The Mushroom Feast: A Celebration of All Edible Fungi Cultivated, Wild and Dried, with Recipes

Synopsis

"The Mushroom Feast" is an indispensable classic for all those who love mushrooms. It is a fine, timeless, literary cookbook. Truffles...ceps...morels, they all conjure visions of one of the most intriguing and subtle of all gastronomic treats. Yet amateur cooks can be mystified by how best to prepare them, while epicures hunger for new ways to expand their repertoires. With more than 250 recipes, Jane Grigson describes the preparation of the best fresh and preserved mushrooms. Besides the traditional use of mushrooms to enhance meat and vegetable dishes, edible fungi are made into pate, powdered, pureed into mushroom ketchup, baked into a flan (an Alice B. Toklas specialty), baked as a cake and used in many other dishes - from the simple to the highly sophisticated - for soups, sauces, stuffings, main courses, too intriguing to resist. Included are helpful tips for selecting and preserving the best edible mushrooms (both wild and cultivated), the folklore behind the recipes, a brief history of mushroom cultivation, guides to distinguish edible from poisonous fungi for those who venture to pick their own, and charming line drawings of the twenty-one most common species.