Home › The World's Kitchen › Broiled Fresh Mushrooms on Toast
Broiled Fresh Mushrooms on Toast
Peel, wash and carefully drain the umbrella mushrooms laid to one side and place in a bowl. Pour over a tablespoon oil, the strained juice of half a sound lemon, adding a light teaspoon salt and half light teaspoon pepper. Repeatedly turn in seasoning, arrange on a double broiler and broil for five minutes on each side, dress evenly on six freshly prepared toasts, spread a little butter over and serve.
A one-paragraph recipe that assumes you have already sorted your mushrooms in an earlier step and know your way around a coal fire. The technique translates cleanly, but two details need restating.
- "Umbrella mushrooms laid to one side"The phrasing points back to an earlier step in which the large open caps were set apart. Use flat field-type caps or portobellos, stems trimmed flush; the recipe wants a broad surface, not buttons.
- Quantity is unstatedThe seasoning would suit roughly a pound of caps, enough to cover six toasts. Scale the oil and lemon rather than the salt, which at the recipe's light teaspoon is already generous.
- A "double broiler"Not a double boiler. This is a hinged double-sided wire grill that clamps the food between two grids so it can be flipped whole over the fire. A grill basket does the same job; otherwise lay the caps directly on a grate or under a hot oven broiler.
- Five minutes a sideThat timing assumes the open fire of the period. Under a modern gas or electric broiler at full heat, thick caps take about four minutes gill-side up, then three to four gill-side down. They are done when the caps darken and slump slightly and juices pool in the gills.
- Skip the peelingPeeling mushrooms was a common instruction in cookbooks of the period, when caps could be gritty or tough-skinned. Modern caps do not need it, and peeling costs you flavour and colour.
- Washing and drainingThe instruction to wash is worth resisting where possible. Mushrooms take up water quickly, and wet caps steam rather than brown. Wipe with a damp cloth, or rinse fast and dry thoroughly before the oil goes on.
- Salt timingThe salt is added with the marinade, which pulls moisture to the surface. If you want a drier, better-browned cap, oil and lemon first, salt just before the caps go over the heat.
- ServingServes six as a savoury or light supper course, three as a main lunch dish. Set the caps gill-side up on the buttered toast so the accumulated juices soak down rather than run off.
- If you are picking your ownThe book takes correct identification entirely for granted. Do not gather wild mushrooms on the strength of a hundred-year-old description of an "umbrella" cap.
Grilled mushrooms on buttered toast belong to the British savoury tradition that The International Cook Book collected alongside its French, Italian and Creole material: a small, strongly seasoned dish served at the end of dinner or at breakfast, built on toast. Commercial mushroom growing is generally said to have expanded on both sides of the Atlantic in the late nineteenth century. The hinged double broiler called for here was standard equipment when much cooking was still done over coals — it let a cook turn a whole batch of delicate food at once without breaking it, a problem that mattered less once the enclosed gas broiler came into use.