Mushroom

Serve with Veggie Balls (page 16)

This gravy is so good you may just end up eating it like soup, spoonful after spoonful. We ladle it over practically any meatball in this book, and we also really love it over a big steaming bowl of Mashed Potatoes (page 79). You can make it ahead, though be careful to stir it frequently while reheating, scraping up the sauce on the bottom of the saucepan to avoid burning.

Sometimes you just gotta take a break from hard-core carnivordom, and these are the way to go—just ask our staff, who eat them around the clock. These balls happen to be Mike’s favorite, too. You’ll often find us at the bar with a big bowl, topped with Classic Tomato Sauce (page 56) or Spinach-Basil Pesto (page 58) and a side of steamed or sautéed spinach. And when it comes to kids, this is a great and tasty way to sneak in more veggies.

This is how my mother cooks green beans. They’re so good and so simple that right from the start we made them our Tuesday vegetable of the day at the restaurant.

Dino, our ever-vigilant head of security, is also a helluva good cook, though he hasn’t ingested a vegetable since the mid ‘60s. This is how he makes roast beef, and this is how I like to sauce it—sneaking in lots of luscious mushrooms. Try to get your hands on the baby bellas. They’re packed with flavor and slice up nicely into bite-size pieces.

I’m not a cooked spinach fan, but I do like spinach served fresh in a salad. (And I love any salad that has bacon as an ingredient!) I’m also not a mushroom gal, so I leave these out when I make it, but it’s good either way.

In The All American Wine & Cheese Book, food writer Laura Werlin named Lively Run’s fresh goat cheese as one of the two best chèvres in the country. A concentrated burst of blue cheese flavor adds zest to an appetizer created by Steve and Suzanne Messmer of Lively Run.

Cabernet Franc, with origins in the Bordeaux region of France, is rapidly gaining recognition as a definitive Finger Lakes red. The wine’s dark fruit and spice act as liaison between the tomato/garlic flavors and the earthy mushrooms.

Here is a simple way to enjoy big Paris mushrooms. I like chanterelles, morels, and even matsutakes, but these common white mushrooms—the kind you see in supermarkets—remind me of culinary school; they smell like la bonne cuisine française. We use banker watch–size mushrooms—as big as you can find. If you’re looking for an upscale alternative, porcini will also work. This dish is best prepared in a cast-iron frying pan, served family style at the table. Bring it out hot and bubbling.

We love Dover sole, or at least we used to. It’s not as sound a menu choice these days, so instead we go for local turbot from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The classic turbot au vin jaune is exceptional, but said vin jaune can be really difficult to locate. A crisp, dry vermouth such as Vermouth de Chambéry will do.

The great thing about this recipe is that even if you mess it up (which is tough to do), you still have a delicious mushroom and bacon cream that you can pour on toast and call it a day. This is a classic coddled egg but with much more garnish.

This Chicken Lo Mein recipe is extremely simple to make and has a nice peppery flavor from the red pepper flakes, white pepper, and ginger.

On their own, roasted mushrooms are golden, buttery, and delicious, but we've gone a step further and jazzed them up by showering them with a blanket of crunchy, chile-flecked breadcrumbs.

The basic method of making risotto will never change; you cook the rice slowly and add broth gradually, so the starchy inside of the rice kernel expands as the outside layer dissolves into creaminess. Risotto feeds the soul and can take a whole range of flavors. I like the pumpkin risotto here, but try a shrimp risotto using shellfish broth, adding a pound of peeled shrimp at the last minute and letting them cook no more than 5 minutes. Or how about a green risotto, with a bunch of watercress or a few handfuls of spinach, chopped fine? Or a mushroom risotto with a pound of sliced fresh mushrooms added to the dried porcini mushrooms. Keep in mind that there's a lot of bad risotto out there, usually because folks overcook it or add too much wine. But if you do have some white wine open, add a splash or two to the rice and onions, just before you ladle in the broth. It gives yet another dimension of flavor.

With this dish you can turn an inexpensive, underutilized cut of beef into a succulent, tender, soul-satisfying stew; once it’s in the oven, you need do nothing but enjoy the amazing aromas that fill your house. (Do plan your time accordingly, though, as it spends at least five hours in the oven.) This dish, like any stew, is best made a day ahead but is fine served the same day. It’s great served atop soft polenta or horseradish-spiked mashed potatoes. Leftovers make a wonderful rustic pasta sauce, as well. A large Dutch oven is best for making this, but a wide-bottomed stock pot with a tight-fitting lid works, too. Just make sure it fits in your oven!

Farro is an ancient grain that, despite its popularity in central Italy, was once impossible to find in the United States. With rising demand for it, more and more domestic growers are starting to cultivate it, including Eatwell Farm in Northern California and Bluebird Grain Farms in Oregon. This hearty fall salad works well as a vegan entrée or a side dish, or even warmed and served as a Thanksgiving stuffing. I like to add diced or pulled roasted turkey to turn this into an entrée salad. Small cubes of good-quality Pecorino Romano are also a nice addition and give the dish added richness and umami.

Brian sometimes roasts mushrooms and artichokes in the winery’s pizza oven alongside a chicken, but the vegetables will color up beautifully in a hot home oven, too. Serve them, browned and sizzling, as an accompaniment to a roast or to Grilled Bone-In Ribeye Steak with Garlic Sauce (page 138). Or pair with polenta for a meatless meal.

Also known as sablefish, black cod thrives in the cold waters off the Pacific Coast, from California to Alaska. The fishery is managed sustainably, so many chefs have turned to black cod as a replacement for the more threatened Chilean sea bass. If you have ever had smoked sablefish in a New York delicatessen, you have eaten black cod. It is an oily fish, rich in heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Chef Bruce Hill, who attended the 1998 Workshop, makes it the centerpiece of this inspired East-West seafood stew, which relies on fregola—a toasty, couscous-like Sardinian pasta—for texture and Japanese miso for flavor depth. Dashi is Japanese stock.

If you like risotto, you will love this creamy, heart-healthy variation made with barley. Pearled barley is not a whole grain, because it has had much of the bran removed, but it has a lot more fiber than white rice so it’s a healthful choice. Chef David Koelling, a 1990 Workshop participant, adds mushrooms to his barley risotto to make the dish more substantial. Serve it in small portions as a first course or side dish—it would complement roast chicken—or in larger portions as a main course, with a salad.

Brian spreads a roasted-garlic paste on the dough under the mushrooms and potatoes, which gives this pizza an irresistible fragrance. If you have access to wild mushrooms, by all means use them. Bellwether Farms Crescenza cheese is a soft, supple, young cow’s milk cheese that melts well; mozzarella is stretchier, but a good substitute.