Mushrooms for all moods

Add mushroom escabeche to everything

Hello and welcome to today’s Stories from Catbird Cottage! Because I make it all the time - and talk about it almost as much - today I’m highlighting the trusty mushroom escabeche from my book, with different ways you can use it.

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Escabeche is a lightly pickled, highly flavorful preparation for foods, and can be applied to many fresh ingredients. For fresh mushrooms, it is an excellent way to preserve their plumpness, and IMO, an indispensable condiment to spoon onto all foods…. SO GOOD, and so versatile. Having made a frittata with it recently, I wanted to highlight some riffs on it too - a kind of favorites-on-favorites installment. :)

If you know me, you know I adore mushrooms. Whether as any-day sustenance or as show-stopping centerpiece, mushrooms bring a hearty savoriness I never tire of. For those of you who have the book, the recipe is on page 93. For folks who don’t have a copy, you should pick one up and get another copy for a friend - it makes a terrific gift! A Year at Catbird Cottage is an award-winning cookbook celebrating the seasons, filled with oodles of staples recipes that capture the best of each season. The real magic, however, is in the delectable ways through the seasons that the staples show up in layered celebration meals, from breakfast all the way to dessert. Check out this post for some favorite images and more recipes commemorating its anniversary.

If you have my book then this escabeche isn’t necessarily news to you, but last week was the first time I incorporated it into a frittata, and we were bowled over by how good it was. There is something about the juiciness of the marinade - combined with the odd heel of this and that cheese needing using up - that made the whole thing a revelation.

Whenever I prep mushrooms I save stems for stock. One bowl goes to compost (the dirty tips), and the next (lengths of stems) is for stock. Then I slice and sauté the caps, and toss them into the aromatic marinade. If I am blessed with a huge wild mushroom haul I will use them in the escabeche, and on a separate occasion, sear the non-choice ends to enrich a deeper flavored stock, extracting every bit of savory mushroom goodness.

For the Feast in the Canopy dinner last month, I got a 4-pound crate of shiitakes to make a big batch of escabeche. There was enough leftover that I used 1 1/2 cups of it towards this frittata. It was heaven. Here is the frittata recipe. I have used (and adapted) this recipe so many times that I’ve lost count. It is my absolute favorite frittata recipe and, I confess, it is actually a savory version of the apple-pomegranate flognarde that appears in the winter chapter of my book (a kind of puffy custard - highly recommend the original/sweet version, too!). Until I developed this recipe, I did not think frittatas were that inspired... This one is a delight and everyone who has made it agrees.

Some tips to apply to your own version -

• Use a regular lemon if you don’t have a Meyer lemon.

• Cheese is forgiving: I have used feta instead of goat cheese, as well as brie for a riff that included smoked salmon. In this frittata, I had an odd bit of Humboldt Fog that needed using up, and used a wee bit of a brie-style cheese to round it out. I bet blue cheese would be delicious. Let me know if you try it!

• No sage? No problem. As long as you tuck the herbs into the eggy mixture so they’re half peeking out, you’ll get good results using thyme, shiso, dill, or parsley.

• I’ve made an all egg white and a gluten-free version, and they were also delectable!