Eugene weekly., April 07, 2011, Page 38, Image 38

THE FUNGUS
AMONG US
Learning to love 'shrooms, the other white not meat
BY WILLIAM KENNEDY
M
y editor emails me and says, “If you’re
interested, I’m looking for someone to write a
piece for the next Chow! insert.” I think to
myself: “Great! Go out, find Eugene’s best
burger, write about it, get paid. Killer.” It could be steak,
sausage, pizza, whatever — I was in. Let’s go. I’d be
eating and getting paid to write about it. Dream come true,
right?
“It needs to involve mushrooms,” the email concluded.
I thought, “You’re killing me, Levin,” but I agreed.
Don’t get me wrong. I like mushrooms. I’ve had plenty
of great mushroom dishes. And I know Lane County is
prime mushroom growing country — forested, wet and
temperate. Locally the fungus has spawned societies
devoted to it, festivals and a virtual cottage industry of
pickers during the fall and spring months.
And, please, before you start firing off angry letters to
the editor, Lane-Veggie-Mafia: I know there are plenty of
health reasons to eat mushrooms instead of meat. It’s just
that to an unapologetic carnivore like myself, mushrooms
always just seem a little like… well, not meat.
People don’t have a lot of money to eat out these days.
With the economic downturn, the restaurant industry has
struggled both at the local and national level. So rather
than going out and stuffing my face at any one of Eugene’s
fine restaurants — something many can’t afford to do
these days — I decided to take a different approach to my
mycological mission and dine in.
Now, I love to eat. But I don’t cook much. Luckily, my
close friend Kat Nichols is a fantastic cook who throws
dinner parties that rival Eugene’s finest dining experiences
any day. So I approached her. “Want to prepare a meal,
host a dinner party and I’ll write about it for the Weekly?”
“Yes!” she responded immediately, visions of the Food
Network dancing in her head. Kat’s passion for cooking
started while studying art at UO and, in recent years, that
passion has grown. “It’s my favorite thing to do,” she says.
“It sounds cheesy, but cooking people food is my language
of love.” This is the woman who spit-roasts a pig in her
Sushi Set Lunch
with soup from $5.00
Sushi Dinner
8 pieces sushi & one roll
with soup from $12.50
backyard every summer, and not too long ago served up
Cornish game hens that we tore apart with our bare hands.
“The meal has to involve mushrooms,” I clarify.
“You’re killing me, Kennedy,” she replied, disappointed at
not being able to throw one of her legendary meats orgies.
But she agreed nonetheless.
“I tried to find morels, but nobody had them,” Kat
explained when my wife, daughter and I arrived at the
south Eugene home she shares with her fiancée. The place
already smelled of garlic and butter. Appetizers of cheese,
olives and almonds were laid out on the counter along with
bottles of red wine. “So I went with wild mushrooms
instead,” she said (morels typically grow in
the spring in these parts). On a chalkboard
near the dining room table was written
the evening’s menu: Crusty baguette,
asparagus with compound butter and a
verjus (a juice made from unripe grapes
that is more than vinegar but not quite wine)
and wild mushrooms in a brandy cream sauce
over homemade pasta. “I ripped up the
mushrooms by hand — it’s more sensual that
way,” Kat joked.
The dinner party was split pretty evenly
among those with mycological
inclinations and those slightly
less enthusiastic about the
tasty fungi. “It’s the texture,”
Heather, one of Kat’s guests,
told me. “It feels like I’m
eating someone’s ear.” She
added, however, that she was more
inclined to try things at a dinner party than
at a restaurant.
And that was the general consensus among
those with some reservations about the
evening’s meal: It was the off-
putting texture, and that
flavor the Japanese might
describe as umami – or, as most call it, “earthy.”
Kat told the party that you have to be gentle when
cooking mushrooms. Tonight, she said, she’d made an
attempt to let the mushroom’s flavor be what it is, as well
as allowing it to retain its unique texture. Soon we were all
eating in silence. Everything was so delicious I couldn’t
believe there wasn’t any meat in it. Eden, sitting next me,
couldn’t overcome her distaste, devouring the pasta,
asparagus and bread but picking out the mushrooms.
Heather — an archaeologist with a colleague who packs a
plastic bag on forest expeditions to stash any mushrooms
she might find — was converted. She turned to her
husband and said, “I think we can cook with hedgehog
(mushrooms) now. I like them.”
Flush with wine and good food we sat and talked, a
luxury not to be had at some restaurants where you are
rushed out to turn over your table to the next six-top. Our
conversation turned to dining in our fair city and beyond
— amazing ingredients, casual restaurant atmosphere, no
pretense, but a woeful lack of variety in ethnic foods. We
all admitted to eating at home more than we did in our 20s
— partially for financial reasons, but also because we
found ourselves driven to recreate the food we once craved
from restaurants.
After a dessert of root beer floats, Kat fired up Beatles
Rock Band on Wii and, after a turn rockin’ out “Helter
Skelter,” I hugged my friends and said goodbye, mulling
the evening over in my mind. I wasn’t sure I’d be
substituting portobello for my burger anytime soon, but I
did know amazing food, wine and friends followed by
Beatles Rock Band was an experience no restaurant in
Eugene, or anywhere, could replicate. ■
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2 CHOW! Spring 2011
chow.eugeneweekly.com