Right.

- Oh, it's wonderful.

- Oh my gosh.

The polenta is really creamy too.

- Honestly, it's probably the best mushrooms I've ever had.

- All local?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

I mean, that's awesome.

Yeah.

- Eating something that's sourced from here, I think, is so important.

- Love that you guys have good vegetarian options here.

- So this hits the spot for you.

- This hits the spot.

- I gotta get another bite.

- Please do.

[laughs] - Coming up, I'm making mushroom ravioli at Larch in Leavenworth.

- You go a long ways to go.

- Okay.

Sorry.

I know.

Get with it.

Okay.

And we're in The Kitchen at Second Harvest trying Chef Laurent's Snails with Mushrooms in a Creamy Brandy Sauce recipe.

[cheerful music] We're back in Leavenworth.

Situated in the Cascade Mountains, it's hard not to fall in love with Bavarian charm and great views.

- It makes you feel like you're out in one of the small towns in Europe.

- The quaint little town is adorable.

The German theme.

- Amazing food, great beer.

And so Leavenworth just delivers every time.

- But according to some, the best food you can find in town is made right here at Larch.

- The customer service, the food, the ambience, it's just top notch.

- Look at all the little restaurants on the outside, but go to Larch.

That's gonna be where you're gonna get the best food.

- You're doing your bratwurst, you're doing your schnitzels.

You know, sometimes you want that other option as well.

So I feel like people come here and they're able to experience both the German and then they're gonna come try the pasta.

- I think you could gain a lot of weight here.

[Ben laughs] Leavenworth.

- Then you can hike it off in the Enchantments.

- Chef Ben works to make his menu fresh and delicious, from the pasta to the Washington-grown ingredients.

- Their attention to detail is just amazing.

- Everything here is homemade, it's homegrown, it's gonna be delicious.

- Sometimes the lasagna, you love it for like, two bites, and I am going to eat this entire plate.

- What are we gonna make today?

I'm excited.

- We're gonna make a couple signature dishes.

We're gonna make our roasted mushrooms and we're gonna make our mushroom ravioli.

That mushroom ravioli kind of is like, a through line in my entire career because I've had that in all the restaurants that I've created.

We've always featured mushrooms and the mushroom ravioli.

There might be a little bit of like, people marching out front if we didn't have those on the menu when they came.

With this pasta, you could make tagliatelle or pappardelle or any other pasta, but today we're gonna make ravioli.

So we're gonna start with- - Not just any ravioli.

- We're gonna make mushroom ravioli.

- Mushroom ravioli.

- This is our famous, [laughs] well, it was kind of what started my culinary entrepreneurship, I guess.

- We add flour, eggs, some salt and water, and mix it up.

- We'll knead it to bring it together.

So someone told me years ago, and I think it holds true, is like, feel your dough and if it feels like your ear lobe, then it's the right texture.

- That's a good, I would say rule of thumb, but rule of ear.

[laughs] - Yeah.

We're just gonna feed the dough through.

- Okay.

- Keep on coming on.

- I know, I'm trying.

I think this is a two-person job.

- Then I'm gonna have you help me by lifting this sheet.

We're gonna go right on to the frame and we have our mushroom filling here.

Now you don't want to overfill them or they will pop.

- Oh, we don't want that.

- Just pretend like you're doing toothpaste on your toothbrush, you know?

You got a long ways to go.

- Okay.

Sorry.

I know.

Get with it.

Okay.

We spritz it with water and cover it with more pasta dough.

- You want to make sure that you see the metal.

See the metal coming through?

And that means that we've sealed it and it's going to come out of the frame well.

- Be ravioli.

- Yeah.

Pop them out.

- Oh, that's fun.

- There's our ravioli.

Now, we're gonna go on and we're gonna make the sauce and we're gonna make the roasted mushrooms to go with it.

- For the sauce, we put chicken broth and fresh thyme into a pan and let it reduce.

Then we add some cream, let it reduce a bit more, and finish with some pepper, fresh nutmeg, and Parmesan.

For the side dish, we roast mushrooms with butter, salt, and pepper, then drizzle on some honey before putting them in the oven to caramelize.

And then finishing it all off with a balsamic drizzle.

- Washington, we have some of the best mushrooms anywhere.

- Farmers, yeah.

I love how you showcase the mushrooms.

- We're definitely all about the mushrooms.

We're a bunch of real fun guys.

- You did not just say that.

[laughs] [cheerful music] There's a sweetness in there, so that must be from the honey.

- From our honey.

Yeah.

- And the mushrooms are super tender and the pasta is just perfect.

- It's a nice subtle thyme flavor in the background, and that goes really well, pairs with mushrooms.

- I'm kind of eating it all, aren't I?

I'll share, I promise I'll share.

- I'll try half a ravioli over here as well.

- To get the recipe for Larch's mushroom ravioli, visit us at wagrown.com.

Coming up, Val's harvesting mushrooms at Chesed Farms.

- You've got it all in one fell swoop, but you know, I've got my technique too.

- I've done a couple hundred of them, maybe thousands, I don't know, I'm losing count.

[cheerful music] - Here at Potholes Reservoir near Moses Lake, the weather is absolutely gorgeous.

With the sun shining and the water sparkling, it got me thinking a little deeper about the weather.

So I decided to talk to an expert on the subject.

Nick Bond is the emeritus state climatologist, and today we are at MarDon Resort to learn what makes Washington's climate so special.

A climatologist, how in the world did you decide that's what you wanted to do?

- I've always been kind of obsessed with it.

When I grew up, I came of age when there was a big drought in California followed by some floods.

And I thought, "What made it so different that one winter versus the other winter?"

And I ended up, after some twists and turns, going to grad school to find out.

There's no state like Washington state in terms of the diversity of the precipitation especially.

We have the Olympic rainforest, and the Cascades, well over a hundred inches of rain a year.

And then places here in Eastern Washington with something like seven or eight inches.

Washington state has 10 climate divisions.

Because we have such a diversity in climate, that means a real diversity of crops can be grown also.

- But when you talk about climate, you have to talk about climate change.

- The climate is changing.

We're seeing increasing temperatures.

The elephant in the room is water availability.

We are seeing decreases overall in how much water we have in that snow-pack bank at the end of winter.

We're not expecting the winters to be drier.

And so if we can hang onto that water and then use it during the summer, dam is a dirty word, but we have a Mediterranean climate here.

People don't imagine that they're down at the ocean there in the French Riviera or something.

But we do have, of course, dry summers and wet winters.

And that is, with climate change, expected to be even more accentuated.

Why is climate so important to farming?

You have to recognize what that climate is to have a successful crop.

We can grow such a remarkable array, variety of crops, partly because it varies so much from hot areas in Eastern Washington to the cooler areas in the Skagit.

Certainly what the folks in the Skagit grow is gonna be different than what they do in the lower Yakima Valley.

- You can follow "Washington Grown" all year long on your favorite social media platform.

Here's Alyssa from our social media team with an example of what you'll see.

- When you're on the hunt for the best spot for a happy hour with the ladies or maybe a little date night nightcap, you want the best atmosphere, the best company, and for sure the best drinks.

I know where to find them.

Come on.

Stampede Cocktail Club in Seattle is that place.

Their menu features fun, creative cocktails and they're served up in an eccentric atmosphere.

In their words, they love and celebrate everything weird.

Today, we're whipping up their most popular bourbon drink called Memory Blade.

So first up, a little lemon juice, then some lime, followed by local honey sourced from Washington farms and then the bourbon, and finally, finished off with house-made lavender bitters, with both English and French lavender from Western Washington.

This cocktail was pretty light, making it a really good entry-level drink for new bourbon drinkers like me.

- Here in Walla Walla, we have all sorts of farms, but the one I'm visiting today looks a little different than the others.

Here at Chesed Farms, they're growing something special and kind of strange, mushrooms.

- Welcome to Chesed Farms.

- Thank you.

And how do you pronounce that again?

- I pronounce it Chess-ed.

It's a Hebrew word and my Hebrew is terrible.

I say it's not important to know how to say it, but it's important to know what it means.

It's hard to translate into English with one word.

So the combinations tend to be loyal love, loving mercy, loving kindness.

I was like, "Well, that's the right word."

No one's gonna know what it is, but like, how do we find a better word?

- And we will lovingly and kindly teach them.

- Exactly.

- Although co-owner Sundown Hazen is a farmer, he likes to think of this place in a different way.

- Lovingly, we like to call this a resort for alien life forms that we call fungi.

- Noted.

[laughs] - Yes.

We start with preparing their rooms and we're gonna fill their room up with all the right food and water that they like to have.

- Oh, can I help?

- Yeah.

You wanna do it?

- I do.

- Okay.

So you're just gonna slide the bag right under in 3, 2, 1.

- Don't blow me away here.

I'm holding it.

Hot diggity.

- You did it.

So we have oak pellets and oat pellets and the pellets take a little while and you can see already the water's starting to disappear.

- Starting to absorb.

- So we have three baskets here.

We're gonna fill each one with four bags.

- Wow.

I got work to do.

- Yeah, you do.

- All right, let's go.

- This would be the lobby.

- Oh, wow.

So they're all hanging out here?

- They're all hanging out here.

We've prepared 30 rooms for their whole extended family.

Each family goes in there, you can see there's a handful of them, but they miss each other so they're going to eat their way to find each other.

And so as they extend, they then start to link up and they hold hands until they all then become one again.

So this is the pool side for our mushrooms as they prepare their spaceship to go onto their next spot.

- [laughs] You are really working this metaphor.

I love that.

- Oh, I'm feeling it though.

We cut holes in the bags and then the mushroom is seeking that air.

So an interesting fact about fungi is they're more similar biologically to us than they are to plants.

So they breathe in oxygen like we do, expel CO2.

They also digest their food like we do.

Because they've come to the Chesed Farms Resort for fungi friends, their next stop is gonna be somebody's belly.

You can do everything from frying these up, using them as meat alternatives, sautéing is the most common one, still.

Some distinct ones would be lion's mane, is a good substitute for crab and lobster meat.

- That's great 'cause I'm allergic to crab and lobster.

- So is my wife.

- How in the world did you land upon mushrooms as your lifelong love?

- That's a great question.

I've had a passion for local food for about three decades.

Being in the Walla Walla Valley with the strong tourism industry, we have great restaurants.

So there was a demand for fresh local gourmet mushrooms.

It fits within that lifelong purpose I've had and drive and passion for local food.

- Time to try harvesting some lion's mane mushrooms.

- So here's our lion's mane mushroom.

Okay, if you just kind of give it a quick wiggle, you'll feel how it's still attached.

So if you put your thumbs underneath by the bag and then just tilt it forward.

Was that satisfying?

- [laughs] Yes, it was.

- That's such a satisfying feeling.

So if you turn it over, you'll see that we still have some of that substrate attached.

Grab your knife.

- Grab my knife.

- And you're just gonna cut where the substrate's attached.

- Okay.

Oh my goodness.

- There's not much there.

You might have to take that one home with you.

- Okay, I come at a different.

- You can go both ways.

- You've got it all in one fell swoop, but you know, I've got my technique too.

- I've done a couple hundred of them, maybe thousands.

I'm losing count.

- This has been so much fun.

I can't tell you.

My little package.

- Yeah.

Packaged with love.

- Packaged with the love and kindness.

[laughs] - And kindness.

[cheerful music] - We are in The Kitchen at Second Harvest Food Bank and I'm joined by the whole crew today.

- We're all here.

- We're all here.

Beautiful Val, we have Tomás and Chef Laurent Zirotti, who always gets to share some of his fantastic recipes with us.

So over the years doing "Washington Grown," I have eaten many a mushroom, as you just saw.

We went to a couple mushroom farms and I'm learning, it's never usually my favorite thing to eat, but I'm learning and expanding.

- Is it a texture thing?

Is it flavor?

- It's an all thing.

- Okay.

[laughs] - And I'm at the other end of the spectrum.

I loved mushrooms since as a little girl.

- That's awesome.

- And I'm in the middle.

Just like I am here.

So I don't mind a mushroom every now and then, it depends, but I don't know that I would go for a mushroom soup.

- Oh, love it.

- Just happy that these farmers share with us how it's done.

- Especially when it's just behind a closed door in an apartment complex.

- Right.

What's going on in there?

- There's not many farms in downtown Seattle.

- No.

No.

But it super unique.

- I was in the Walla Walla area, and again, it was just this little side of the road shed.

- Let's go in this shed.

Come on, Val.

We're gonna be making something with mushrooms today.

- I know, and it's a test of a taste today.

- Oh, great.

- A test of a taste.

- We're gonna do a dish I used to do at Fleur de Sel, my former restaurant where we had a snail with a creamy cognac sauce with mushroom.

And I love that dish, people love that dish, and I wanted to share it with you today.

- So you're throwing mushrooms at me and snails.

- And snails.

I'm sorry.

- Okay.

Maybe not.

- We'll see.

- I'm gonna be brave.

- You've never steered us wrong.

- Right.

You never steer us wrong.

- Unitl.

[laughter] - Let's see how it's made first.

- Yeah, let's see how it's made.

[cheerful music] - Okay, here's the test.

- It looks so pretty.

- It is beautiful.

- It looks really good.

- And it's just about the texture.

So don't think about what you're eating.

- I'm gonna take a lot of time putting my napkin on the lap.

- And they're beautiful.

They're small.

- Let's get right into this.

It almost reminds me of like, a beef stroganoff.

- Like a stew.

Yeah, it could be stew, but it's a pansot.

So you do everything at the last minute.

You have all your components and you sauté your mushroom, your snails, you deglaze with a brandy, a cognac, and then a little bit of stock and your cream, spices.

I think there's a little tarragon in the recipe.

- So it kind of all just absorbs the flavors.

- Don't be afraid to sauce, just put a lot of sauce.

And if you don't like the snail, don't put snails, but use this recipe for something else.

- And that's what's divine, the sauce.

And in my tradition, when you really like it, you sop it up.

- There you go.

- So, as a mushroom lover, what do you think?

- This is wonderful.

I really like the sauce.

I feel like it's just a secret to discovering some other taste treats.

- And as someone who doesn't like mushrooms.

- I like all the textures that are going on here.

You know, the puff pastry is crispy and the mushrooms and the snails are nice and creamy.

Well, thank you so much.

- What a fun, different dish to bring to us.

Thank you.

- Yes, you're very welcome.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

And I'm happy you tried it.

- I am happy you tried it too.

- And this is the lesson of "Washington Grown."

- Right.

Try it.

- Try it.

- Try it.

- To get the recipe for Chef Laurent Zirotti's Snails with Mushrooms and a Creamy Brandy Sauce, visit us at wagrown.com.

These beautiful mushrooms, like all of the crops here in Washington, are the product of dedication and passion of a Washington farmer.

That's it for this episode of "Washington Grown."

We'll see you next time.