Button Mushroom

This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

This colorful and delicious dish is perfect with fish, meat or poultry.

For good Nasi Goreng, the rice should be cooked 2-3 hours before it is fried, so that it has time to become cold.

One surprise to Europeans who settled the plains was the abundance of wild mushrooms, including morels, chanterelles, and other varieties familiar from home. Free for the picking, the mushrooms were hung on strings and dried, providing a winter's worth of eating. Wild rice (actually a grass seed) is a New World native that combines well with the earthy mushrooms the French cèpes. (The Italians call them porcini, and they are easier to find than cèpes, which is why we call for porcini in this recipe.)

Hazelnuts and wild mushrooms - popular ingredients from Oregon and Washington - add terrific flavor and texture to this sophisticated stuffing.

"I recently had lunch at Café Boulud here in New York," says Shelli Rafkin of New York, New York. "My entrée, blanquette de veau, had the most incredible sauce I've ever tasted. The whole dish, in fact, was sensational." In this variation on the classic stew, the veal and the vegetables are cooked separately and combined at the end, when they're topped with a rich white sauce.

There's nothing more comforting than this version of chicken pot pie. Each individual serving is topped with a Pennsylvania Dutch-style buttermilk biscuit. Pour a dry white wine like Sauvignon Blanc.

The mixture known as duxelles (diced mushrooms cooked with shallots or onions) probably dates back to the seventeenth century. It is said that the famous chef La Varenne, who worked for the Marquis d'Uxelles, created this recipe to preserve mushrooms. Serve this tart with baby greens for a light lunch, or enjoy it as a starter with a white Burgundy.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Not so many years ago dried "exotic" or wild mushrooms could be found only in fancy specialty shops, but no longer. Many good urban and suburban supermarkets now carry little packages of various varieties. And Asian markets are a great source for dried shiitake, also known as Chinese black mushrooms. The dried mushrooms are an optional addition to this soup, but they do add a deeper, woodsier flavor.

These are great with almost any kind of stuffing — corn bread, oyster, sausage, you name it. Pour Spanish wine throughout the meal: a chilled white Albariño or a red Rioja.

This dish is wonderful served with mashed potatoes.

Ragoût de petits L
égumes au Parmesan et Vinaigre Balsamique Also nice as a meatless entrée—with some crusty French bread, of course.

Croûte Forestière This is based on a croûte forestière I tasted at the Bois Gourmand restaurant outside Champagnole, in the heart of the mountainous Jura region in France. The restaurant is known in the area for its regional specialties, and this was an intriguing interpretation of the typical croûte forestière which is made entirely with morels.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

This composed salad is a variation of a recipe from Chef Antonio Ortega of Príncipe y Serrano in Madrid, Spain.