No tomatoes, please

So, apparently, this little delight is pretty much a staple across the pond. I was inspired to make this after I saw Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay (holy jesus don’t even get me started on those two…super hot) make this simple dish on their respective shows. Speaking of Jamie Oliver, I also stole his saying, up there in the title. If it sounds retarded, it’s him, not me. It sounds better with a British accent anyhow.

So, since I am a relative newcomer to the whole mushroom-liking thing, I was afraid I wouldn’t like this recipe, but it actually turned out really well, and was delicious and surprisingly filling, and also super yummy for people who don’t eat meat and need something a little heartier than zucchini and such. Ooh! This would also make a totally rad appetizer if you just took little circles of bread and toasted them up and put the mushrooms on them. Ya know, if you’re into being nice to people who come over to your house.

We used four kinds of mushrooms: the regular button mushrooms, cremini mushrooms (which are also known as “baby bellas” since they’re, ya know, immature portobello mushrooms), oyster mushrooms (which are the delicate light yellow mushrooms that don’t really look like mushrooms, and they have a lovely delicate buttery flavor), and shitake mushrooms (which I always thought shitake mushrooms were those little white straw mushrooms, but those are, uh, straw mushrooms). All of these were lovely and available at Harris Teeter, so not too hard to find these days.

All I did was wipe them off and slice up the buttons, creminis and shitakes, and just lightly tear the larger oyster mushrooms in half. The verdict is still out as to whether or not you can wash them though. Old crochety French chefs say absolutely not, because they take on a lot of water or some bs, but you can if you want to. The fertilizer kinda gets stuck on them and is hard to wipe off. I mean, the crap on them is pretty much horse shit, so, yeah, don’t wanna eat that. I don’t like to wash them because they do take on a weird rubbery texture that makes them somehow harder to slice, but then again, in a lovely bit of irony, the chef’s house is filled with knives duller than Britney Spears at a MENSA meeting, so it’s hard to even cut butter around here. Oh geeze, topical humor! God, I should write for Jay Leno.

So all I did was throw some butter and olive oil in a pan (butter for flavor, and olive oil so the butter doesn’t burn) and saute the mushrooms. The hardest part about this recipe is not putting too many mushrooms in the pan. I ended up doing three batches, because if they get all crowded in the pan, their water all comes out and can’t evaporate, and they basically boil, and that is no good. So, I threw the mushrooms in the pan and didn’t stir them and let them brown on one side and get some color. Then I threw in about one clove of chopped garlic and some fresh thyme (because dried thyme, I don’t care what my mom says, tastes like dirt to me. I can always taste it at Cosmic when they put too much thyme in their dang beans, cuz they taste like someone threw dirt in them. Then again, it is Cosmic, who knows? They probably did throw dirt in there too), and stirred it around. For some reason, when I saute garlic alone in a pan, especially when it’s all chopped up in tiny pieces, it ALWAYS burns. So I like to throw it in with whatever else I’m sauteeing, like onions or whatever, never alone.

So, after you’ve sauteed the mushrooms and they’re cooked and have some color to them, then put salt and pepper on them. DO NOT salt the mushrooms before they are nice and browned, or the salt will draw all the moisture out of the mushrooms and they will boil in all the liquid. So at this point, all you have left to do is throw a little white wine in there, let the alcohol cook out, and voila! Mushrooms! All you need is the toast. You can either put bread in the toaster, but we just took some nice soft sourdough bread and sliced it up and sprinkled olive oil on it and broiled both sides under the broiler until they got nice and brown and toasty. Then throw the mushrooms on there. My mother insisted on putting chives on top because she has this weird obsession with them and insists on putting them in everything. But you don’t have to do that. So, it seems rather convoluted and hard to explain, but for realz, it only takes like, 10 minutes, and it is freakin delicious.

Mmm….DO IT