Mushroom Power

This month's Food and Wine (Feb.) has a great article on the healthy qualities of eating mushrooms (pp 42). Additionally it talks about how the sponges of the earth are good for one's skin. This aspect of fungi skin products wierds me out a little bit, because I remember a dinner party where we had mushroom pate. The conseunsus of the party was that the pate looked, smelled and tasted like dirt-- fitting characterization given the source! So I still have a hard time contemplating a daily mushroom pate skin scrub.

With mushrooms on my mind, I ventured to Whole Foods and glanced at all the mushrooms, my eyes are always on alert for morels (delictable morsels of earthy goodness), instead I saw a basket of shittake mushrooms calling out my name. I filled a bag and was on may way to mushroom health.



My sliced shittake's found their home in a simple cream sauce (heavy cream and parmesean) with sauted onions and garlic, with a little white wine, and broccoli rabe over linguine. This turned out very good and went well with a side of roasted brussel sprouts with walnuts and raisins.

The next day for lunch I used the left over mushrooms and made an omelette with mushrooms and goat cheese.

Later on in the week the mushrooms were included in a cream cheese/butter/flour crusted tart with swiss chard, shittake mushrooms, bacon, leek and goat cheese.

Food and Wine's "Polbano and Chedder Stuffed Portobello" (Feb. pp.48) is also a GREAT meal.

The many uses of the mushroom- the sponge of the earth.

I can't wait for morel season