Mushrooms

In the delicatessens and chilled cabinets of France one can find a preparation called Champignons a la Greque. It's an oily tomato sauce flavoured with thyme and oregano and encasing button mushrooms, the small white babies known as Champignons de Paris. I haven't quite got to the bottom of this nomenclature but suffice to say these are cultivated mushrooms and not the sort that are eagerly gathered in forests and fields every autumn.

I can't blame the French for this particularly, they are recreating something that is foreign, a holiday memory, a false convention almost and it's one that is shared by the British and it seems, from my research, the Americans also. But I come from a more traditional cooking discipline, something that surprises even me, and for me anything cooked a la Greque has no tomatoes, it is simmered in a liquid somewhere between a court bouillon and a marinade, fragrant, subtle and retaining its own character.



I have, as it happens, used cultivated mushrooms for this example but if you have them other sorts of fungus will be equally well served.

Finely slice a small onion and two cloves of garlic. Put them in a pan, I like to use an enamelled pan for this sort of cooking, with a good splash of olive oil and allow them just enough heat for the rawness to pass away.

Add to this a bay leaf, 6-10 crushed peppercorns, a small bunch of parsley stems and all and a strip of lemon zest. To achieve perfection I would have added a scant teaspoonful of coriander seed and half a florence fennel bulb sliced thin but these are the omissions. To substitute I used half a teaspoon of fennel seed. Thyme or Greek oregano is another possible addition.

Add 1 wine glass of a sharp white wine, an equal quantity of water and the juice of the lemon.

Bring this bath to a simmer and after five minutes add your prepared mushrooms. This amount will take at least a pound (500g) of fungi. Bring it back to a simmer and give it another five minutes. Cover the pan and leave to cool. When cool, decant into a jar or dish retaining enough marinade to cover the mushrooms and chill for between 6 and 24 hours. It will keep, covered, for a couple of days or more if necessary.



They were served on a bed of lettuce leaves, the first crop from our vegetable garden where I carefully pinched off just one leaf from each plant to decorate the plate. I used spare mushroom simmering liquid to braise the last of the chicons and reheated some French bread rolls to eat with them.

Tonight's interesting drink is a Dandelion Kir, made with Dandelion Syrup and a glass of that sharp Muscadet used in the bouillon.