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Clown Meat

I’m not really sure how to react to this one. Who knew that old retired clowns are processed and turned into deli meat? What will those Brits think of next?

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Shroomin’

Some of you may remember an incident last year where we found a mushroom growing in our bathtub. While a bit disturbing and a lot funny, I never held anything against our fine fungi friends. I love shrooms, and they tend to show up a lot of various pasta and risotto dishes in our house. They also used to appear in a spicy Thai soup that we used to make, but some strange chemical reaction between cooked fish sauce and shitake mushrooms caused some violent stomach issues that are best left untold. We’re a little more careful with our mushroom selection and a lot better about keeping our bathtub fungus free, and at this time of the year especially, I love using them.

This pasta dish is so simple to make, and it gets its mushroom flavor from three different sources: fresh oyster mushrooms, rehydrated porcini mushrooms, and black truffle oil. Fresh porcini mushrooms are incredibly expensive, so the most common way to find them is dried. A package of 0.25 oz. of them costs about $3 (which translates to, um, $192/lb.), but even this small amount makes a huge difference. Simply put them in a bowl with hot water, and after about 10 minutes, they’re completely rehydrated. Whatever you do, don’t throw out the water that they’re soaking in. It gets a nice rich brown color and takes on all of that expensive porcini flavor. No need to waste it.

Get a pan nice and hot, add in a good glug of olive oil, and add a couple of handfuls of oyster mushrooms, They mushrooms will soak up a lot of the oil, so be careful they they don’t start sticking. Add a clove of chopped garlic, a pinch of fresh thyme, and salt and pepper. The salt will start to draw the moisture out of the mushrooms, and the flavor of them will begin to concentrate. After the moisture has boiled off, add a splash of white wine to deglaze the pan. Make sure that you scrape up any of the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add in the chopped porcini mushrooms and some of the porcini water, and let the liquid reduce a bit. In the end, you want the mushrooms to be fully cooked and a nice flavorful sauce for the pasta to soak up. If it needs more flavor, don’t be afraid to add more salt and more of the porcini water. Finally, toss in some chopped parsley and little more fresh thyme.

Get your pasta ready, and add it to the pan with the mushrooms. Toss the pasta with the sauce making sure that every bit of the pasta is covered. A healthy drizzle of good olive oil and a shower of Parmesan, and one more toss, you’re all set. Almost. Nothing gives you the aroma and taste that truffles do. One of the most prized and expensive of all gourmet ingredients, truffles are off limits to most mere mortals. If you happen to have a nice fresh $1000 truffle lying around, feel free to shower your pasta with shavings of it. For the rest of us, the closest we’ll come at home is to use truffle oil. Truffles come in two varieties, white and black, with white being the more expensive of the two. White truffle oil is still incredibly expensive, but at least accessible for those willing to shell out the cash for it. Black truffle oil is much more reasonably priced, and although it can’t compare to the intensity of the white, it will does great things to your home cooked meal. My good buddy Alberto brought me back a bottle of black truffle oil from his visit to Italy, and this was our first opportunity to use it. The key here is restraint. A little goes a very long way, and a little drizzle right at the very end will take this dish to a very different place. A very good place. Maybe if we let things go a little bit around the house, we’ll start getting truffles growing in our bathtub.

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