Recipe: pan-fried lion’s mane with wild garlic pesto
With the wonderful and delicious lion’s mane mushroom, this dish will nourish blood, qi and yin as well as moisten dryness and improve your brain function. And you can happily substitute shop bought pesto or toasted seeds as a topping, instead of homemade with wild garlic.
- Fresh lion’s mane mushroom
- 2 handfuls organic spinach
- 1 big handful wild garlic
- 1 handful cashew nuts
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Hard sheep or goat’s cheese, such as Manchego (optional)
- Parsley to garnish
To make the pesto: wash the wild garlic and lightly toast the cashews. Put both in a blender and add some grated cheese (if using). Blend and add olive oil until you get a consistency you like. Season to taste.
Warm and wilt the spinach in a pan with a little water. Season and place on a plate.
Cut the lion’s mane into slices – about 1.5 cm thick – and lightly season. Add a dash of olive oil and water to the same pan and fry the lion’s mane until golden on both sides of each slice – you want to keep it quite dry so it doesn’t go soggy.
Turn the mushroom onto your plate with the spinach. While it’s all still hot, add a drizzle of olive oil and a few shavings of cheese.
Top it all with a spoonful of pesto and a touch of parsley and you’re done!
Energetics
Fresh lion’s mane calms shen, tonifies the five zang organs, and benefits stomach and spleen. I often use this as a supplement in clinic for digestive symptoms – especially if there is heat – as well as for menopausal symptoms such as poor memory, brain fog, insomnia, anxiety and hot flushes.
In western terms lion’s mane mushroom strengthens the brain, gut and heart and its main therapeutic applications show it can benefit people with neurological symptoms, such as stroke, Parkinson’s and dementia. It does this by increasing nerve growth factor (NGF) in the body, which means it protects and repairs nerves. (Medicinal Mushrooms: A Clinical Guide, Martin Powell, 2014)
Spinach nourishes blood and yin, clears heat and moistens dryness.
Wild garlic moves liver qi and nourishes blood.
Cashew nuts nourish yin and moisten dryness.
Parsley, Manchego cheese and olive oil combine to nourish qi, blood and yin.
Melanie Leeson is an experienced acupuncturist with clinics in Bath and Bristol. She is a clinical supervisor at the College of Integrated Chinese Medicine (CICM) and founder member of the Acupuncture from Conception to Childbirth team (ACCT) in Bristol. Melanie specialises in treating women’s health, pregnancy and children. She trained with Martin Powell and uses his medicinal mushrooms alongside a diploma in Chinese nutrition and yang sheng, from CICM.
