Dinner Diary - Wild Mushroom Bake

One of the things that differentiates how a forager cooks from how a chef does is the use of mushrooms. For us, its often the case that wild mushrooms aren't a luxury to be used in small volume for flavour or appearance, they're a bulk filler for other food.

How often have you seen some posh restaurant or television chef cook a mushroom dish and make sure all of the mushrooms are somehow visible? Its so often about display, about the expensive ingredient you're paying through the nose for, so you can see it and so those dining with you can see how much you're adding to the bill they're not looking forward to splitting with you. Its about display. But if you pick your own wild mushrooms you probably use them in much greater bulk, for flavour and texture. Yeah, I could have think slices of pretty mushroom on top of a dish - but who am I trying to impress? They're free, growing in a field. Why would anyone be impressed?

This dish really does exemplify the difference in attitude between a forager and a posh chef.

First, you've got to pick your mushrooms. This time I used horse, field and shaggy parasol mushrooms. I could pretend they were selected for the combination of almondy and mushroomy flavours and for the mix of soft and firmer textures, but I'd be lying.  I used them because I had a lot of them, I found a field full of mushrooms yesterday and the day before a patch under some trees covered with parasols. The trick to this dish is to cook the mushrooms first so they retain a better texture. Pack a pan load of mushrooms, drizzle some olive oil, salt and pepper on and put it in a hot oven for 20 minutes or so. While you're doing that wash and slice some potatoes, almost cover them in a pan with milk and simmer it. While thats happening the mushrooms should be ready to come out, they should have reduced in volume rather and they'll have a lovely smell and intensified flavour. 

Another optional step at this stage is to sautee some onion, carrot, celery and bacon in another pan ready to go into the sauce. You don't need this, but if you want to use the bacon as seasoning its a nice touch. Or if you want to keep the whole thing veggie leave out the bacon. I quite like this classic combination of stock vegetables. Somehow it makes this kind of dish more homely, more rounded. Less cheffy and more 'real' if that makes sense. Now, you've got your sauteed vegetables, pan of soft potatoes in milk, and your mushrooms. Its time to make your sauce. 

You all know how to make a white sauce, right? Take your musnrooms out of the skillet, put them aside. Put some butter in, melt it over a low heat and cook for just a minute or so before adding the milk you used for the spuds, slowly at first, stirring all the time to get rid of lumps. You can add some cream at this point if you really want it to be rich, but you don't need to. When the flour is cooked out, toss in a handfull of chopped parsley (if you have some) its time to assemble everything and put it in the oven.

Put a layer of about half of your spuds in the bottom of a casserole dish or big pan and season them. Put the sauteed veg (if you're including them) and mushrooms on top. Then put the rest of the spuds on, and pour the sauce on top. Now you can go and make your topping - drop a chunk of stale bread in the food processor or grate it, and make a bowl of breadcrumbs (always save some stale bread for crumbing). Put alternate layers of bread crumbs and grated cheese on top, with a final layer of cheese and a few knobs of butter at the end. You'll have something like this...

That goes into a hot oven for about 20 minutes, or until its crisp and browned. Dish it out piping hot with salad or whatever side vegetables you want, but I like something green with it.

This is another of those dishes thats more of a technique than a recipe. There's a thousand and one ways you can think of spuds, white sauce and a breadcrumb topping - you could put ham or chicken in it, you could have a layer of broccoli in the middle instead of mushrooms and cook it with a cheese sauce instead of a white one. Bluntly if its spuds, white sauce and cheesy breadcrumbs with something else in it, its likely to be delicious. But this is a really good way of using mushrooms, they're kind of meaty and intense in this dish, and you can really mix things up by using different kinds of mushroom. 

And best of all? This is cheap, substantial and filling. You won't be leaving the dinner table hungry. Enjoy.