Andrea Gentl’s book, Cooking with Mushrooms, is a guide to the culinary world of mushrooms. The author is award-winning food and travel photographer and combines her artistic and culinary talents with her love and knowledge of mushrooms to provide an expansive look at how mushrooms can be used in a wide variety of dishes. With beautiful photographs, Gentl offers background information on mushrooms and almost 100 recipes featuring 21 different varieties.
Introductory material offers suggestions for buying, prepping, storing, frying and cooking mushrooms, details about the flavor and texture of the various varieties, and directions for growing your own This is followed by simple to complex recipes from making mushroom salt to baking double-chocolate tahini mushroom brownies. Each recipe provides the number of servings, ingredient list, introduction highlighting the special features of the dish and suggestions for serving, step by step directions in paragraph form, and a full page photograph of the finished product. The simple recipes include mushroom jerky, chaga chamomile tea, and mushroom negroni, while more complex ones are bigoli in salsa with maitake, and cod poached in parchment with enoki and beech. Some recipes are familiar, like mushroom lasagne, tacos, and ragu while other are more exotic such as king trumpet chips, and crispy rack of oyster mushroom.
The variety of recipes in Cooking with Mushroom is outstanding and their presentation is noteworthy. Gentl’s writing style and photography are a delight and make the subject matter exciting and appealing. The one caveat is the availability of the ingredients. Although the diversity of mushrooms in the grocery stories has been increasing over the last few years, the availability of many of those needed for the recipes in this book is still limited. Since freshness is essential for many recopies, online sources are not an option. The ingredients lists also include items that may be available online and in the grocery stores of urban centers but will be absent from the shelves of those in less populated areas. If you like or are interested in culinary mushrooms, however, the book is a feast for the eyes and imagination no matter where you live.
To buy Cooking with Mushrooms from Amazon, click here.