- 1
Ingredients
- 1 oz dried porcini or cope mushrooms
- 1 c. boiling water
- 1/4 c. olive oil
- 2 tbsp. butter, divided
- 1 1/2 c. diced onion and shallots
- salt and pepper to tase
- 1 1/2 lbs. fresh mushrooms, stems discard and roughly chopped
- 1/2 tsp. dry thyme
- 1/4 c. madeira, marsala or sherry, or 1.2c. white wine
- serve with sieved egg
Preparation
Step 1
Every spring, I promise I’m going to share a recipe for chopped liver. And every year I lose steam, perhaps because there are probably few more divisive foods than organs, or maybe because my instructions on the matter are quite short: just make
But I like this year’s distraction the most, which came from me wondering what a vegetarian chopped liver might entail. The first thing it would need to do is lose the word liver, so not to scare away children of any age. Second, I hoped it would embrace rather humble ingredients like mushrooms that when cooked down to concentrated nubs, pack an unexpectedly fragrant and earthy complexity. And finally, although there are recipes for wild mushroom pâté from one end of the web to the other, I was hoping it would have a Jewish/Eastern European vibe, reminiscent of the promised chopped liver — rich, ample browned onions, making use of hard-boiled eggs, and served on matzo crackers, likely with pickles.
Now, I realize that most of us probably do not have a pâté-shaped hole in our lives. Most of us do not have champagne and melba toast happy hours on the reg; this isn’t
Heathers
). Today, it’s going to reinvent itself as a sandwich spread, maybe with sliced hard-boiled eggs or just lettuce and goat cheese. I could imagine stirring it into a simple risotto at the end, folding it into a breakfast crêpe, or dolloping it on a white three-cheese pizza right before baking.
And while, if all goes well, you’re basically going to end up with the home cook’s dread — a mound of brown food — I couldn’t help but notice that there’s something decidedly spring-like about it. It looks like, well, potted dirt, with some hopeful sprigs of weeds, tufts of yellow mimosas, pinkish rings of pickled shallot. I’ll take it.
Mixed Berry Pavlova
I used a mix of mostly cremini (baby bella or brown) mushrooms, plus oyster and chanterelle. Use whatever mushrooms you can find that you like the flavor of, or, feel free to use just brown mushrooms; you’ll still get a lot of flavor. This is a flexible recipe; you’ll probably be just fine if you don’t have any dried porcini or cepe, although I do love the extra oomph of flavor here. If you need to skip the alcohol, the pocini stock alone should give you enough flavor that you might not miss it terribly. But, of course, we liked this best as written below.
Yield: 2 cups pâté
1 cup boiling water
1 1/2 pounds mixed fresh mushrooms, any tough stems discarded and roughly chopped
To serve
Crackers or matzo, sieved hard-boiled egg, chopped flat-leaf parsley and/or chives, small pickles or cornichons, additional caramelized onions or pickled shallots or red onions (recipe below)
Combine dried mushrooms and boiling water in a small bowl and let soak for 30 minutes. Remove mushrooms, finely chop and set aside. Strain soaking liquid through a paper towel or coffee filter to remove any grit and set it aside.
Heat olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter over medium-high heat. Add onions and shallots, if using, and cook for 7 to 8 minutes, until they brown at the edges. Raise heat to high and add fresh mushrooms, thyme, salt and pepper. Cook, sauteeing, until mushrooms brown further and release their liquid. Cook until all of the liquid has evaporated, then add Madeira, Marsala, sherry or wine and do the same. Add rehydrated mushrooms and their soaking liquid, and cook this almost completely off. No liquid should run into the center if you drag your spoon through the mushrooms, clearing a path. Adjust seasonings to taste — seasoning is
here — then stir in last tablespoon of butter.
Let mixture cool to lukewarm, then blend in a food processor or blender until desired consistency — I like mine
Serve with crackers and garnishes of your choice. To make an egg “mimosa”, peel a fully cooled hard-boiled egg. I like to cut mine into quarters and press each quarter, yolk side down, through a fine-mesh sieve until the flecks of egg fall decoratively on top. To pickle red onions or shallots, combine 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, 1/4 cup cold water, 1 tablespoon kosher salt and 1 tablespoon granulated sugar in a jar. Add thinly sliced onion or shallot and cover with lid; let pickle in fridge ideally for at least an hour. Pickled onions will keep for two weeks in the fridge.
eggs in purgatory, puttanesca-style