Living any portion of your life online increases the likelihood of the digital jump scare: spotting an ex on a dating app, say, or receiving a LinkedIn invitation from a childhood nemesis. But neither compares to the minefield that is Facebook and Instagram’s “On This Day” feature, which highlights old posts. Remember the heartbreak? The vacation that ended in food poisoning? The time you bleached your own bangs?
This week, “On This Day” transported me to 2020 — the day after the pandemic was declared, specifically. That feels like a different lifetime. That feels like yesterday.
It can be jarring to clock time’s hurried march when we are less than prepared for it. So when a nice memory pops up, I savor it. Like the one of an old apartment I adored, or the one served to me Monday, of some mushroom tacos I posted two years ago. Then came a different kind of jump scare: I haven’t written a Mushroom Week Veggie in two years.
On this day, we remedy that, with many different mushrooms.
Frilly maitake (or hen-of-the-woods) may be my favorite mushrooms to cook with, their edges becoming crisp and lacy when pressed against a hot skillet. Now imagine those browned bits beneath a blanket of piquant au poivre sauce, à la the maitake au poivre from Cafe Chelsea in Manhattan. Actually, you don’t have to just imagine, since Florence Fabricant’s procured the recipe.
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That’s food fit for partying, if I’ve ever seen some. Fit for a quieter night might be Hetty’s one-pot mushroom and ginger rice, gentle with velveted mushrooms that stay plump, but with bits of crispy rice to keep things lively. Velveting, or dusting with a bit of cornstarch, is usually reserved for meat and seafood, but this recipe shows it’s a worthwhile technique for keeping vegetables silken even after ample cooking.
Fresh mushrooms may get the majority of today’s word count, but dried mushrooms should get the majority of tomorrow’s dinner plans. With them, you get the best of both worlds: a compact, shelf-stable ingredient that is only 10 minutes and some boiling water away from the supple mushrooms you know and love. Ixta Belfrage uses them as a shortcut to this luxurious porcini ragù, adapted by Ligaya Mishan. In just 45 minutes, you’ll be transported — not by Instagram, but by recipe — to a restaurant atop a Tuscan hill.
Porcini Ragù
View this recipe.
One More Thing!
What’s stinky, fussy and $800 a pound? That, too, would be a mushroom. Pete Wells took off to Eugene, Ore., to join a cadre of humans (and some very good dogs) on the hunt for truffles, “as evocative of the region as morels and blackberries.”
“Wild-mushroom brokers buy them at trading posts in the woods that can take on the atmosphere of mining camps in a gold rush,” Pete writes. Rush to read that, and I’ll see you next week.