Books

How To Love a Mushroom and Eat It, Too

A Cook’s Book of Mushrooms: With 100 Recipes for Common and Uncommon Varieties was written by Joe Czarnecki, who is the third-generation chief proprietor of Joe’s Restaurant in Reading, PA. He’s had a lifelong fascination with mushrooms, and it shows throughout his writing. He begins his cookbook with a bit of sage advice for all mushroom aficionados regarding treatment of fresh, dried, canned, and frozen mushrooms. Then, he launches into a little story about his guilt over spotting a large patch of Agaricus in the wild as he was driving down a road…after all, part of the hunt is the disappointment of dark descending with no mushrooms in the basket, right?

I find mushroom hunters fascinating - not because they’re a “breed apart” so much as how they are transformed in the presence of their mushroom obsessions. Czarnecki is a mushroom romantic. He knows mushrooms inside out, and he loves them in spite of their faults. You’ll find little love stories and notes attached to various mushrooms throughout this book. Czarnecki writes: “There is a special feeling when you are in the woods looking for mushrooms while it is still pouring [rain]. I feel as if I am catching mushrooms in the process of being born.”

Czarnecki’s parents were mushroom hunters, and he recalls stories about how he learned to love wild mushrooms as a child. Not all his experiences were pleasant. He doesn’t wimp on describing the tiresome work involved with preserving the precious finds. After many years of a sore back and a bored mind developed during the tedious task of cleaning tubs full of mushrooms, Czarnecki experienced an epiphany:

I began peering down at the individual mushrooms I was cleaning and began noticing things, like how different they were from one another or how the slightly viscous caps of the mushrooms would feel pleasantly slippery in my fingers like shiny little bald heads of wood elfins. Then I would get a small twinge of satisfaction as I transformed each one from a crummy urchin into a cleaned and spiffy-looking dandy ready for the most aristocratic of dishes.

If that doesn’t sound like a man in love…or at least like Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady” when he sees Eliza Doolittle for the first time…

The historical and mycological facts in the book are for beginners, and they’re sound and easy to remember with Czarnecki’s writing style. There’s nothing “beginner” about the recipes, however. These are topnotch dishes, and Louis B. Wallach’s photography doesn’t hurt anything…except, perhaps, the need for immediate gratification. This is a coffee-table book in some respects, as it would be a shame to drip juice from a dish containing salmon, chantarelles, and red pepper puree on the pages. You wouldn’t want to smear painted portobellos in puff pastry on the pages, nor would you want to drop the Medallions of Lamb en Croute with Morel Duxelles and Glace de Morille on the floor while you were entranced with one of Czarnecki’s many stories.

He likes to sauté his truffles with smoked meats or garlic and onions. The morels “have an earthy flavor that reminds me of sweet peppers and caraways…” One of his uses for the dried black chanterelle is to use the water from the reconstituted mushroom as a sauce for fish, as it “yields a dark, satiny liquid that looks gorgeous…” But, don’t worry if you don’t have all the ingredients for these dishes - just go for it, and realize what you’ll miss in the final taste. Most of the dishes are simplistic in preparation, but each ingredient adds its own little personality to the final product. Czanecki is lenient in some respects, but firm in his command in others on the ingredients. For instance, you can substitute any of the firmer fresh mushrooms for the Hen-of-the-Woods with Calamari and Chile Oil on Wet Sesame Rice, but “Use only fresh tomatoes in season, preferably from your own garden” for the Tomato Soup with Rosemary and Oyster Mushrooms.

What the heck. I know most of you will play with the recipes anyway - and A Cook’s Book of Mushrooms: With 100 Recipes for Common and Uncommon Varieties will give you plenty to play with in a very classy way. Have fun and enjoy!

Joe’s Restaurant is listed in The Wineman Best Restaurant Guide. You can find them at Joe’s Restaurant, 450 South Seventh Street, Reading, PA, 19602.

© 2006 FUNGIFEST.