Serve with rice and a side of mixed wild mushrooms.

The beauty of cuisine is in the overwhelming opportunity to explore an infinite body of recipes. To invent, and obviously to prepare. Of course, there is the eating part. Is that not the reward for passionate exploration?

So having lunch with a friend in Oysterville — a friend at the end of the road — offered one more culinary opportunity. This friend always puts on the dog. He has an abiding reverence for food, and after a morning seeking edible mudrooms — getting soaked to the bone — we scored and put together a lovely lunch.

Vegetable ribbons and wild mushrooms

Ribbons

• Two carrots

• One green papaya

• One green daikon radish

• One red pepper, medium-sliced

• 1/2 cup peanuts, medium-diced (better

roasted for a couple of minutes)

• 1/2 cup cilantro, fine-chopped

• 2 cups cooked sticky rice

Salad dressing

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 1 tablespoon lime juice

• 1 tablespoon fish sauce

• 1 tablespoon brown sugar

• One red bird’s eye Thai chili,

fine-chopped

Mushroom side dish

• 1/2 pound mixed wild mushrooms

• 1 tablespoon diced garlic

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 1 tablespoon soy sauce

• 1 tablespoon fish sauce

• 1 tablespoon dry sake

Preparation

Grate the carrots, green papaya, daikon radish and red pepper into long, even strands with a ribbon tool. Presentation is everything here.

Mix the salad dressing ingredients together and hold. Slice and toss the veggies with the dressing. Top with the peanuts and cilantro. Serve with sticky rice.

Dry saute the mushrooms for about two minutes, then add olive oil and garlic. Add the liquid ingredients and deglaze for another two minutes.

I have found that buying high-grade soy and fish sauce at a grocery like Uwajimaya makes a big difference in the quality of the final recipe.

I used Lactarius deliciosus mushrooms, small, firm, red saber-capped boletes, and man on horseback, sometimes called a canary mushroom for its canary-yellow color. Any good edible wild mushroom will do. Chanterelle or matsutake mushrooms are divine.

Serve the mushrooms on the side or over the rice.