Mushroom 500 Flatbread

Every once in awhile I will dine out and happen upon a dish that is so good I spend the entire evening scheming about how I can recreate it at home.

COCO500's truffled mushroom flatbread with sea salt and chili is one of them. It is the perfect bite of crispy flatbread, earthy, robust mushroom, and salty parmigiano.

I knew it would be hard to fully recreate the experience -- so much of it is in the flatbread -- but I knew I could come close, and while I would love nothing more than to jaunt off to COCO500 every time I had a hankering, this is much easier.

For my take on this, I opted to scale down the fancy factor so it could be an easy and inexpensive snack or party hors d'oeuvre. The beauty of this recipe is in its flexibility. Ambitious? Make your own flatbread. Not so ambitious? Store-bought whole wheat pita works wonderfully. Or, try slicing and toasting up some baguette for a crostini.

Also, feel free to play with the type of mushrooms you use. If the button mushrooms are looking good at the market this week, go for those. My favorite has been baby portabellos lately. And since I came across some spring morel mushrooms, I decided to sautee them up and throw them on top for this last batch.

The recipe below is the basic base for your dish, but the fun is in tweaking it and making it your own.

Mushroom 500 Flatbread
With inspiration from COCO500's truffled mushroom flatbread with sea salt and chili.

Feel free to play with the type of mushrooms you use for your base of duxelles (fancy French for "mushroom spread"). If you want to go all out, by all means, add some shaved truffle, or finish it off with truffle oil or salt. Not necessary though, this is perfectly delicious without the expensive stuff.

Servings: 4

Ingredients:
For the duxelles:
1 pound baby portabello mushrooms, cleaned
¼ cup shallots (or 1/2 medium onion)
4 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine
Salt and pepper to taste
A few dashes Worcestershire sauce

Parmigiano Reggiano
Flatbread or pita

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 375 F.

Roughly chop mushrooms, shallots (or onion), and garlic, and place in food processor. Process until everything is finely minced.

Heat butter and oil in a pan. Place mushroom mixture in, add the rest of the ingredients, and sautee until it becomes a paste-like consistency.

Spread the duxelles on flatbread. Sprinkle liberally with Parmigiano Reggiano, and bake until cheese is melted and golden (about 8-10 minutes).

Walking through the Ferry Building recently, I couldn't pass up locally foraged chanterelle mushrooms from Far West Fungi. Chanterelles first become available to us in the fall, being foraged from the Pacific Northwest. They arrive with the first rains, and they begin to grow closer to San Francisco as we get into wintertime and cooler, rainier weather. Because chanterelles grow as the result of a symbiotic relationship between fungus and host plant (usually a tree), they are always found in the wild and don't grow outside of a forest environment.

In his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan details foraging for chanterelle mushrooms with a mushroom hunter -- one of several area people who forage for these delicious mushrooms in nearby forests and then bring them to San Francisco to sell to restaurants and stores.

I jump at the chance to buy chanterelle mushrooms because I love their meaty texture and delicious flavor. It's been said that they have an apricot scent, and I think that the flavor is deliciously strong without being overwhelming. They don't tend to cook down as much as say, button mushrooms, so the yield per person is better.

Keep an eye out for chanterelles on local area menus. I usually find them at the local gourmet pizzerias as a pizza topping, and SPQR regularly has them on their menu sauteed with spinach.

When cooking at home, I usually make very basic dishes that show off the chanterelle flavor. Tonight, I'm thinking of using mine in a very basic risotto. In the past, I've sauteed them simply with butter and topped with a poached egg. I also like them tossed with a whole grain such as farro or brown rice.

Chanterelles have a hefty price tag -- I purchased a meager amount at Far West Fungi for $20 per pound. But they are meaty enough and substantial enough to be a main ingredient in place of meat, which is how I justify the cost.

Currently, the chanterelles available at Far West Fungi and local farmers markets are being foraged from all around the Bay Area: Sonoma, Marin, and Alameda counties. We can expect to see chanterelle mushrooms for at least a few more weeks, and if it rains then possibly another month or two.

Chanterelles on Bay Area Bites:
Hunter gatherer: Chanterelles in Big Sur

Chanterelle mushroom recipes on the blogs:
Truffled Chanterelle, Celery Root and Potato Gratin
Warm Chanterelle and Pancetta Salad
Farro with Chanterelles, Apples, Apples and Apples

The day after Thanksgiving is rapidly becoming one of my favorite foodie holidays. Each year we trek down to Monterey to visit our friends and their family, and participate in what proves to be an even more elaborate and decadent feast than the previous day. This year, for the first time, I went down for the whole extravaganza, which includes a nearly all-day mushroom hunt.

Back into the hills...deep into the hills...of Big Sur we went, turning somewhere off of Highway 1 and skidding down a dirt road for at least 5 miles. Once parked, we probably trekked a few miles into the ever-thickening forest. In fact, you would never have known what a glorious day it was for the thick canopy of trees shading us below.

At some point down the path we turned off, and started climbing up a rather steep hill, through heavy brush and downed trees, doing our best to avoid the poison oak (which, I found out later, I didn't actually manage to avoid), all the while looking, searching, straining to see the delicate little fungi we were seeking. Finally, a cry of discovery and excitement (a cry that was quite distinguishable from the anguished cry earlier from my friend Tony who was attacked by yellow jackets, which sent another friend up a tree thinking it was a wild boar on the rampage). We all rushed over and found a patch of perfect, beautiful, delicious chanterelle mushrooms. Our bounty. We took what we could use, left the little ones to grow, and made our way back to prepare our feast.

Our feast that night consisted of tiny little mussels and barnacles we had harvested on the coast on the way home from the hunt, steamed in white wine. Our next course: homemade tagliolini with shredded quail, pancetta and chanterelle ragu. Our main course a slow-simmered pork stew with leeks and more chanterelles. And to top it off, a juicy pear galette.

The next day, each with a bag of mushrooms, we returned to the city... scheming how to use our chanterelle morsels. My friend Max ended up pickling his. I, on the other hand, decided upon decadence, and made a creamy white lasagna. It was heaven.

The Most Amazing Decadent Mushroom Lasagna

This recipe is adapted from a recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the owner of the River Cottage, author of numerous incredible cookbooks, and believer in living off the land.

For the Bechamel
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups whole milk, warmed
1/3 cup grated Parmesan
1/3 cup grated Fontina
About 3/4 to 1 cup chicken stock
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Lasagna noodles*
About 300g fresh chanterelles, cleaned and sliced very thinly
About 6 large or 9 small very thin slices of good-quality prosciutto
About 1/2 cup Parmesan
About 1/2 cup Fontina

*Note: You can use either fresh or dried lasagna noodles. Fresh are always my first choice, and contrary to what some might tell you, you don't need to pre-cook them, you can just layer them and bake them. There are also dried lasagna noodles that you don't need to pre-cook either. They are thin enough that they bake when you bake the lasagna. The nice thing about these is that they tend to stay al dente when baked.

Preheat the oven to 375F. To make the bechamel, in a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and cook, whisking, for about 2 minutes. Slowly add the milk, whisking constantly, to smooth out all the lumps. Turn down the heat to medium-low, and add the Parmesan and Fontina, whisking to incorporate. Whisk in enough chicken stock to make a fairly loose sauce. It should be pourable but not thin. If you are using the dried lasagna that is not pre-cooked it's a good idea to make the sauce a bit thinner than you normally would. Season to taste with salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper.

To layer the lasagna, in a baking dish about 21-cm square, add about 1/4 cup of the Bechamel. Place a layer of lasagna noodles, then another 1/4 cup Bechamel, the 1/3 of the chanterelles. Top the chanterelles evenly with 1/3 of the prosciutto, shredding it into pieces to spread it evenly if necessary. Top the prosciutto with a thin layer of grated Parmesan and Fontina. Top with about 1/2 cup Bechamel, covering the filling evenly. Top with an even layer of lasagna noodles, then repeat the layering two more times. Add a final layer of lasagna noodles, then the rest of the Bechamel, and some grated Parmesan and Fontina.

Bake the lasagna until the noodles are tender, and the filling is bubbling, about 45 minutes if using the dried uncooked noodles (for fresh it might be about 25 minutes). Let sit for about 15 minutes before cutting and serving.

Cassie Clemmons, 1942

I've always loved celebrity cooking stories. Maybe it's because they're proof that the starlets actually eat, or maybe it's because it tickles me to think of them puttering around a kitchen with knives and saucepans just like us. Not that long ago, I hit a gold mine when I discovered Frank DeCaro's library of celebrity recipes and I've spent hours paging through recipe contributions by Debbie Reynolds, Ida Lupino, and J. Edgar Hoover. (I'm sure Rock Hudson's cannoli is quite tasty.)

Growing up, I heard celebrity cooking stories from my Grandma and Grandpa Clemmons. Both of them worked and played in Hollywood and both of them loved to cook. Grandma, who once won a Charleston dance contest with William Bendix and was presented a string of pearls by judge Bette Davis, was a fashion sequence model at MGM, appearing briefly in The Women, The Great Ziegfield, and Dracula. Grandpa had studied architecture at University of Michigan but made his real career out of being a "funny man." He was a gag writer for Bing Crosby's radio show and later a script writer and storyman for Walt Disney, listing The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, The Aristocats, The Rescuers, and The Fox and the Hound among his credits.

My mother still recalls the annual holiday dinner parties thrown at their house in Glendale, where the Clemmons family hosted friends and neighbors who didn't have anywhere to go for the holidays. (Unlike today, when we have to deal with "busiest travel day" of the year, people back then just didn't hop on a plane to visit family every time a holiday popped up.) Some of the regulars at these raucous parties included Bill Morrow (Bing Crosby and Jack Benny's head writer) and his various girlfriends, including actress Pat Dane, a boxer named "Society Kid" Hogan, and Bing Crosby himself.

The food was a potluck affair with the guests bringing their favorite dishes and my grandmother taking care of the main course. A few Christmases ago, my mother put together a family cookbook for my two sisters and me and the three of us now have a sampling of some of these recipes as well as the stories. The recipes are, of course, very retro with lots of sour cream and mayonnaise. Clogged arteries aside, however, the recipes are absolute gems.

My favorite story in The Family Moveable Feast is Grandma experiencing a Julia Child moment. While my 80-year-old Great Grandma Mimi entertained the guests by doing the Cakewalk with her daughter Anita at the piano, Grandma was in the kitchen taking care of that year's roast turkey and Bill Morrow was in the kitchen keeping her company and feeding her cocktails. Ready to serve, the big bird was nestled on a platter when it slipped off and plummeted to the floor with a rather juicy smack. Grandma looked at Bill and Bill looked at Grandma. Grandma picked up the bird, brushed it off, and served it and Bill kept his mouth shut.

No one but wedding buffets seem to use chafing dishes any more. I have a lovely chafing dish that was a wedding present, but I'm afraid to take it out and see how tarnished it's become. However, if you do have a chafing dish you're not afraid to use or polish this Thanksgiving, here is one of the more decadent recipes in my family's cookbook.

Chafing Dish Mushrooms

3 pounds fresh mushrooms
1 1/2 cup Amontillado sherry
1/2 cup water
1/2 pound butter
1 fresh bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
1 teaspoon dried dill seed
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 pint sour cream

1. Using a damp paper towel, brush off the mushrooms and trim the ends. Put the mushrooms in a large pot and add all the ingredients, except the sour cream.

2. Cook over medium heat for thirty minutes and until most of the liquid has reduced. Fold in the sour cream and serve in a polished, elegant chafing dish.