Fungus Among Us

I suppose you could buy mushrooms from other people than the Garrone family. I just don't know why you would, unless you live in New York, or Chicago. And even then, I'm pretty sure they ship.

I first met John Garrone of Far West Fungi over 20 years ago, when I moved to San Francisco and happened on the Civic Center market. John told me recently that it was somewhere else at the time, around the corner or something. But I remember him at pretty much the same location he is now, not far from the escalator to the underground I was probably taking to work. Maybe I was on lunch hour.

It's not just the mushrooms, although Far West Fungi probably has everything you could ever want in that department. It's the absolute friendliness--not the kind of "Fly Me!" friendliness we see a lot of these days, but the kind that comes from an obvious love of people--with which John greets everyone.

I can't remember ever not loving mushrooms. Even the canned ones. I know: They have that weird texture, they smell funny, and if you put an open can and a fork in front of me I would probably finish the can before you came back.

When I was in high school the local wing of the French National Honor Society flew to the place where people really speak the language. We did the French equivalent of what Europeans come to see in these parts. Here, it's Las Vegas, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco, and maybe Monterey. There, it's the Eiffel Tower, the Loire Valley, Mont St. Michel, and Montmartre, where everyone visits a church called Le Sacré Coeur.

I remember two things from that trip: the castles in the Loire Valley, and lunch after we went to church: Coq au Vin aux Champignons.

To the other kids champignon was just a long way of saying mushroom. And mushrooms, they agreed, were gross. Did I really want them?

I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

John Garrone has very good manners, so you have to look closely to see him rolling his eyes as he hears me tell yet another customer about the Miso-Soba Soup from The Book of Miso. John's interest in miso soup ia on a par with his interest in Brussels sprouts.

Someone once asked him, "What do you like to do with Brussels sprouts?"

"Personally, I throw them out," he said.

Miso Soup with Buckwheat Noodles and Eggs

(adapted from The Book of Miso by Aikiko Aoyagi and William Shurtleff)

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 small onion, thinly sliced or 1/2 bunch scallions, cut in long strips

1 zucchini, sliced into half coins

3-4 large or 6-8 small shiitaké mushrooms, sliced

1/2 cup water, stock, or dashi

2 oz. soba (buckwheat) noodles, broken into 4-inch lengths and cooked*

1 tablespoon red, barley, or hatcho miso (the original says 3T but that's overkill, to me)

2 eggs

1 tablespoon minced parsley (optional)

Heat your favorite soup pan and coat with oil. Add the onion and sauté until transparent, then add mushrooms and cook until just shy of being done. Follow with the zucchini, also cooked till almost done. Next, add water and bring to a boil, then the cooked noodles and return to the boil. Place the miso in a bowl and add some of the hot liquid, whisk to combine, and return to the soup. Now increase the heat to medium-high and carefully break in the eggs, keeping the yolks whole. Cook for 1 minute more, or until the whites are just firm. Serve immediately, garnished with parsley.

This is like French onion soup meets poached eggs meets mushrooms and noodles. It should be illegal.

*There are rituals for cooking soba noodles. You cook them partway, put them into very cold water, drain them, cook them some more, back in the cold water, drain again, cook them some more--and then go out and shoot yourself because they are still not perfect.

If you have all that time on your hands, let me just say that Honey, do I have filing for you. If not, I say just cook them, deliver them to their winter vacation, drain them, and then add them to the soup at the proper time.

If anyone complains, my cooking instructions are as follows:
Don't invite them again.

But what if they live with you?
Then you already know what to do.

©2009-2014 Laynie Tzena.

The Great Apricot, or We Like Them Again

When I was growing up I hated apricots. They were mealy and disgusting. Each year (and I never did this with other foods) I would taste an apricot, it would be mealy and disgusting, and we would go into another year.

Then I learned that dried apricots were good for you. I tried one. It was very good. So I tried a fresh apricot. It was mealy and disgusting.

One fine day I tasted an apricot in season. It was sweet, juicy, luscious. Wonderful.

Soon I tasted another one. It was mealy and disgusting.

But the memory of the great apricot stayed with me, and I've loved apricots ever since.

* * *

I was on the phone with a client, catching up, when someone said something to him and he asked if I could hang on a minute.

"Oh, no," he said, "We like them again."

Seems a vendor had fallen out of favor and was now back in the fold.

As we know, this also has been known to happen with food.

I was never a big Swiss chard fan. A little grainy. Didn't interest me. But when I started seeing it at the market, red and gold and drop-dead gorgeous, who could resist? Coming up, a recipe or two that would make a place for that vegetable in anyone's heart. But since we were just talking about soup, here's a recipe (from James Beard's How To Eat Better For Less Money [co-written with Sam Aaron]) I couldn't resist even in my not-that-into-chard days.

"Lentil-Chard Soup":

1-1/2 cups lentils
2-1/2 lbs. Swiss chard (spinach may be substituted)
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup chopped onion
3 to 4 cloves garlic, crushed with salt
1 rib celery, chopped
3/4 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon flour

Wash and pick over the lentils. Cover them with cold water and cook, covered, until tender. Wash the leaves of the Swiss chard or spinach and chop. And to the lentils with 1 cup water and cook until the chard is done, adding more water if necessary.

Heat the oil in a skillet and sauté the chopped onion, garlic crushed with salt, and celery until vegetables are tender and flavors blended. Add to lentil mixture. Mix the lemon juice and flour and stir into the soup. Cook gently, stirring occasionally, until the soup is rather thick. Taste for seasoning. Cool slightly before serving in soup bowls. Pass crusty French or Italian bread to mop up the juices. Serves 6. This thick and hearty soup tastes delicous served cold the next day.

©2009, 2014 Laynie Tzena.

Time for Soup

Well, after a couple of days of Florida weather (84? In San Francisco?), we're back to normal: cold and clammy. And that can mean only one thing: Soup!

Dear Love at First Bite:

I hope I didn't hear you say "soup." Who on Earth has time to make soup? Where do you find time to do all this cooking? I can barely keep up.

Take-Out Tammy

Dear Tammy:

First things first: No one keeps up. It's a myth.

Second, here is my secret (Close the door.): Extra time is delivered to my house one night a week and also on the weekend.

Don't tell anyone.

It's easy to think there's not enough time these days. I remember talking to a friend about how it was always a struggle to get everything done Friday afternoon to get to temple on time. (Later, I stopped worrying about it and considered it instead a public service: If I ever arrived at temple on time, the rabbi would fall off the bima.)

My friend said gently, "Laynie, I think you need to start earlier."

And so it is with cooking. Most recipes have a few ingredients in them, and those ingredients need to be measured, chopped, diced, minced. And it's later than you expected, and you need to eat something, and the heck with it. Peanut butter or take-out.

So eat the peanut butter or take-out. And then reach for one of the recipes you want to try and pull out the cutting board. Chop. Dice. Mince. And measure. And take some small jars or plastic containers (you can get tiny containers with lids at Costco [just be sure to re-use them] or those little porcelain saucers in Chinatown), measure the amount of each ingredient you need for that recipe, put a date on the containers, and sit them in the refrigerator.

The next day: Presto! All you need to do is assemble and cook the dish, then pat yourself on the back or graciously accept the compliments for your creation.

Which might be this very soup.

"Fish Soup from Tunaco":
(From Barbara Karoff's South American Cooking, I adapted it to three servings from the original six.):

1 lb. bass, cod, snapper, or other firm white fish
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt to taste
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1-1/2-2 jalapeño or serrano chiles, seeded and chopped
3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
2 cups water or stock
1 cup coconut milk
Chopped cilantro

Cut the fish into bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle them with lemon juice and salt and set aside. In a soup pot, sauté the onions in olive oil until they are soft. Add the chilies and tomatoes and cook over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the water or stock and the fish and simmer gently until the fish is almost done. Take care not to overcook. Add the coconut milk and let the soup come just to the boil. Serve immediately, topped with chopped cilantro.

Time-saving tip: While you're squeezing the lemon for the juice in this recipe, make extra and put the lemon juice in a glass jar with a date on it. It'll be ready for the broccoli-asparagus stem salad or the lentil-chard soup coming up shortly. Same thing for the onion and when you have a recipe that calls for minced garlic. If a restaurant prepared every ingredient from scratch for each dish, the patrons would starve and the joint would go out of business in a New York minute.

©2009, 2013, 2014 Laynie Tzena.