A Cook's Book Of Mushrooms: With 100 Recipes For Common And Uncommon Varieties

Plot

Portobello, cremini, shiitake, and enoki mushrooms--and even morels and chanterelles--are showing up in supermarkets and specialty stores these days. Advances in mushroom cultivation have made varieties that were once available only to experienced mushroom hunters now easy for everyone to find, and a number of mail-order sources provide more exotic kinds. But what should a cook do with all these mushroom varieties? How do you bring out their most distinctive characteristics in the kitchen? In "A Cook's Book of Mushrooms," Jack Czarnecki, chef/proprietor of Joe's Restaurant in Reading, Pennsylvania, provides the answers. Czarnecki gives an account of his life-long fascination with mushrooms--hunting them, cooking them, and eating them. He describes the characteristics of the principal edible mushrooms and provides a collection of tasty recipes for using these "wild" mushrooms that are now available commercially, as well as for more exotic mushrooms. Seven chapters cover the major mushroom families--Buttons and Saucers: The Genus "Agaricus"; Aristocrats of the Forest: Morels and Truffles; The King and Lesser Nobility: Cepes and Their Cousins; Flower of Fungus?: Chanterelles; Mushrooms from Wood: The Ultimate Recyclers; From the East: Asian Mushrooms; and The Best of the Rest. The 100 recipes include appetizers, main courses, salads, and even breakfast dishes that use mushrooms in starring and supporting roles, such as Morels with Ruffled Pasta, Wild Mushroom and Onion Soup, Barbecued Oysters and Shiitake Mushrooms, and Salmon with Chanterelles and Red Pepper Puree. The author--whose knowledge of wine rivals his knowledge of mushrooms--includes wine or beer suggestions for most dishes.