Recipes in General, and Deborah Madison's Mushroom Pie in Particular

Those food writers and books about food which feature the most interesting prose do not uniformly offer the finest recipes. When it all comes in one package, there is no greater treat for an obsessive reader and cook. With or without the literary bonus, reliable recipe writers are rare, and friends forever. They are our benefactors, who should not be overlooked, and cannot be overpraised. With their recipes, I can begin cooking something I have never made before, confident that if I do my part, I am unlikely to have an abject failure on my hands. These sources are, well, more precious than rubies, and all that.

Dorie Greenspan, Mirielle Johnson, the Ruth Reichl-edited yellow Gourmet Cookbook, Everyone Eats Well in Belgium, and Please to the Table, for example, are all nearly perfect sources for recipes which have obviously been thoroughly tested, taste good and interesting, and work properly when you follow them. Deborah Madison is another such recipe writer, who specializes in mostly vegetarian fare.

She has a perpetually surprising flair for striking and creative, yet fundamentally simple combinations of flavors, of the sort which make me shake my head and wonder why I could not have thought of them myself. It really is astonishing that she can be so endlessly inventive with food, without resort to gimickry. I mean, people have been eating and cooking for thousands of years, and even the best of new food ideas are generally reworking combinations or techniques of considerable age. To be so original within this framework is truly remarkable.

For many years, I have kept her substantial Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone on the short shelf with The Joy, Maida Heatter, Marcella Hazan, the yellow Gourmet, my notebook of collected recipes, and a few others I consult regularly. And I'm not even a vegetarian- more a vegephile. Recently, I've been having a terrific time, though, cooking from her two most recent, slimer volumes,Vegetarian Suppers and Vegetarian Soups.

Most recently, I made two suppers from the former, with an eye to using two happy Costco finds: a giant ( one pound!) bag of beautiful sliced dried shitakes and a string parcel of five perfect avocados, ripened bruise-free in a bag on my counter. A friend took me as a guest to the Costco near the airport. There is one going up nearby, which will be accessable to the carless-I'm definitely signing up. (Yes, I also got more excellent bargain pinenuts, too.)

The vegetarian suppers were Black Bean Tostadas (coming your way soon), and a delicious mushroom tart. Here's how you make the tart, as adapted. (Of course, my adaptation may render the recipe less reliable-you should have a look at the original, indeed the whole book, anyway. They have it at my library, even in the small downtown branch.):

dried mushrooms (porcinis in original, I used my shitakes, sliced) one cup
dry white wine or sherry 1 cup
9" tart or pie shell
olive oil
butter
large onion, finely diced, one
sliced fresh mushroom, white or brown 1/2 lb.
portabellas, gills removed, 1/2 lb., in thin slices
sea salt
pepper
tomato paste 1 tsp
sprigs fresh parsley, minced 3
sprig of fresh thyme or marjoram, minced, one-or equivalent dried
egg, one
2/3 cup half and half, cream, or mushroom stock

Preheat oven to 425. Boil dried mushrooms in a saucepan with the wine and 1/2 cup water.Turn off the heat. Cover, and soak 30 minutes. Strain. Save liquid.
Meanwhile, freeze the tart shell.
Heat oil and butter in skillet. Cook onion until it begins to color, about 5 minutes. Add fresh mushrooms and some salt. Turn up heat and cook about 10 minutes, stirring. Stir in the tomato paste, and a little soaking liquid. Add dried mushrooms. Cook for about 15 minutes, adding more liquid in small amounts. Add half the herbs, and taste for salt. Add pepper.

Meanhile, blind bake the shell for about 15-20 minutes. Beat egg and cream. Spread mushrooms in the shell, and pour custard over. Bake about 30 minutes, sprinkle with remaining herbs. Serve with a salad and follow with fruit. for a heartier supper, begin with soup. Leftovers make an enviable take along lunch, whether or not you have workplace equipment for reheating.

Note: The gills are removed from the portabellas so that the color of the dish as a whole will be more medium than dark brown. I decided I didn't care about that, but I thought I'd pass it on. I suppose it might be marginally prettier that way, but I think it's pretty nice looking anyhow.

Comments

[Tanna]

We are in perfect aggrement in authors! and D Madison has got to be one of my very favorites; her creativity is stunning at every corner. I find her dishes have tremendous appeal even to the non-vegetarians. That is an excellent recipe.

[catherine Ross]

Deborah Madison is awesome and your pie is beautiful!

[Rebecca]

This looks astonishingly good, and even my meat-loving family might be satisfied with it. Before I read the note I was going to ask about the gill-removing because I had never heard of it; stems, yes, gills, no.

Clearly I'm going to have to check out Deborah Madison, one of the few cookbook authors I've never really had any experience with.

[Julie]

This is the third or fourth post I've read in less than a month praising Deborah Madison. I've had Vegetarian Cooking with Deborah Madison on my wishlist forever but never see it for a bargain price so I've held off buying it. Sounds like it's time to go ahead and buy it anyway.

Apropos of recipes and reliability, sometime in the past couple of weeks I heard someone --and I can't remember who, but perhaps Ruth Reichl on NPR Thanksgiving day -- say that magazine recipes are almost always much more thoroughly tested than book recipes. It surprised me because I've always assumed (based on what I don't know) that book recipes would be the more reliable and better tested of the two.