Dangerous Beauty

Mushrooms are fascinating; there is something mysterious, even frightening about them. They can make you sick, or kill you, or make you high, or fill you with pleasure. They have a strange, fleshy texture and they can taste like meat or seafood. To me, there is no aroma any more compelling than that of dried cepes. I keep them on hand and throw them into all sorts of braises, stocks, and the odd dish just for the little jolt of richness and beefy gravity they introduce. 

They also make a huge difference in a regular cream of mushroom soup. We ran across some beautiful portabellos in the market and decided to work on our mushroom soup recipe. I have never done a side-by-side tasting of portabellos and regular white button mushrooms, but the brown color makes them look like they have more flavor to me, so I use them or crimini. 

I suppose their are two choices when making a cream of mushroom soup. It needs to be thickened, which means either a roux of oil and flour or an addition of an egg yolk and cream liaison. For this version I used a roux, some stock, whole milk, and just a soupçon of cream at the end. I also used another one of my secret weapons, a dash of black truffle oil.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

1 oz. dried cepes

2 c. chicken stock

1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped

4 fresh portabello mushrooms, stems removed & reserved

4 T. butter

4 T. flour

2 c. whole milk

1/2 c. heavy cream

1/2 t. black truffle oil

s & p

Heat the chicken stock until warm, add the cepes and let them hydrate for ten minutes. Remove and reserve the cepes. Add the onion and the cleaned stems to the stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, roughly chop the portabello caps and the cepes together and sauté in a mixture of olive oil and butter until they are browned and give up their liquid. Remove and reserve the mushrooms. Heat the butter until bubbling and add the flour, whisking, for just a minute or so. Add the cold milk and strain the stock into the pan and stir. Add salt & pepper, mushrooms, and the dash of truffle oil. Simmer for 30 minutes and taste for seasoning. Now use a food processor or immersion blender to puree the soup. Add the cream and gently reheat to a simmer and serve.    Should make 4 one-cup servings. 

Sources:

D'Artagnan

Oregon Mushrooms

Various

Chef Paul's Tomate-Suppe

One of the good things about being a traveling musician is you meet people along the way and some of them become good friends. As a result of this, we now have “close” friends scattered from Belfast to Prague. The flip side is, sometimes you lose track and it is very hard to locate them. One of our best buddies along the way was Chef Paul Bumgartner, who ran a little hotel and restaurant in Buchs, Switzerland. Paul loved music, and musicians, and the chapter in our lives spent in his hotel jamming all night with Gypsies, eating his great cooking, and soaking up the culture is one of our fondest memories. His recipes pepper our cookbook, The Amazing Afterlife of Zimmerman Fees, and the war stories from those days are never far from being retold. However, Chef Paul disappeared years ago and we never could find him. We haven’t been back to Buchs, or played any of those gigs, in years. That’s just the way it is with our kind of business. Scenes open up to you, you run with it, and then they close and go away.

We were playing a show in Switzerland last year not far from Zurich, but a long way from Buchs, and we wondered idly where Paul had disappeared to. That night, somebody came up behind Kimmie and tapped her on the shoulder and there he was, The Paul Himself, back in our lives again. At last I was able to find out the secret of the Spargel-Suppe! (It was an egg and cream laison.)

Since I am currently confined to a liquid diet, soups are the obvious answer for a gourmand yearning for real flavor. We were just in the Dallas Farmer’s Market, on our way home to Austin, and bought a ton of ripe tomatoes. One of Chef Paul’s good soups was a cream of tomato, and he told us how he did it. This one stood the test of time very well; we make it all the time, liquid diet or no:

 

Chef Paul’s Tomato-Bacon Soup

1 yellow onion, chopped

3 slices smoked bacon

1 oz unsalted butter

1 24 oz canned peeled tomatoes  with juice

2 cups chicken stock

sea salt, freshly ground pepper

1/2 c. cream

Makes about 6 one-cup servings

 

Gently sauté the bacon until the fat renders out. Remove bacon. Add an ounce of butter if needed. Add the onions and sauté them for about 20 minutes until soft. Add the tomatoes and juice and 2 cups of stock. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add the bacon and puree the mixture completely. Adjust the salt & pepper. To serve, drizzle some of the cream over the top of the bowl of soup, or whip it and add a spoonful to the soup as a garnish.

 

Joe Gracey’s Texas Chili Non Carne

If you were a Native Texan 400 years ago and you had a mess of peppers and onions and beans and garlic and corn and handful of herbs like oregano and comino, well, your first idea would be to throw them all in a pot and stew them together. All of these things grow wild in Texas and Mexico so the cooks of the bunch developed this soup/stew ten thousand years ago.

When Cattle Culture became paramount in Texas and Northern Mexico, this stew came to be called “chilis con carne” since beef was easier to come by and meat was less of a delicacy.

Texas kids in the 50’s grew up eating Chili Con Carne and Beans & Cornbread once a week or so, and every cook in Texas has her own unique interpretation of the dishes. Little of the “chili” made north, west, or east of Texas is what a Texan would recognize as a Bowl of Red.  Additions such as pasta, kidney beans, tomatoes, turkey (!!!) etc. have caused considerable confusion and panic amongst the people, but here I attempt to set the record straight.

With the modern-day interest in non-carnivorous eating, it is but a short step back to the aboriginal intent of this dish and so I present my version to you here. The only bean that has the correct flavor for this stew is the Texas Pinto Bean. It cannot be a white bean, or a kidney bean, or a black bean. They all have their place in the pantheon of bean dishes, but only the Pinto will do. Nothing else has the earthy but delicate assertiveness required. If you are desperate, try what Americans call “red” beans, or try the Italian “borlotti” bean. The flavor of this dish depends on the presence of the “poblano” pepper, which is called the “ancho” chili in its dried state, or the dried powder of this pepper which makes up most of the “chili powder” sold in Texas. You can get this online from Penzey’s. Please note that there are no tomatoes of any kind in this dish. The characteristic deep red-brown color and flavor of Chili does not rest in any way upon tomatoes; it derives from ancho chilis.

 And so, with those caveats, I give you this dish:

1 pound Pinto Beans, soaked overnight, water discarded

2 yellow onions, peeled, chopped and lightly sauteed in oil

3 cloves garlic, peeled, chopped

6 ancho chilis (simmered and processed or chopped, or 6 tablespoons of Texas chili powder)

Kernels from 3 ears of corn

1 tablespoon of cumin (or more, to taste- careful, there is a delayed reaction with each addition)

1 teaspoon of Mexican Oregano, dried

salt and pepper

vegetable stock to cover

fine cornmeal

Drain the beans. Cover with stock, add the vegetables (except the corn) and the herbs and salt and pepper. Use the chili pepper simmering water as part of the stock. Simmer until the beans are done. Add the corn and simmer for another half hour or so. Add cornmeal as needed to thicken.

Adjust salt and pepper, and serve it forth!

Serve with ice-cold beer, Iced Tea, corn and flour tortillas, and garnish with chopped white onions and grated Monterrey Jack or Queso Chihuahua cheese.