Brie with Mushrooms

Connie accuses me of never following a recipe.  I say never say never.  LOL In all honesty, I rarely follow a recipe as written.  Either I have an ingredient I want to use up so I substitute or I just use the recipe as a suggestion and fill in the blanks myself.  That’s what happened with a recipe in Chef Recipes Made Easy.  It was for camembert with a wild mushroom fricassee.  It sounded wonderful but I had a wheel of brie and not one of camembert.  And, I just had a box of cremini mushrooms, not all kinds of fun, wild mushrooms.  And, last but certainly not least, it was going to be dinner along with a lovely bowl of room temperature ratatouille.  That meant if I was to use the sage and walnuts, I’d be introducing a totally different herb.  Fine.  A recipe had totally become a suggestion.   

What did we think?  WOW!  This was an incredible dish.  In fact, it was so good that I made it again a few days later for a pitch in.   

Ingredients: 

Wheel of brie (I used a 21oz wheel from Costco) 

2 T butter 

12 oz very thinly sliced cremini mushrooms 

1 shallot, minced 

¼ c prosecco, dry sherry or dry white wine 

1 large sprig rosemary 

½ c chopped pecans 

Pecan oil 

baguette 

 

Directions: 

Preheat your oven to 350.  Put the brie in a tart pan.  This is what you’re going to serve it in also.  Melt the butter in a medium skillet.  When it’s foaming add the mushrooms and shallot and saute until they’re well softened and the pan is relatively dry.  Remove the pan from the heat and pour in the alcohol.  Put the pan back on the heat and add in the rosemary sprig.  I tucked it under the mushrooms.  Stir regularly.  Once the pan is again almost dry, add in the pecans and heat through.  Pour the mushroom mixture over the brie and put the tart pan in the oven.  Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes.  After I took this out of the oven I drizzled it with pecan oil.  Really any nut oil should work.  Serve with baguette or sourdough toasts or party rye or whatever you please.   

 

Adapted from Chef Recipes Made Easy 

 

Palomino's Portabella Mushroom Soup and Chop Chop Salad with Garlic Bread

BC used to be Before Connie in our home.  Now it's also Before Covid.  Before our lives got upended.  We had season tickets to six different theatres in Indy and Carmel.  Had being the operative word.  When we went to IRT - which is Indiana Repertory Theatre - we stopped at Palomino's for dinner.  We ate in the bar and always had their Portobello mushroom soup and their Chop Chop Salad.  Now, not only are we not going to the theatre but Palomino is closed.  Permanently.  Makes me sad every time I walk by.  And, I really missed that soup and salad.  

Now, as luck would have it, for many years WTHR and Marsh put out an annual cookbook at Christmas.  It's a long story, but thanks to my friend, Lisa, I own all the copies.  Ok, the short version.  I was missing one year.  Lisa's wonderful mom died.  She came into town to clean out her condo.  All her friends were invited to come over and say hi.  Of course we did.  She tells me I must take something.  Wound up taking a bowl and a pitcher.  Navy blue with sunflowers.  That bowl is my FAVORITE bowl.  I love it!  And, best of all, I think of Lisa and Jan when I use it.  So, I asked about cookbooks.  Connie rolled his eyes.  I have plenty.  Jan had about a dozen cookbooks.  And, there it was, the missing WTHR/Marsh cookbook.  It too has become one of my favorites.  

Back to Palomino.  One of the recipes in the 2008 cookbook is their Chop Chop Salad.  I made it in 2008 and hadn't made it since.  On to the internet for the soup recipe.  SCORE!  It's on Epicurious.  But, they always served bread with our soup and salad.  Ina Garten's new cookbook has an outrageous garlic bread recipe that had my name written all over it.  Good to go.  

There's a lot of chopping and a lot of steps here for all three recipes.  It's not a 20 minute meal.  Not by a long shot.  But, it's worth all the time you put into it!  We gave the soup and the garlic bread a five and the salad a four.  But, it was almost a five!  Now, keep in mind that Connie is NOT fond of soup.  And, he loves this!

Palomino Portobello Mushroom Soup

Ingredients:

2/3 c unsalted butter

8 oz leeks, white and green, cross sliced at 1/4"

8 oz yellow, onion, diced

8 oz portobello mushroom caps, chopped (I used three big shitakes)

12 oz cremini mushrooms, chopped

5 oz AP flour (I used 1/4 c)

6 oz chicken stock

2 oz dry sherry

1 qt heavy cream

1/4 t cayenne pepper

1/4 oz kosher salt

 

Directions

Melt half of the butter in a stock pot or dutch oven.  Add the leeks and onions and cook for about five minutes or until the onions are translucent

Add the chopped mushrooms and cook for about 5-10 minutes or until they're tender

Add the cream, sherry, cayenne and salt and let it simmer

While you're cooking the mushroom mixture, melt the rest of the butter in a saucepan.  Add the flour and cook it for a few minutes.  Whisk in the chicken stock slowly.  Then, let that simmer for half an hour.  

Take about a quarter of a cup of the warm cream from the mushroom mixture and stir it slowly into the roux.  Then, add another and another until you have a cream sauce that can be poured into the mushroom mixture.  

Let the soup simmer for 15 minutes.  You can serve it topped with some more sherry.  

adapted from Epicurious

Palomino Chop-Chop Salad

Ingredients:

Balsamic Vinegar Dressing

2 egg yolks

2 c extra virgin olive oil

3/4 c balsamic vinegar

3 cloves finely mince garlic (I used roasted garlic)

3/4 t kosher salt

1/4 t freshly ground black pepper

Salad

3 c julienned romaine greens

1 T julienned fresh basil

2 T provolone cheese, cut into 1/4" cubes

3 T grated Parmesan plus more for serving

1 T garbanzo beans

2 T julienned wine salami (I used genoa)

1/4 c julienned smoked turkey breast (I used turkey deli meat)

2 oz diced tomato

ground black pepper

Directions:  

Palomino tosses this and serves it that way.  I did mine like a cobb salad, then tossed it once it got to the table.  To make the dressing, you whip the egg yolks then slowly drizzle in the olive oil followed by the vinegar.  Then, mix in the garlic and the salt and  pepper.  This will make dressing for about six of the salads.

adapted from The Sunrise Cookbook, 2008

Outrageous Garlic Bread

Ingredients

12 T unsalted butter

1 head garlic, cloves separated and peeled (I'd roasted garlic so I just squeezed the cloves out of one of the heads)

1 c freshly grated Parmesan

2 T minced fresh parsley

2 t lemon zest

1/4 t crushed red pepper flakes

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 20-24" long crusty baguette (I used an Italian loaf)

fleur de sel or sea salt

Directions:

You'll need to bake this at 450 so preheat your oven

You can handle the garlic one of two ways.  Ina calls for melting the butter and slowly cooking the cloves for 20 minutes.  I slice the top off a head of garlic, drizzled it with olive oil, put it in an ovenproof dish and baked it for an hour at 300.  Then, once the butter was melted,  I just squeezed the head of garlic and all the cloves popped out, nicely roasted.  At that point I added the parmesan, parsley, zest, pepper flakes and salt and pepper and let it simmer for about 10 minutes,

Next, you prep your bread.  Cut it in half lengthwise.  Put the halves on a half sheet or in a 9x13 pan.  Something to catch the drips of butter.  Because there will be drips of butter!  Then, score the bread into serving pieces but don't cut all the way through the loaf.

Slather the bread with the butter mixture.  Bake it for 5-7 minutes.  You want the top to be bubbling and a little brown.  

adapted from Modern Comfort Food by Ina Garten

 

Pasta with Mushroom Cream Sauce

Spring and the flu.  Not a fun combo.  The flu isn't fun whenever you have it.  But, at least in the winter you can totally hibernate under the covers.  Spring's a bit too warm for that.  At first I thought maybe I had listeria from a blue cheese we inhaled and THEN found out was recalled.  But, then Connie got sick just as I was improving.  So, who knows what it really was.  At this point what matters is that we're both feeling better.  No more banana and water days.  We were ready for a real meal.  Nothing spicy.  Nothing fancy.  Just some nice tortellini and mushroom sauce.  I've never been big on the white sauces.  Tomatoes are my addiction.  Yes, my dirty little secret is that if I need to work late on the evenings that Connie plays bridge, he goes through the drive-up window and I sit down in my chair with a jar of Trader Joe's Arrabiata sauce and a spoon.  Seriously.  That's only about once a quarter but it's often enough to scratch that particular itch as my father would have said.  Needless to say, tomato sauce didn't sound good to Connie.  He'd graduated to chicken broth for lunch but this was going to be his first real meal.  So, I created a white sauce.  I used what was easily accessible and not what was the least for the old calorie count.  The good news is that it made about six servings of sauce...

Mushroom Cream Sauce

Ingredients:

2 T butter
2 T flour
8 oz white wine
4 oz cream cheese
1 c cream (or you can substitute broth, water, lowfat milk... to lower the calorie count)
2 g grated gruyere
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 T olive oil

Directions:

Saute the mushrooms in the olive oil while you're making the sauce.  Melt the butter.  Stir in the flour.  Cook for a few minutes until it's lightly browned.  Slowly whisk in the wine.  Reduce the heat to low.  Add the cream cheese and allow it to melt in.  Stir in the gruyere then the mushrooms.  Serve with your choice of pasta sauce. 

So, that was dinner.  And, it tasted pretty darned good.  We've been on a kick of using the Food52 Genius Recipes cookbook.  It's actually pretty good.  I'm not a huge fan of their site because I find it clunky.  There are too many bloggers with fabulous and easy to use sites for me to deal with one that's clunky.  Two other examples of clunky (in my book) are Food Network and Martha Stewart.  Either they take a ton of clicks to get where you want to go or  they don't easily get you back when you finish with a recipe.  With me it's easy to get to or I'm on to something else.  In spite of that, when we both picked up the same cookbook at Costco to look at, I figured I'd give it a try.  The first recipe was Connie's to claim:  granola.  It was (and is) amazing. 

Then, I tried a butternut squash salad with kale.  It fell flat.  I wound up sautéing everything the next evening to rescue it.  Then, there was a very simple green lentil salad.  I made MUCH less than it called for but we wound up with green lentils in what felt like everything for a week.  That was ok because they were fabulous.  I'd never used anything but the larger brown lentils.  Now, I'm officially hooked on the green ones!  And, there were pork burgers with roasted red bell pepper sauce.  YUM!

The other fun happening was a trip to Columbus to celebrate Rosie's 6th birthday.  We got to watch both kids play hockey.  And, we made some killer strawberry buttermilk ice cream from the Jeni's book.  Unfortunately, I never got photos taken...  Here are a couple of photos from the weekend:

Mushroom Lasagna Rolls

Moving has been a challenge.  First, Comcast disconnected us on the date we'd agreed to.  That was after the first rep did NOTHING  that we'd agreed to.  Then, they sent a technician who obviously wanted to go home.  He told us we had no service and it'd be 30-60 days before they could come dig a new line under the driveway.  Ummm, what was it about the previous owners having had Comcast FOUR days earlier????  A week later they sent another guy.  Orlando.  He was a gem.  Even if he was 2.5 hours late.  He got us set up.  Then, we had no computer cables.  Turns out Connie had put everything we needed in a box.  A box that the movers picked up and moved with the other 400 boxes.  One that ended up at the bottom of a mountain of boxes.  So, even though we finally had internet, we had no computers.  Finally a few days ago, Mark our computer guy, cobbled together enough stuff from leftovers at the office that we had the ability to log on to the internet.  But, our main computer was and still is not up and running. 

I spent the first week at the new house trying to direct traffic while the pantry was rebuilt, the fence was installed, the heating and cooling was replaced...  One day I counted eight different service folks in and out of the house.  I was trying to unpack the kitchen so we could at least quit eating carryout.  That was marginally successful.  Connie spent that week at the old house trying to get it ready to list.  He succeeded wonderfully.  It looks awesome.  Now, if it would only sell. 

The second week we came back to the office.  To a week full of meetings for me.  Wednesday afternoon I couldn't load my imaging retriever.  Russell  on the help desk did all he could.  Thursday morning Mark was due at the house to do the cobbling together.  I called him and said please come by the office first and resolve this issue.  Two hours later and he said it looked like Windows had crashed and needed to be reinstalled.  Oh, joy.  That meant the rest of Thursday and Friday were gone.  All of my appointments those days were to be via GoToMeeting and I didn't have a computer to use.  He got everything restored by Saturday.  Well, except email.  I originally had 85 emails in my inbox.  Once the system restored I had about 15,000.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I was not amused.  These were all emails that'd been carefully stored in the right folders over the years.  Now, they'd come back to the inbox.  The same thing happened with my outbox.  And, none of my business email addresses were coming through.  The one I use the most just made some changes to their CRM so we are dealing with wait times in the 20-25 minute range.  So, what to do while holding???  Write a blog!  That is write a blog after I spent 15 minutes trying to get logged in to Blogger...  Seems that since I always log in from home this computer doesn't want to cooperate!

Before we moved, I had all of my pastas and grains happily stored in plastic containers.  They were wonderfully convenient.  Now, they're in a box somewhere.  I'm missing the dessert plates and coffee mugs with the flowers too.  There's a big space in the attorney's bookcase where those go.  Means there are two boxes of that missing.  Connie found one of them last night.  YAY!  It's the small things that really make me happy right now.  So, the only pasta I had was lasagna.  Once I'd moved everything from one freezer to the next, I decided I HAD to work on using up some of the stuff I'd frozen eons ago.  Mushroom pesto was at the top of the list.  Now, you could very easily substitute some very finely chopped mushrooms sautéed with some garlic, olive oil and truffle oil.  But, I had this:  mushroom pesto.   And, I had cottage cheese and gruyere cheese.  And, I'd finally found a cheese grater.  Not our everyday one, but one that would work.  And, I had a jar of pasta sauce and some cream.  We were in business!   For a clean out the kitchen meal this was amazingly good!  It's one that is so easy for a weeknight yet tastes elegant enough for company.

Mushroom Lasagna Rollups

Ingredients

6 lasagna noodles
1/4 c mushroom pesto (or an equal amount of very finely chopped mushrooms sautéed with garlic, olive oil and truffle oil)
1 c small curd (NOT lowfat) cottage cheese
1 c coarsely grated gruyere cheese
16 oz jar Arrabiata pasta sauce (we use Trader Joes)
1/2 c cream
1 c coarsely grated gruyere cheese

Directions:

Cook the lasagna noodles for about a minute less than the instructions call for.  Mix the cottage cheese, mushrooms and one cup of the grated gruyere.  Schmear that on the lasagna noodles and roll them up.  Put them in a baking dish seam side down.  Mix the pasta sauce and the cream and pour it over the lasagna rolls.  Top with the other cup of the grated gruyere.  Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.

Mushroom Bread Pudding and Pork with Port Wine and Cherry Sauce

There are a lot of blogs I love to visit.  I really could care less about the photography.  Just give me some good recipes.  And, tell me a great story.  Three of the bloggers are really special to me.  Liz at That Skinny Chick Can Bake, Christiane at The Mom Chef and Debra at Eliots Eats.  Now, I don't very often leave messages when I visit their blogs.  My bad.  But, I do love their stories and their recipes.  Tonight was a trifecta.  I finished up Split Pea Soup for lunch tomorrow, courtesy of Christiane.  Our salad was dressed with a fabulous Honey French Dressing from Debra.  The color was so gorgeous that I had to pour it into a glass and take a photo. 

One of the best parts of the dressing?  The honey from our friends John and Jackie.  It's positively amazing!!

And, our dessert?  My favorite Mounds Bars from Liz.  Ahhhh, you know what?  It just doesn't get much better than this! 

Yes, we did have something other than salad for dinner.  I'd found a mushroom bread pudding in the Tasting Along the Wine Road Cookbook.  Had to try it.  OMG!  It was a five.  I'm going to be surprised if all of it is still there tomorrow evening.  My guess is that Connie will make a midnight run on the bread pudding.  Then, there was the pork special.  Yes, you read that correctly.  We really do try to cut down on meat.  So, I cut a pork special in half and pounded it and made a port wine and dried cherry sauce that was pretty darned good. 

The other thing that made our dinner tonight fabulous was our wine glasses.  A couple of months ago we went to a Reidel class at one of our local liquor stores.  And, we each left with a Pinot Noir, Syrah and Cab glass.  And, yes, there is a BIG difference between how the wines taste in the various glasses.  Connie chose a Pinot Noir for dinner tonight,  It was perfect.  I particularly enjoyed the I Love You I got in sign language as I was taking the photo :-)

Savory Wild Mushroom Bread Pudding

Ingredients:

2 T unsalted butter, melted
1 lb mixed wild mushrooms, chopped
2 large eggs
1/2 c milk (I used 2%, the recipe called for whole)
1/2 c cream
1 t kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 lb brioche or challah loaf
2 oz Gruyere cheese, grated
1 sprig thyme leaves or 1/2 t dried thyme
1/4 c finely grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Saute the mushrooms in the butter until they're lightly browned. 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, milk and cream  Add in the salt and pepper, bread, Gruyere and sautéed mushrooms.  Allow to sit for 30 minutes.  Spread the bread pudding in a lightly butter baking dish.  Top with the parmesan.  Bake for 30 min at 400F.

Pork Specials with Port Wine and Dried Cherry Sauce

Ingredients:

pork special, cut in half and pounded to about 1/4" thick
salt and pepper
light olive oil or canola oil
1/4 c port wine
1/4 c dried cherries
1 T grainy mustard
1/2 t dried thyme
1 T butter

Directions:

Soak the cherries in the port. 

Pound the pork to about 1/4" thick.  Salt and pepper it.  Heat the olive oil to shimmering in a small skillet.  Add the pork and cook on both sides until lightly browned. 

Remove the pork from the skillet. Put it on a plate and tent it with foil to keep it warm.  Add the port and cherries to the skillet. 

Stir until the port is reduced by half.  Add the thyme, mustard and butter.  Cook until slightly thickened.  Serve over the pork

Whew!

Here's where to find the split pea soup and honey French dressing and Mounds Bars recipes;

Split pea soup

Honey French dressing

Mounds Bars
 

Strawberry Salsa

My new guy, Wee Mac Connelly, is a comedian.  He's also an acrobat.  And, he would just love it if that darned screen wasn't there so he could get some of those flying cat snacks.  Alas, he's an inside kitty.

 

Mr. Wee Mac just turned a year old.  So, he's turning into a cat.  A very curious cat - lol.  That's one of the reasons he has an invisible fence in the house.  He's a tad too curious!

Tonight, we had almost the same dinner we had last night.  We've been getting home later than normal so I've been enjoying freezer food and leftovers.  Oh, and morel mushrooms.  It's been a lousy season for morels.  The Mansfield Mushroom Festival was a bust.  Since then I've been calling all the usual suspects asking if they had morels.  Nope.  Not until yesterday.  Locally Grown Gardens.  Even better, they're about 10 minutes from the office.  AND, the morels were less expensive than other places said they'd be.  Such a deal. 

Most folks think they're best breaded and fried.  Not us.  We just give them a good dunk in cold water, dry them a bit and brown them in butter.  They get nice and brown and a bit crispy about the time the liquid cooks off.  Then, I turn them and brown them on the other side.  A good grind of salt when they're served and it's nirvana!

So, last night we had leftover green beans.  They were leftover from Monday when a fund company had one of their analysts in town to chat with some of us.  They took us to one of my favorite steakhouses.  Not being one to waste that kind of thing I brought home not only my leftover steak but the table's leftover green beans. Tonight I had to come up with Plan B.

Actually, it was a pretty easy choice.  I had two huge clamshells of strawberries in the fridge.  Our family birthday, Mother's Day party was supposed to be Sunday.  Then, Connie and I found out our annual broker/dealer audit is Tuesday and my brother, John, found out he's due at a meeting Monday morning - in Delaware.  My sister-in-law, Pam, was a gem and rescheduled the party.  Now, I'll actually have time to make my contributions:  pulled pork, strawberry salsa, three bean salad, strawberry torte and rhubarb cream pie.  Now, you see why the plethora of strawberries, don't you?

I told Mom the other day that we'd made the BEST salsa out of strawberries.  You know that sound that someone makes on the phone that just translates as, "You are officially nuts but I am being polite and not saying so."  Yeah, that's what she did.  Fortunately, she's going to have the opportunity to realize how wrong she is.  Because this is seriously wonderful stuff.  If you've read this blog for long you know Connie isn't fond of fruit.  He eats it because I serve it to him.  And grumbles the WHOLE way.  Not about this. 

This is a recipe I found in Rachael Ray's magazine.  And, I couldn't get it out of my mind.  So, a few days ago I made a batch.  Connie inhaled his before I'd even tried mine.  I then inhaled mine.  Time for a second batch...

Strawberry Salsa

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c strawberries, cored and chopped
1/2 c peeled and chopped cucumber
1 small jalapeno, finely minced
1/4 c sweet white onion, finely diced
1 T lime juice
1 t honey

Directions:

Mix all the ingredients and allow them to sit at room temperature for 20-30 minutes before serving.  Serve as is or with chips or over chicken, fish...

adapted from Everyday with Rachael Ray

Old Favorites and A Newbie

Cooking time has been short for the last few weeks.  Connie played in a bridge tournament so was gone for three evenings.  There was a wine tasting dinner.  A couple of business related functions.  A couple of social things.  We'd not been to the grocery for two if not three weeks.  My refrigerator was about as empty as it gets.  Apples, some straggly carrots, a head of romaine, a box of mushrooms and a couple of ribs of celery that'd seen better days. 

Friday night Connie was playing his last game of the tournament.  I got an email from my dear friend Sue letting me know that she and Doug were going to be in Indy Friday evening.  Would we like to go out to dinner?  Of course I'd love to!  I got home a few minutes before their scheduled arrival.  They are fellow sushi lovers so I had high hopes that we'd head up the street to our favorite sushi restaurant - Tomo.  Then, they walked in the door and it dawned on me.  They'd left Florida several weeks ago and driven to California and now back to Indiana.  They'd eaten out for too many meals to count.  So, my first question was eat here or out?  Sue's eyes lit up and she said home cooking would be wonderful!

Off to the freezer I went.  What would thaw relatively quickly and be easy to cook?  Pork tenderloin would do nicely.  Then, I reached for a sweet potato.  Ummm, no.  It'd seen better days.  Better days a long time ago.  Into the compost bin it went.  Jane's Rice.  It's a pantry staple and SO easy.  A salad with apples and blue cheese and a mustard vinaigrette.  Then, our favorite new sauteed mushrooms.

New sauteed mushrooms?  How in the world do you improve on a knob of butter and a bit of garlic and maybe a splash of wine in your sauteed mushrooms?  You go to Epicurious and find Gourmet's old recipe published in 1999.  It was probably a Cooks Illustrated where I'd read the article about the best sauteed mushrooms.  Remembering the password for that site wasn't happening.  So, I hopped on Epicurious.  And, we tried these mushrooms.  And I declared I'd never again make plain sauteed mushrooms. 

I now had a plan for dinner.  Thaw the pork.  Slather it with Andria's Steak Sauce.  (Here's a link to my post about Andria's.) Grill it.  Make Jane's Rice and sauteed mushrooms.  Toss a salad.  Serve with red wine.  Best of all?  We have leftovers for Monday's lunch!

Saturday morning the four of us were off to our favorite breakfast hole-in-the-wall, Keystone Deli.  As usual, Connie and I both ordered the smokehouse breakfast and didn't touch our extra crispy home fries.  Those are for blue cheese potato salad for dinner tonight and lunch on Tuesday... 

Tonight we're trying Tuscan Ribs from a new cookbook.  They're slathered in this incredible rub and soaking it up in the fridge.  The blue cheese potato salad should be perfect with them.

Saturday late afternoon we headed to Costco and Marsh.  We were in the liquor aisle (shocking, I know) and we both looked at the Tanqueray.  Did we need some or not?  A couple walking by joined in the merriment of what's the worst that could happen?  We'd have TWO bottles instead of one.  We started talking about good drinks and Donna told us about one they make called a Calypso Cooler.  Neither of us could remember the measurements but Connie did a fine job of making a wonderful drink!  Connie promises he's going to get caught up on his drink posts.  I'm not going to make the same promise about all of my recipe posts...  That'd take more hours than I've got these days!

Back to Costco:  While we were there, Connie picked up a bag of fresh artichokes.  Now, I love artichoke hearts and artichoke bottoms.  But, fresh artichokes always feel like a lot of work for very little reward.  But, Connie wanted to try them so we did.  I pulled out my go-to vegetable cookbook - Greene on Greens and looked at a couple of other cookbooks and decided I'd poach them in water, lemon juice, white wine, crushed red pepper and peppercorns.  Then, I was on to the dipping sauce.  Garlic butter didn't appeal.  Green tapenade did.  Another Bert Greene recipe.  But, this time from The Store coobook. 

Along with the artichokes, we had another new recipe.  But, you'll have to come back to see that since it's my Secret Recipe post for the 18th.


So, are you ready for a recipe??

Sauteed Mushrooms

Ingredients:

1 T fresh lemon juice
1/2 T soy sauce
1 t sugar
2 T olive oil
10 oz mushrooms, quartered (I used cremini)
1 T unsalted butter
1 garlic clove, minced

Directions:

Mix the lemon juice, soy sauce and sugar and set aside.  Pour the olive oil into a 10-12" skillet.  Heat it to shimmering.  Add the mushrooms and saute until they're nice and brown.  That'll take 5-10 minutes.  Add the butter and garlic and stir well. 

Once the butter is absorbed, add the lemon juice mixture.  Stir well.  Allow to cook for a few minutes so the liquid is absorbed.

adapted from Gourmet via Epicurious