Book-ish

What’s cooking? Zucchini Spirals with Mushrooms

I spent all day last Saturday at the Texas Book Fair, an annual event that takes over a sizeable portion of downtown Austin near the capital and draws upwards of 50,000 attendees.  I started my tour with barbecue king Aaron Franklin (of the legendary Franklin Barbecue), who talked about grilling steaks and his new cookbook, Franklin Steak. Next up, I heard Malcolm Gladwell interviewed about his latest book, Talking with Strangers; then I hotfooted it from one side of the fair to the other to hear Sean Brock, former chef at McCrady’s in Charleston and the Husk group of restaurants across the South, talk about his newest project in Nashville and his latest cookbook, South, as well as his passion for Southern/Appalachian cuisine.

My last stop was a conversation between two authors who are also copy editors: Mary Norris (Between You & Me and her newer book, Greek to Me), who is also a writer and copy editor for The New Yorker; and Benjamin Dreyer (Dreyer’s English), executive managing editor and copy chief for Random House. The topic of their talk was “Word Nerds: Famous Copy Editors on the Glories of Grammar Punctuation.”

I had thoughts that a session with that catchy title might not draw a single person, so I was determined to put at least one face (mine) into the audience. Imagine my surprise when, arriving a full 15 minutes before the start of said session, I learned that there were no seats left. Wait – not only were all the seats taken, but a fire marshall had posted himself outside the room because it was “at capacity,” with people sitting on tables and standing at the back. Amazing, right? Who knew that many people would care so much about punctuation? I considered leaving, but then the fire marshall got called away, so I sneaked into the back.

The conversation was about as riveting as you could imagine, with bits about the “Oxford comma,” writing tics (subconscious gaffes committed on the page by writers), and styles of punctuation and usage that determine a writer’s voice. I’ve written before about finding “my people” in a room of food writers or bridge players, but these were true “ word nerds,” and I felt included, happy, at home.

So what did I learn on my day at the Book Fair? Well,...

■ From Aaron Franklin, I learned that grass-fed steak always has a beefier flavor than grain-fed steak. Also that you should never cook a filet mignon on the grill: there’s not enough fat on it, and what’s there drips down onto the coals or gas burners, leaving the meat dry and tasteless. According to Franklin, the best way to cook a filet mignon is to cook it on the stovetop in a skillet with butter. This was big news to the Kitchen Goddess.

■ Gladwell spoke about his prevailing premise in this latest book: that humans “default to truth” in our communications with others. That is, that we tend to take at face value things other people tell us, even if we should know better. It’s a level of trust that con artists and cheats rely on. But in the modern world, we have no choice but to talk to strangers. To assume the best about another person is “the trait that has created modern society. ... the alternative – to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception – is worse.”




■ Sean Brock has taken the past two years away from the restaurant business to investigate Southern cuisine. By his measure, the South covers an area equivalent to that of continental Europe, and has at least as many cuisines. Even within one state, the cuisine of, say, southern Virginia differs markedly from the cuisine of the Chesapeake Bay area. These microregions of cuisine have developed as influenced by the types of people who live there (natives, immigrants, Native Americans), the geography of the place, and the plants available in the area. His goal is to understand how these cuisines have developed and how they relate to each other. A food as simple as cornbread will vary widely from one community to the next because of the types of corn available, how it’s stored, and the cooking methods dominant in the area.

* * *


It will not surprise you that by the time I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was cook dinner. And fortunately, my prince was out of town on a golf trip. (Yes, the sport I hated most as a young mother because of the time it took is now a great gift for the time it takes. Not that I love my mate any less, but everyone needs a little alone time now and then.)

I didn’t want to cook, but I also didn’t want take-out. Hmmm... I stopped at the store on my way home and picked up these interesting veggie spirals I’ve been meaning to try, and a box of sliced mushrooms. That’s right – the Kitchen Goddess bought sliced mushrooms. Do as I say, not as I do. They’re not as fresh as if I’d sliced them myself, but when you’re really beat...

It was a perfectly wonderful meal, and embarrassingly simple given the Kitchen Goddess’s leanings. You have to be careful not to overcook the veggie spirals, but that’s easy if you just sample a piece occasionally. And some people will want their zucchini more al dente than others. That’s up to you, as is whether or not you add the chicken broth. I mostly did it for the Knorr flavor, and because I wanted a little liquid.

Zucchini Noodles and Mushrooms

Serves 2.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
8 ounces crimini (a.k.a. Baby Bella) mushrooms, in ¼-inch slices
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 package (about 10 ounces) zucchini spirals (a.k.a zucchini noodles)
½ cup flavorful chicken broth, or ½ cup water with ½ teaspoon Knorr Seasoning Chicken Bouillon
Garlic salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Garnishes (optional): freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, chopped parsley

Directions
Heat the butter and oil together in a large, high-sided skillet, over high heat, until the butter foam begins to subside. Add the mushrooms and sauté, stirring, for about 4 minutes, until they begin to brown.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the garlic. Cook 30 seconds, stirring, then add the zucchini spirals and continue stirring – gently, in a folding style, so as not to destroy the texture/shape of the squash – until the zucchini is al dente, another 3 minutes.

Pour the broth over the mixture and continue cooking about 1 minute. Remove from the heat and season to taste with salt/freshly ground black pepper, and serve. Garnish – if you want – with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or chopped parsley.

I served this to my husband a few nights later, and plated it with apple wedges and a nice slice of crusty bread toasted with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Outstanding.

Celebrate Teacher’s Day! What’s cooking? Mushroom Toast

In my humble opinion, there is no group more deserving of a special day than teachers. You may grimace at the elementary school teacher who kept you in from recess for misbehaving, or the high school teacher who seemed to have his/her favorites, or even the college professor who made a pass at you, but these are such a small minority that I hesitate even to mention them.

Here are the ones I do want to mention:
■ Mrs. Sweeney, my 2nd grade teacher who literally forced me to overcome my fear of competition in arithmetic races;
■ Marilyn Montgomery, my 7th grade math teacher who proved to me that you could be both glamorous and good at math;
■ Paul Foerster, my high school math teacher, who taught me that higher math could be fun and useful;
■ The writers Phyllis Theroux and Susan Shapiro, who helped me find my voice;
■ The angels who shepherded and inspired my own darling sons through nursery school and all the way through law school and med school – way too many to name. And now those who have my grandchildren as well.
■ My good friend, Anne Poyner, who, as a drama teacher at Summit High School, has convinced thousands of young men and women that they are capable of greatness beyond their imaginations if they work hard and support each other.

Most teachers care deeply about even the monsters that show up day after day in their classrooms; they are incredibly patient with the whiny kids and whinier parents who don’t understand why they can’t be granted yet another exception to the rules that give us a civilized society. They come in early and stay late to offer help and encouragement, then they go home and grade papers while the rest of us watch “Dancing with the Stars.”

But it’s worth it to them because of the millions they make in compensation.... Oh, wait – that’s wrong. In fact, it’s embarrassing how little we pay for their efforts.

So to all those teachers, I congratulate you on your dedication and invaluable, unending efforts to make the world a better place. Happy Teachers’ Day!

And now, in honor of those amazing molders of minds, the Kitchen Goddess has a dish that’s not just delicious, but fast and easy to prepare. And if you stick to crimini mushrooms, it’s also easy on the wallet.

Kitchen Goddess note on mushrooms: You want to cook mushrooms as soon as possible after buying them, but if that’s going to be a couple of days, store them – without washing – in a paper bag in the fridge or another cool, dark spot. Avoid keeping them in the vegetable drawers because those are areas of high humidity. You want them as dry as possible when you toss them into your skillet, so the best method of clearing them of debris is to wipe them with a clean, damp cloth or paper towel. If you feel compelled to use water, dump them into a bowl of water, swish them around, and quickly pull them out. Lay them on paper towels or kitchen cloths and blot them dry.

Mushroom Toast

Adapted from David Tanis in The New York Times.

Serves 2. (There’s actually enough mushroom mixture to serve 4 pieces of bread, but – trust me – you’ll want seconds.)

Ingredients
2-3 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus extra for toasting the bread
1 pound cremini mushrooms (or a mix of cremini and white button mushrooms or shiitakes, or morels), sliced about ⅛ inch thick
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves or ½ teaspoon dried thyme
2 small garlic cloves, minced
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons medium-dry sherry (like Amontillado)
¼ cup crème fraîche
2-4 thick slices country bread, for toasting
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Directions
The process of cooking and assembling this dish takes about 20 minutes total, so this is another of those recipes that needs to start with a reminder to get your mise en place before you turn on the heat. (Plus, you’ll feel incredibly professional – I know I do.) Have your mushrooms and bread sliced, and the other ingredients measured out and ready to go. And now that you’re ready,...

Lightly spread butter on both sides of the bread, and set aside.

Kitchen Goddess note on cooking mushrooms (repeated from other mushroom posts to make sure you don’t forget): It is easy to screw up sautéed mushrooms. Also easy to do it right, as long as you are careful that (1) the mushrooms are dry; and (2) you get the butter hot enough that it foams and then subsides before you add the mushrooms.

Heat the butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Swirl it around to cover the entire bottom of the pan. When the butter foams and the foam subsides, it’s time to add the mushrooms.

Before they lose all that water...

Toss the mushrooms in the hot fat for 4-5 minutes, stirring almost constantly, during which time they’ll absorb all the fat. Continue to cook them, stirring, for another 2-3 minutes, when they’ll release some of that fat and brown.

And after.

Stir in the thyme and garlic, to combine well. Season well with salt and pepper – mushrooms don’t have that much taste on their own – then add the sherry and the crème fraîche. Bring the mixture to a bare simmer and cook another 2 minutes.











While the mushroom mix is simmering, in a separate skillet, toast the bread until it’s a golden color. (You can also use a grill or broiler to toast the bread – your choice. But in that case, you may want to wait to butter the bread until after it’s toasted.)

Place a piece of bread on a plate. (For extra elegance, heat the plates before serving.) Spoon the mushroom mixture over the toast, and garnish with chopped parsley. Serve immediately.

And say a small prayer of thanks for the teachers in your lives.

What to Do If You Forgot It’s Valentine’s Day What’s cooking? Wild Mushroom Soup with Madeira

OMG – it’s Valentine’s Day! And you forgot?!! Okay, so don’t panic. How about making dinner for your loved one/friend/spouse/parent... whoever? Yeah, sure,... ok... dinner. What’s fast and easy but special? Steak? Right, steak. Get a couple of those little filet mignons and grill or broil them. That’s easy enough. Then... let’s see, ... salad. Yup. Just the thing – salad. Some nice lettuce, maybe a sprig or two of watercress, and a simple oil and vinegar dressing. Hmmm... but what’s going to make this dinner special?

Ah... So you turned to the Kitchen Goddess for help? Good thinking, because I have just the dish: Wild Mushroom Soup with Madeira. It comes from one of my old stand-by sources, The New Basics Cookbook from the Silver Palate ladies, Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins.

You will love this soup. The flavor is outstanding – nutty, earthy – the texture velvety, and the aroma will remind you of an early morning walk in the woods when the trees haven’t leafed out but the birds have arrived.

It’s a rich taste, but without cream, so not high calorie. Yes, there’s butter, but not so much. And it takes only about an hour to cook, if you start the mushrooms to soak first, then chop the onion and leeks, and quarter the criminis while the mushrooms are absorbing the wine.



In fact, the only real downside to this soup is the cost. Yes, you read this photo right: the dried morels at my grocer are $300 per pound. But you only need one ounce, which is less than $20. And if you’re cooking for two, you can halve this recipe and it’ll only cost $10 for the fungi. But they are soooo worth it. And after all, it’s Valentine’s Day!


A couple of short notes about the ingredients. (You didn’t think the Kitchen Goddess would be able to skip this part, did you?) Morels are pricey in part because the flavor is so distinct and intense, but also because no one has yet figured out a way to cultivate them commercially. They come out as the snow melts, and they’re not easy to spot. Morel fans have been known to travel hundreds of miles in the hunt.


And morels are famously paired with Madeira in cooking. Madeira – named for the Madeira Islands, where it’s made, off the coast of Portugal – is a fortified wine produced in a range of dry to sweet styles. The unique process involves repeatedly heating the wine, which gives it a mix of flavors including notes of roasted nuts, stewed fruit, caramel, and toffee.


This is a soup fit for a queen or a king, ... or a Valentine!

Wild Mushroom Soup with Madeira

Adapted from The New Basics Cookbook, by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins.


Serves 6.

Ingredients
½ cup medium-dry Madeira
2¾ cups good vegetable stock (can substitute good chicken stock)
1 ounce dried morel mushrooms (substitutes: dried shiitakes or dried chanterelles)
3 leeks (white part only), well rinsed
1 medium onion
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour (bleached or unbleached)
2¼ cups good beef stock
1 pound crimini mushrooms (or white button mushrooms) with stems trimmed, quartered
kosher salt and white pepper to taste
Garnishes: crème fraîche, snipped fresh chives or sautéed sliced mushrooms











Directions
In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the morels, the Madeira, and ½ cup of the vegetable stock, and bring the mixture to a boil. Immediately remove the pan from the heat, cover, and let sit for 30 minutes. (If it sits for longer than 30 minutes, that’s ok.)

While the dried mushrooms are soaking, dice the leeks and the onion. (You should end up with about 1 cup each of chopped onion and leeks.) In a larger soup pot, melt the butter then add the chopped leeks and onion. Cook over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, until the vegetables are soft but not browned. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and continue to cook, stirring with a whisk, for 5 minutes more.





Add the remaining 2¼ cups of vegetable stock slowly, while stirring with a whisk to avoid lumps. Stir in the beef stock and the quartered crimini mushrooms. Add the morels and their soaking liquid to the pot, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. Season the broth to taste with salt and white pepper.

Let the soup cool a little before transferring it to a blender and purée for at least a minute to make sure the soup is smooth. Depending on the size of your blender or food processor, you may need to do this in batches.

Serve hot, with a dollop of crème fraîche and either fresh chives or sautéed sliced mushrooms.

Shroom Season! What’s cooking? Mushroom Bolognese

The Kitchen Goddess hasn’t forgotten you – she’s cruising on the Danube, taking a crazy number of photos and tasting lots of nice white wine. She’ll be back next week with some fun recipes from her travels. In the meantime, here’s an earthy, flavorful pasta sauce that’s a snap to make and easy on the waistline.

It’s springtime, and a cook’s fancies naturally turn to...mushrooms!

I wish I had the nerve to go mushroom hunting on my own in the woods. I once signed up for a foraging outing in Central Park (NYC), but it got cancelled, for reasons I never quite understood. And I’ve read too many murder mysteries featuring poisonous varieties to be comfortable with picking any old variety I stumble across. If I were a Roman emperor, I could have my food tasters check out the differences. Instead, I go ‘shroom hunting at Whole Foods, where what they sell has already been tested.

As a category, mushrooms but simply macrofungi, or fungi that are large enough to be seen with the naked eye. They aren’t plants because they don’t develop through photosynthesis – they get all their energy and nutrients through their growth medium, via a process of decomposition. And, according to Wikipedia, there’s reliable evidence of mushroom consumption for nutritional and medicinal purposes as far back as several hundred years BC in China. Many of these varieties – e.g., chanterelles, porcini, morels, and truffles – are commercially cultivated, and Wikipedia lists more than 60 that are harvested in the wild.

Crimini mushrooms

Nutritionally, white and brown (crimini) button mushrooms are very similar. White button mushrooms are better sources of Vitamin C and iron, but criminis provide twice as much calcium, 50% more potassium, and three times as much of the mineral selenium. Criminis are lower in fat but higher in carbs. White buttons offer slightly more fiber and protein. Do you have a headache yet? I have even more information on buying and storing mushrooms on this previous post. And here endeth the lesson.




So the Kitchen Goddess was yearning for some meaty bolognese sauce, but her scales were telling her she should cut back on red meat. (There’s nothing like an upcoming cruise to remind a person about the need to slim down.) What better solution than to substitute mushrooms for the beef? You get all that great umami flavor and a meaty mouthfeel for lots fewer calories.

Shiitake mushrooms

For kitchen use, the button mushrooms (white and criminis) are by far the best buy. But the Kitchen Goddess is all about trying new things, so consider throwing in a few shiitakes, morels, chanterelles, or oyster mushrooms. Look for whole, intact caps – no major blemishes or slimy spots – and a plump, smooth, dry skin. They’ll keep in a paper bag in the fridge (or as Cook’s Illustrated recommends, in a partially opened zip-lock bag) for about a week.

Mushroom Bolognese

Adapted from The Mushroom Council and the Culinary Institute of America®

Yield: 6 Portions

Ingredients

Diced veggies for sauté. 

3 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds mushrooms, minced*
1 medium onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
⅔ cup carrots, cut in ¼-inch dice
⅔ cup celery, cut in ¼-inch dice
½ cup dry white wine
¼ cup tomato paste
1 cup vegetable stock (mushroom stock, if you have it)
1 piece Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese rind, 2-3 inches long
1 large garlic clove, minced (about 1 teaspoon)
2 fresh basil sprigs
1 bay leaf
⅛ teaspoon grated nutmeg
2 tablespoons grated raw potato
1 cup cream (heavy or light)
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 package pasta
½ cup pasta water, reserved
Garnishes: chopped fresh parsley, grated or shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Kitchen Goddess note on finely chopping mushrooms: The KG hates chopping mushrooms, so she uses a food processor to mince button mushrooms. To avoid ugly hunks of mushroom in the mix – you want the sauce to have a nice, even consistency – first cut them into quarters before loading them into the processor. Use the pulse button 8-10 times, or enough to get a mince that’s not mushy – remember that the end product should resemble ground beef. For shiitakes, first separate the cap from the stem. You can add the stems (cut into modest-sized pieces) to the processor, but the caps don’t process as well, so you’ll want to slice the caps into ¼-inch dice. Tedious, I know, but you don’t need to have more than a few to add flavor.

Preparation
If you’ll be serving the sauce immediately when it’s ready, start a large pot of boiling, salted water for the pasta. Cook pasta according to package instructions.

For the sauce, in a large, straight-sided skillet, heat the olive oil on a medium setting until it shimmers. Add the minced mushrooms and sauté, stirring often, until golden, about 5 minutes. Add the onions, carrots and celery, and continue to sauté on medium heat until the vegetables are soft, about 5 more minutes.

Add the wine, stirring to release any of the vegetable sauté that might have stuck to the bottom of the pan. Continue to cook the mixture until the wine has nearly evaporated, about 5 minutes more.

Stir in the tomato paste and continue to sauté the mushroom mixture another 2 minutes. Add the stock and stir well, again making sure to release any of the mix that might have stuck to the pan. Add the next five ingredients (garlic, basil, bay leaf, nutmeg, and potato), stirring to mix well. Add the cream and stir well. Add ½ teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of pepper, then taste and adjust seasoning.

Bring the mix to a low simmer if it’s not already there, and let the sauce continue to simmer, partially covered, another 5-10 minutes until it thickens. Stir occasionally. Add some pasta water or more stock if the sauce seems too thick as it cooks. You can toss it with your pasta now, or store it, covered tightly, in the fridge for as long as a week.

When the pasta is cooked to an al dente doneness, drain it well and toss it with the sauce – in the pan or in a large serving bowl – until the sauce is well distributed among the pasta. Garnish with Parmigiano-Reggiano and parsley and serve immediately.

Winner, Winner, Mushroom Dinner What’s cooking? A Blender Winner and Pasta with Wild Mushroom Sauce

Before I get into the recipe of the day, I want to announce the winner of the Hamilton Beach Wave~Action Blender. I also want to thank all of you who left comments and stopped by to read about my Cool Green Soup and the wonderful smoothie I made with my own Hamilton Beach blender.

So, without further ado, the winner is...

Congratulations, Rana! I’ll be contacting you separately to get an address for the Hamilton Beach people to send your prize.

* * *

Not everything I find at the farmers’ market is green or red or yellow, though just thinking about what shows up in those colors makes me smile. I recently stopped by one of the organic stands where they stock mushrooms from surrounding farms. These mushrooms were so beautiful – plump, reasonably clean, and mostly unmarred (really, sometimes the ’shrooms you find at the grocery store look like they grew under the log, not on top) – that I could hardly wait to get them home. For a light, healthy summer entrée, you really can’t beat pasta with sautéed mushrooms and a sprinkling of fresh parsley. Add a salad, some toasted crusty bread, a little fruit sorbet for dessert, and a nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and I’ll be right over.

For this dish, I picked a combination of crimini mushrooms and shiitakes. With mushrooms, you can spend a lot of money without trying, but it’s not necessary to do so, especially if you just want to get a decent dinner on the table. Those two varieties I chose aren’t much more expensive than white button mushrooms and they have worlds more flavor – which is important when that’s pretty much all that’s on the plate.

Crimini (also sometimes spelled “cremini”) look like white button mushrooms but have a slightly earthier flavor. Think of them as baby portabella mushrooms, because, well, that’s what they are.

Shiitakes are among the most flavorful mushrooms, with a meaty texture and strong earthy, woodsy flavors. They’re cultivated throughout Asia and found in many Asian recipes. Shiitakes are high-protein mushrooms, rich in potassium, niacin and B vitamins, calcium, magne-sium and phosphorus. They have natural antiviral and immunity-boosting properties and are used nutritionally to fight viruses, lower cholesterol, and regulate blood pressure. They’re even said to be good for your skin. So unless you just don’t like mushrooms, these should be regulars on your table.

Kitchen Goddess notes on buying, storing, and cleaning mushrooms:

1. Buy mushrooms with a plump, smooth but dry skin. No major blemishes or slimy spots. A closed “veil” (that part under the cap) will produce a more delicate flavor; an open “veil” will yield richer flavor.

2. Store mushrooms in the fridge, preferably in a paper bag, where they’ll last a week or more. DO NOT RINSE THEM until you’re ready to cook.

3. To clean mushrooms, set a colander with relatively large perforations into a large bowl of water. Put the mushrooms into the colander and swish them around energetically to loosen the dirt, then lift the colander out of the water, leaving behind the debris. Working quickly, turn the mushrooms out onto tea towels and lightly rub or pat them clean/dry with paper towels or another tea towel. Mushrooms should spend the least possible time in water.

So, now that you’re ready,...

Pasta with Wild Mushroom Sauce

Inspired by a recipe in Gourmet magazine, September, 2006.

(You can choose to use only white or cremini mushrooms; if you do so, just change the name of this dish to “Pasta with Fresh Mushroom Sauce.”)

Please note that the pasta/mushroom quantities for this recipe have been revised since the original posting. I don't know what I was thinking, but you can be sure it is better now.

Serves 6 as first course, 4 as entrée.

8-10 ounces linguine (or spaghetti or fettuccini)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons canola oil (or vegetable oil, or grapeseed oil)

10 ounces large fresh crimini mushrooms, thickly sliced (¼ inch)

8 ounces medium-to-large fresh shiitake mushrooms or a mix of fresh wild mushrooms, thickly sliced (¼ inch)

2 tablespoons dry sherry (or red wine or white wine – lots of flexibility here)

1 large clove garlic, minced

2-3 tablespoons diced shallots (or spring onions)

zest of 1 lemon

½ teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoons chopped flat-leafed parsley

Finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese for topping

Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling, well salted water until al dente.

In a large skillet, sauté the mushrooms in the oil and butter. Kitchen Goddess note on technique here: It is easy to screw up sautéed mushrooms. Also easy to do it right, as long as you are careful that (1) the mushrooms should be dry; and (2) you get the oil and butter hot enough that the butter foams and then subsides before you add the mushrooms. (Using a mix of oil and butter allows the fat to get even hotter than with butter alone.) Then (3) toss the mushrooms in the hot fat for 4-5 minutes, during which time they’ll absorb all the fat. Continue to cook them, stirring, for another 2-3 minutes, when they’ll release some of that fat and brown.

For this preparation, you may want to sauté the mushrooms in two batches, using half the butter and oil with each batch. If you do, add the first batch back into the skillet once the second batch is browned.

Now, reduce the heat slightly on the skillet. Add the sherry (or wine), the garlic, and the shallots, and stir to combine with the mushrooms. As the sherry boils, scrape up any bits of browned butter and mushroom from the bottom of the skillet, stirring constantly.

Before you drain the pasta, reserve ½ cup of cooking water. Drain the pasta and add it to the mushrooms. Stir to combine. Add the reserved pasta water a little at a time, to bring the mixture to a texture that you like.

Stir in the lemon zest, the lemon juice, and the parsley. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Serve with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

A Holiday Giveaway!! Season’s Greetings from the Kitchen Goddess What’s cooking? Italian Veggie Gratin

In the spirit of holiday cheer, my friends at Hamilton Beach have offered another giveaway to Spoon & Ink readers: a Stack & Snap™ 10-Cup Food Processor. They sent me one for testing, and I used it to make an Italian-inspired vegetable gratin. But more on that later. First let’s talk about how you can get your own Stack & Snap – free!

Win a Hamilton Beach Stack & Snap 10-Cup Food Processor!

If you’d like to participate in the drawing for one of these handy time-saving, work-saving machines, all you have to do is leave a comment – either at the bottom of this post or on the Spoon & Ink Facebook page. Just be sure to sign it, and you’ll be entered to win. I’ll be drawing a name and announcing it in a post on Monday, December 22. So leave your comment before then.





The Kitchen Goddess is not one to insist on all the latest appliances. But a food processor is something that even the non-serious cooks among you should have. In fact, many of my favorite recipes would be complete non-starters in the absence of a food processor: Arugula Pesto, Fromage Fort, Greek Almond Cookies, and 3 of the 4 veggie sides I posted about for Thanksgiving (Asparagus Flan, Sweet Potato-Ginger Soufflé, and Watercress Purée). Moreover, the Stack & Snap Processor is so reasonably priced that, even if you don’t win the drawing, it’s easy to fit one into your budget.

The Machine

The Kitchen Goddess was totally in her element with this road test. First, I tried out the processor’s most basic feature: the chopping blade. It nicely pulverized the almonds for a meringue in a recipe I’ll tell you about another day.

So I moved on to the slicing/shredding blade. For convenience, it's a single blade, with "Slice" clearly marked on one side and "Shred" on the other. I wanted to use both features in a single recipe, so I looked around my kitchen and found onions, zucchini, crimini mushrooms, and a package of those adorable grape tomatoes. I took inspiration from a zucchini gratin posted by the great Ina Garten, whose recipes are known to be easy and straightforward, and I tweaked it in so many ways that it no longer looks like Ina’s at all, though it’s still easy and straightforward.

The Stack & Snap performed beautifully, except on the mushrooms, which – frankly – don’t really stand up to any food processor. (Not that it didn’t slice them but it’s too hard to control the position of a mushroom in the feeder tube, so more than a few came out looking like tiny frisbees. I sliced the rest of the mushrooms with my mandoline.) But my Stack & Snap sliced through the onions, the squash, and even the tomatoes like a hot knife through butter. (It’s a Southernism. Forgive me.)

The shredding side of the slicing/shredding disk made short work of a chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano, and in no time flat, I had the mise en place for my gratin. Which, by the way, is completely delicious and redolent of Italy.

Italian Veggie Gratin

Serves 6.

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, separated
2 large onions (12-13 ounces total), halved and thinly sliced
8 ounces crimini mushrooms, thinly sliced
5 small zucchini (about 1¾ pounds), thinly sliced
10 ounces grape tomatoes, thinly sliced
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 ounces fresh goat cheese
2½ ounces Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, grated
1½ cups fresh bread crumbs (or panko or a combination)

Preheat oven to 400º and lightly grease a 2-quart gratin dish (about 12 x 9 x 2 inches).

Melt 4 tablespoons of the butter in a large sauté pan or skillet over medium-low heat and add the onions. Sauté the onions for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. The onions should cook but not brown, so if they begin to brown, turn the heat down.

While the onions are cooking, take a small skillet (preferably non-stick) and heat another tablespoon of the butter on medium-high. When the butter is hot, add the mushrooms and sauté, stirring, for about 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.

Once the onions have cooked, add the zucchini, stir, and cook covered for 8-10 more minutes, until the zucchini are tender. Stir in the tomatoes, the reserved cooked mushrooms, and the salt and pepper. Crumble the goat cheese over the mixture and stir it in. Cover and cook another 5 minutes.

Remove the vegetable mixture to the prepared gratin dish. In a small bowl, stir together the Parmigiano-Reggiano and the bread crumbs. Melt the remaining tablespoon of butter and stir it into the cheese/bread crumbs, mixing enough to get the bread crumbs well moistened with the butter. Sprinkle the mix over the vegetables and bake at 400º for 20 minutes or until the top bubbles and browns.

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