smitten kitchen » Mushrooms

warm mushroom salad with hazelnuts

deb — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:23:24 +0000

So, this is a tale of two salads. No wait, three. Okay, this is the tale of three salads. The first one crossed our table at brunch with my mother and the little pilot two weeks ago (you might remember that our last brunch together resulting in us obsessing over monkey bread; who knew brunch could be such a source of inspiration?) at one of my favorite local restaurants: warm mushroom, softly cooked, chestnuts cooked in brown butter, bacon lardons and a port reduction. We haven’t stopped talking about it since.

So, when I was looking for a salad to make for our accidental dinner party last weekend that did not hinge entirely on out-of-season always-going-bad-too-fast never-tasting-as-good-as-they-should salad greens and spied on a warm mushroom salad in the always-amazing Sunday Suppers at Lucques, I had a good feeling about it.

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mushroom marsala pasta with artichokes

deb — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:16:51 +0000

People, I’m about at the end of my ordered-in dinner rope. It’s not that — as the front page of this site might suggest — I haven’t cooked anything since the baby arrived, it’s just that I’ve largely cooked things that could be assembled during naptimes, and most of Alex and my conversations about meals go, “What should we do for dinner?” “I made mushroom toasts and a bowl of butterscotch sauce today!” “Right, so what should we order?” And so on with the pho, cracker-thin pizza and hummusiot dinner deliveries. For three months. At 93 days, even shakshuka broiled with haloumi gets tiresome.

Now, I don’t expect any violins, especially from folks without the East Village’s globe of food delivery options at their fingertips, but I am sure you all understand what it means to desperately crave a homecooked meal. And I don’t mean a 5-hour braise or hand-sheeted pasta (though, ahem, I wouldn’t push either away); even a simple sautéed chicken, which I managed to eek out a few weeks ago, stands out as one of the best things we’ve eaten in a month.

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creamed mushrooms on chive butter toast

deb — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:39:57 +0000

My husband’s people — that would be The Russians, if you’ve been following along at home — really like their caviar. It’s rare that a signature spread of zakuski doesn’t include at least one form of gem-colored eggs by the thousands, usually served with sour cream and small crepes. Me, I’m a troglodyte; I’m unable to appreciate such fine things in life, and generally breeze right past the caviar to spear a potato with my fork.

But it doesn’t mean I don’t like a little fancy something-something now and then; I just want it to suggest caviar but not actually being it (or, ahem, costing it). So when Melissa Clark called this mushroom preparation giving them “the caviar treatment” in an article eons ago, I was both excited, because I do love me some mushrooms, and dubious — dubious enough that it took me over two years to make it. And that, my friends, was a terrible waste of time.

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spanakopita triangles + then some

deb — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:43:24 +0000

Apparently, making marshmallows at home isn’t as “normal” as I would have thought, but then again, I am the last person one should be using a yardstick of kitchen normality, or not as long as I am pickling grapes or making wedding cakes with a mini-oven and a single, eensy counter.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that my brand of crazy will match yours, however. I mean, someone actually asked if was going to make my own phyllo next. Are they mad? I hate working with phyllo. Who invented this stuff? It’s fragile and fussy and requires a ludicrous amount of manual labor, and then it leaves papery flakes of pastry everywhere, but mostly on this abdomen shelf I’m growing (sorry, kid. One day you’ll be more than just a crumb catcher! Just not today.)

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mushroom bourguignon

deb — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:48:36 +0000

When it is as cruelly cold out as it has been this week, beef bourguignon is one of my favorite things. If there is anything better than a symphony of onions, carrots, red wine, broth and a scoop of tomato paste simmered for hours, I haven’t met it. I don’t want to meet it. I already know my favorite.

Julia Child’s recipe was always my mother’s go-to dish for company and back in the day, the smell of it braising in the oven was enough to get me to reconsider my vegetarianism. I cheated more than once, ladling the braise broth over egg noodles, and never felt that I wasn’t missing a thing. In fact, I always argued that most of the things people thought they liked about meat they actually liked about the sauces and braises and spices they were cooked in, which is why I have been dreaming up a vegetable based bourguignon for ages.

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mushroom and barley pie

deb — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:52:59 +0000

“So it’s a pie?”
“Well, it’s pie-like. I mean, it has a bottom crust and a top crust and it is filled with stuff. So yeah, pie.”
“With farro?”
“No, we have had barley sitting in the pantry for like a year so we’re going to eat that first.”
“Awesome.”
“And it has mushrooms and ricotta in it!”
“And bacon?”
“Ew, no. It’s a vegetarian Thanksgiving entree.”
“Can we have bacon on the side?”

Anyway, perhaps if you don’t live in my apartment, you would be really excited to make this. I mean, I know I was. And lest you think Alex doesn’t like mushrooms and barley and vegetarian dishes, it is entirely not the case. But I have to admit, this is a wonderful dish (he’s eaten the leftovers, twice!) but it needs… something.

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cabbage and mushroom galette

deb — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:17:15 +0000

I don’t think I have ever met a galette I didn’t like. In fact, my only grievance is that I do not have more galette recipes on this site. Two years ago there was a wild mushroom and stilton galette and last year there was a butternut squash and caramelized onion galette but since then? Nada. Let me serve to fix that right now.

Why am I so obsessed with galettes? Halfway between a tart and pizza, I think they’re easier than both. They don’t require any of the eggs or liquid-setting bake of a quiche and there’s less of a volume limitation than you have with pizza, where too many ingredients will send your toppings right onto the oven floor. The galette is perfection, and I am excited to add this one to the collection.

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mushroom strudel

deb — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:27:37 +0000

I am not proud of this, but I’m really just a one trick pony in the language department. Sure, after four years of high school French and the shortest exchange program ever, I can get by in Paris and because of this, can occasionally make sense of written Italian or Spanish, but Czech? German? I couldn’t be further from makings heads or tails of it.

As you might expect, as Alex and I luckily found ourselves at some untouristy eateries in Vienna–without a waitstaff that catered to the language-deficient or menus reprinted in 16 world languages–quite a bit of Hilarity Ensued. After many hours of walking on a hot day, Alex and I were beat, so we flopped down at a cafe and mindlessly asked for “iced coffees” completely forgetting that “ice” equals “eis” equals “ice cream” in German, and ended up with a big cup filled with coffee, cream, whipped cream and a scoop of vanilla gelato. I wish all mistakes were this tasty!

Looking to offset the heavy dishes Central Europe, I also ordered something that I guessed was going to be a light, healthy vegetable strudel, something I’d imagined dreamily warm with crispy, flaky edges and something I was certainly going to want to repeat at home. Unfortunately, I received a brick of rice with a few flecks of carrots and parnsips, wrapped in phyllo and smothered in a creamy herb sauce. It all went very well with my eis Kaffee!

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alex’s chicken and mushroom marsala

deb — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:44:14 +0000

We’ve discussed this before, but I really hate cooking anything twice. I know what an awful shame this is–falling upon gasp-worthy, decadent and even flawless recipes, broadcasting their merits across the Web, then filing them away only to never speak of them again–but I am going to have to insist that you do not judge me for this; after all, what would thesmittenkitchen be without my impatience for the next new thing?

Nevertheless, there are certain recipes that Alex, less appalled with the concept of having to eat anything twice in two whole years, frequently and politely requests that I make again. And what do I do? Do I tie on my apron, pour him a drink and say “of course, honey! Anything for you, baby! You’re the love of my life, baby!”? No, I suggest that he make it himself.

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creamy white polenta with mushrooms

deb — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:50:32 +0000

Because I am a complete and total Yankee, I really didn’t know a thing about grits until Alex and I took a trip to Savannah and Charleston earlier this year. But when I tried them, I fell hard. I found them in a small puddle beneath the most saucy, delicious chicken dish in a large-rimmed shallow bowl, shredded Brussels tangled around them and then the next day loaded with cheese and chives adjacent to my eggs. They seemed to be open and ready for anything put before them–on so many levels, exactly what I needed.

I swore I’d make my own when I got back, heck, I’d make them daily but somehow that “when” became “eight months later” and that pretty much brings us up to last night. I’d bookmarked Jonathan Waxman’s Creamy White Polenta with Mushrooms and Mascarpone a while ago, but forgot about it until last week’s chicken dish reminded me of how much I like chanterelles.

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