Button Mushroom

Nutritious brown rice enhances the flavor and texture of this scrumptious two-cheese pie. Try it for dinner or brunch.

Shrimp Marsala has it all—savory aroma, the rich flavors of wine and mushrooms, and company-pretty looks. A baked potato and steamed asparagus go well with this dish.

With its Old World flavors and tempting aroma, this versatile dish is a big hit at potluck suppers. Depending on whether you use the main recipe or one of the variations, you can create an entrée, a one-dish meal, or a side dish from the same basic ingredients

Crunchy pine nuts enhance this side dish with their distinctive flavor.

As an accompaniment for anything from roasted turkey at a holiday feast to grilled burgers on the patio, this side dish is hard to beat.

For a light entrée, serve this richly flavored mixture over brown rice.

Using presliced fresh mushrooms and frozen chopped onions will hurry things along in this recipe.

You’ll notice the cooking time of the mushrooms may be as short as 5 minutes or as long as 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the sliced mushrooms you buy. If your mushrooms are thinner, they’ll take less time. Thicker slices will obviously take a bit longer. However, thick or thin, this recipe will cooperate nicely. Just make sure to pay attention to the cooking time.

The caccia in cacciatore means “hunt,” so I guess this is chicken hunter’s-style. Somewhere along the line—probably on its trip from Italy to America—the hunter’s pheasant or guinea hen in this dish was replaced by chicken. If you don’t want to cut up a whole chicken, you can buy pieces—get all legs and thighs, if that’s what you like; they are very good in this dish. It can be made using only chicken breasts, if that’s your preference, but to keep the chicken from drying out, you should cut the cooking time in half, and reduce the wine to 1/4 cup and the tomatoes to 3 cups. Best of all, though, is to make this dish with an older hen. In that case, increase the cooking time by 20 minutes, adding more water or stock as needed to keep the hen pieces covered as they cook. When you cut up chicken, or anything for that matter, your knife should glide along. If you’re struggling, stop for a second and take a look at what you’re cutting; you should be cutting between the bones at the joints, not actually cutting through the bones. If you’re off target, just wiggle the blade of the knife to get a feel for where the joint is, then make another cut. With practice, you’ll get a sense for where the joints lie.

If you like, trim the stems of the mushrooms even with the caps—they will look neater that way. Save the stems for vegetable stock or chop them for a vegetable soup. The mushrooms keep for a few days in the refrigerator. If you want to keep them longer, top them off with enough oil and vinegar to cover them completely. The oil will float to the top and seal out air. They’ll keep a couple of weeks like this.

There’s a reason why this creamy concoction of beef, mushrooms, and onions in a sour cream sauce is a classic. What’s not to like? Well, 31 grams of fat, for starters. The original has nothing on this slimmed-down version—except for about 20 grams of fat.

This puff pastry-wrapped and pâté-packed dish is de rigueur for any character in a book, movie, or television show who is trying to impress someone with an über-elegant meal. The classic is rich beyond measure and fussy as hell. I’ve minimized its artery-clogging character—by about 77 grams of fat and 777 calories—and the fuss factor, too. It remains über-elegant.

Classic Chicken Marsala calls for Marsala wine (of course), a fortified wine from Sicily, white flour, and butter. In this modified Chicken Marsala, the white flour and the butter had to go, but the rest was retained—especially its namesake. The combination of mushrooms, garlic, herbs, and chicken broth is as delicious as the butter-laden original.

Many cooks overload Italian-American-style red sauce with olive oil. While it is a healthy fat, it’s still a fat. At 120 calories per tablespoon, that’s a lot of leeway in the hands of a liberal cook. In this version, the olive oil has been reduced to 1/2 tablespoon for all 4 portions and it still tastes great. If you use chicken thighs, you’ll end up with a little more cholesterol but a lot more flavor. (If your diet requires very small amounts of cholesterol, use boneless, skinless chicken breast instead of the chicken thighs, and simmer them for only 10 to 12 minutes to prevent their drying out.

The highest form of “cream of” soup starts out with cooked, pureed vegetables and pure, fresh cream. The second-best incarnation of that same soup winds up being pastier, with cornstarch as a thickener and the fresh cream replaced with cheaper fats, like vegetable oils. There’s one more way to make cream soup, though—a way in which you get the freshest, purest, least diluted taste of the vegetables. There’s no cream in this recipe—and no cornstarch, either. You still get a great creamy texture by using a lot of mushrooms and chicken broth. The key is to not let the mushroom liquor (the juice expressed by the mushrooms as they cook) evaporate, and to use a good blender to create a luxurious puree.

Chicken and applesauce . . . sounds like hospital food, huh? Well, if that were the only way to get this elegant, savory supper, I’d check myself in!

You have to buy a quart of buttermilk in order to get the 2 cups you need for this recipe, but I’ve got your back on the extra 2 cups: transfer it to a large resealable food storage bag and freeze it. Don’t forget to label the bag—if you’re like me, you have enough mystery items in your freezer already! Use the buttermilk to make this recipe again, or check out the recipe for Bacon and Creamy Ranch Chicken Burgers with Crispy Scallion “Sticks” on page 236.

Mushrooms are beefy and delicious. This is a great quick supper for meat-free-ers and meat eaters alike because it is so hearty. To round out the meal, serve a simple green salad dressed with Dijon dressing or sliced apples or pears.

Mushrooms are well known for their meaty flavor. They are rich in natural umami elements and we enhance that here with the addition of soy sauce and sherry. The finished stock has a rich flavor that can be used for vegetarian soups and sauces or to enhance meat dishes. You can easily turn this into a rich mushroom soup with the addition of some sautéed mushrooms and a touch of cream.

Here is Paul Bocuse’s kosher rendition of his famous soup with black truffles and foie gras. He first created it for a dinner in 1975 at the Élysée Palace (the White House of France) when he received the Légion d’Honneur from President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing for valor on the battlefield during World War II. I have omitted the fresh foie gras, because obtaining it both fresh and kosher is difficult. This soup is refreshingly delicious, one you can prepare ahead that will still make a grand splash at any dinner. Either make one big soup or use eight 8-ounce ramekins, as the recipe indicates.

"There is no such thing as Jewish Alsatian cooking. It is Alsatian cooking,” Chef Gilbert Brenner told me over lunch at his restaurant, Wistub Brenner, with a view over the Lauch River in Colmar, a charming city in southern Alsace that has had a Jewish presence since at least the eleventh century. “Jewish cooks adapted the dietary laws to what was available here,” Monsieur Brenner told me. “France didn’t create dishes. Families created the dishes. It is the cooking of their grandparents and reatgrandparents.” Looking over the menu at Brenner’s popular restaurant, I was taken by this extraordinary leek terrine, which I later learned was put on the menu for Gilbert’s Jewish customers and friends who keep kosher or are vegetarians. During the short asparagus season in the spring, Gilbert substitutes asparagus for the leeks. The recipe is a modern version of very old savory bread puddings, like schaleths (see page 251).

I often offer these as an appetizer. I serve them just the way they are, but you could also serve them on toasted slices of Italian bread or just buttered toast.