Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 16, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I recently stumbled upon Saveur’s 10 favorite pastas and figured I had it made. I love pasta. Saveur loves pasta. We’d meet somewhere and have one hell of a dinner. And this is the one I fell for. I was immediately drawn to this dish because of how robust and filling it all sounded, even though there wasn’t an ounce of meat present. It exceeded my expectations. I was amazed at the full flavor and enormous body of this dish. I suppose the wonderful mushrooms had something to do with it, but I’m going to thank all that salt I dumped into the pasta water before the noodles ever went in. This dish didn’t need an ounce of seasoning beyond the obligatory sprinkling of Parmesan. It tasted as if some reduced stock had been thrown in.
The most expensive item in the meal—the sherry—is also the one that can most easily be substituted. A dry white wine would work perfectly fine. But it would slightly change the nature and aroma of the dish. And splurging for that Spanish beverage wouldn't be a complete waste. A good bottle of sherry is also worth drinking, and paired so well that I'm really glad I bit the bullet and bought the bottle.
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Posted by Blake Royer, March 25, 2008 at 3:45 PM
I've been on the lookout lately for pasta dishes which require no cheese or butter to make them delicious. My girlfriend is off eating dairy for a while, so we've had to get creative. And it's not easy—it seems like ninety percent of pasta recipes finish with "sprinkle freshly grated Parmesan and serve." It's been a good challenge to make the ingredients taste wonderful without the usual shortcuts. I've heard before that vegetarians are more creative in the kitchen, because they have to be—as a current faux-vegan, that seems even more true.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 17, 2008 at 4:30 PM
The first of this week's recipes from Arthur Schwartz's Jewish Home Cooking is for Mushroom Barley Soup. I couldn't resist highlighting this one, because a good mushroom barley soup is one of my favorites. I've never made my own, prefering to get a decent one at a handful of delis here in New York, but Arthur Schwartz doesn't make this seem so difficult. The most time-consuming part might be making the chicken soup that serves as a base, but even that's not too crazy—and you can sub in four quarts vegetable broth for the chicken soup and water listed below.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, March 7, 2008 at 4:00 PM
I had little chorizo leftover from Monday’s fantastic chorizo, egg and raisin meal, and instead of making that same meal for the third time, I figured I’d try to see what else I could find. Contrary to all rationale, I was still in a taco munching mood, and so I quickly went for the Mexican guide to all things quick and easy, Rick Bayless. This isn’t the first time.
I’ve made this before with just the chorizo and potato, but I decided to finally pony up and get the mushrooms too. For some reason they felt unnecessary before. The potato was already going to add body and the chorizo had all the goodness. The mushrooms certainly don’t lighten up the dish like the raisins did, but they do make things a little more savory and a tad less greasy. It’s odd that it works so well, but I guess that’s just Bayless you.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 5, 2008 at 2:00 PM
As an undergrad, I spent a semester studying in Russia. Our host mothers urged hot kasha (referring to any kind of porridge) on us in the sub-zero mornings, and they served a different kind of kasha (buckwheat groats) as a side dish in the still-freezing evenings. When the time came to leave, one of the most pressing questions for many of us was, “Will I be able to find kasha in the United States?” Obviously, none of us had ever lived in cities with large Eastern European immigrant populations or been members of health-food co-ops, or we would have known that buckwheat groats aren’t hard to find at all.
Cooking them properly is a different matter. The first time I tried, I got it just right: the grains were separate, firm, and nutty. Since then I have tended to produce mushy messes that are edible but not appetizing. The Joy of Cooking recipe for kasha varnishkes yielded very nicely cooked buckwheat groats, but also the realization that I don’t particularly like this particular dish, which is kasha with mushrooms, onions, and bowtie pasta.
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Posted by Ed Levine, March 2, 2008 at 8:00 AM
Even the creamiest scrambled eggs aren't exactly loaded with flavor, so when I came across this Nancy Silverton and Mark Peel recipe for scrambled eggs with porcini mushrooms, I got very excited.
Dried porcini mushrooms are one of those flavor intensifiers I crave especially when I'm watching my weight. These eggs get their desired creaminess through constant stirring and serving them immediately.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, February 6, 2008 at 5:00 PM
"This is a ridiculously easy soup to make.” Well, okay then. Nothing like Anthony Bourdain telling you what to do. I was just innocently flipping through Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, grazing over his faithful French adaptations, when I came upon a recipe that sounded like the perfect Dinner Tonight recipe. How can you go wrong a recipe even he says is the easiest recipe in the whole book?
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Posted by Jenn Sit, January 2, 2008 at 1:30 PM
It's almost the New Year and this time, your resolution to eat healthier foods can be a lot easier to keep with Ellie Krieger's new cookbook, The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life. The portobello panini with gorgonzola and sun-dried tomatoes recipe not only sounds delicious but is really simple to make and could be served with a side salad to make a great filling lunch. After the recipe, she notes "that there are five basic tastes our tongues can detect: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and, only recently recognized by western science, umami, a Japanese word that loosely translates to 'deliciousness.'" Mushrooms, tomatoes, and cheese are chock full of umami—or as you'll come to call it, "mm-yummy." (sidenote: my New Year's resolution is to stop making bad food puns...looks like I'm off to a bad start.)
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Posted by Blake Royer, December 27, 2007 at 4:00 PM
The way I see it, sautéed mushrooms should be as simple as possible. With only olive oil, heat, and the most pedestrian white mushrooms one of the more intriguing kitchen alchemies occurs, and the kitchen is filled with glorious smells: savory, meaty, rounded, earthy. Apparently, mushrooms are great carriers of the fifth taste, umami, which is often described with those very words. Perhaps the only greater sauté smell is bacon—which, actually, you could probably use by rendering some to replace the oil, perhaps removing the cooked bacon to chop and add in later. But this recipe goes with a simpler preparation, true to Mark Bittman’s minimalist style in How To Cook Everything
, and all the ingredients end up tasting of themselves—one of the higher compliments you can give a recipe.
When the mushrooms are tender, the recipe adds a splash of white wine to complement the earthy flavor with sweetness and acidity, then finishes with a bit of chopped garlic and parsley, cooking only for a minute so that the garlic is just softened enough to lose its bite, but still distinct, and the parsley remains bright. He recommends letting the mushrooms sit for an hour or so to cool and let the flavors develop; even though I ate most of them long before this apparent flavor development stage, the ones that were actually left were indeed delicious.
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Posted by Jenn Sit, December 22, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Every Thursday night back at my Williams College abode, everyone in my house clears their busy schedules to get together and cook a potluck feast. We hardly get to eat with everyone together during the week so we like to go all out and make an epic mess of the kitchen. Almost every week, someone always concocts a massive pasta dish and I can't wait to go back and try the wild mushroom and spinach lasagna recipe from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics . It's a dish big enough to stuff a ravenous crowd of college students like us and even meat-free for our resident vegetarian. It's also chock full of spinach to stave off that Scary Scurvy we all learned about in middle school (not just for pirates! but actually a real problem for college students who survive solely on beer and pizza!). As my housemates will tell you, I consume more spinach than Popeye could ever handle. Although I might lack the bulging biceps of our spinach-scarfing cartoon sailor, I always hope that these bouts of nutritious eating will happily counterbalance the pizza and french fry fests on the weekends. Surely this lasagna will help us out on that front and plus, it sounds mighty tasty.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, December 5, 2007 at 3:10 PM
Want to hone your mushroom cooking technique? Give yourself an excuse to splurge on expensive mushrooms by trying Tom Colicchio's recipe for pan-roasted mushrooms from Think Like a Chef. Colicchio's method for pan-roasting mushrooms—making sure to work in small batches—is to brown them for 2 minutes, season with chopped shallot, garlic, butter, thyme and tarragon, and finish with 2 more minutes of cooking. This dish can act as a main course or a side.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, October 29, 2007 at 2:15 PM
And, as promised, here's your first recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
. It's for a mushroom pâté that would be wonderful at your upcoming Thanksgiving dinner.
Serve it on crackers or toast or in canapés. You could also use it as a sandwich filling.
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Posted by SaraBir, September 15, 2006 at 2:58 PM
The flavor of barley works especially well with mushrooms. I like asparagus in this, too, but it's out of season; if you want to get your greens on, throw in a few fist fulls of rinsed, fresh spinach during the last several minutes of cooking. Browning the mushrooms over high heat makes them especially meaty; it also keeps them from getting slimy and overcooked.
Ingredients
10 to 12 ounces white mushrooms
4 to 6 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 small onion, minced
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 cup pearled barley
½ cup dry white wine
2 to 3 tablespoons mascarpone cheese
Procedure
1. Brush off the mushrooms and separate the caps from the stems, reserving stems. If the mushrooms caps are small, halve them; if they are large, quarter them.
2. In a medium saucepan, add stock and mushroom stems. Bring to a boil, lower heat, cover, and keep at a very gentle simmer.
3. Meanwhile, put a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and add the mushroom caps. Brown without disturbing for about a minute, then toss and continue to brown mushrooms on all sides. You want the mushrooms to be golden brown; they will shrink a bit in size, but not much, and they will not release much liquid. (It is best to have plenty of room in the pan, so brown the mushrooms in two batches, if needed). Remove mushrooms from pan; set aside.
4. In the same pan, lower heat to medium and melt 1 tablespoon butter. Add minced onion and cook, stirring frequently, until onion is translucent. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute. Add the barley and cook 1 minute, stirring to coat with butter. Add the wine to the pan. Stir until almost all of the wine is absorbed.
5. Meanwhile, remove the solids for the stock; discard solids. Keep stock at a simmer. Add about half a cup stock to the barley mixture and stir until almost all stock is absorbed. Continue adding stock one ladle at a time, tasting barley periodically to check doneness.
6. When barley mostly cooked but still has some bite, add the mushrooms to the pan. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Cook until barley is fully tender. Add a few last splashes of stock if needed (you want the risotto to be loose but not soupy), remove from heat, and stir in mascarpone cheese. Adjust seasoning, divide between plates or bowls, and garnish with freshly grated parmesan cheese. Serves 4 as a main course.
