Home › The World's Kitchen › Broiled Fresh Mushrooms
Broiled Fresh Mushrooms
Cut off tails, peel, wash and drain well a pound fresh mushrooms. Place in a bowl with a tablespoon oil, juice of half a sound lemon, a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Turn well in seasoning, arrange on a double broiler, broil for four minutes on each side, dress on six freshly prepared toasts, spread a tablespoon maitre d'hotel butter over them and serve. N. B. After cleaning them of sand, etc., place all mushroom tails and trimmings in demi-glace pot.
A straightforward broil that depends on two things: dry mushrooms and enough heat to colour them before they surrender their water. Everything else is seasoning.
- Dry them properly"Wash and drain well" is the hinge. Wet caps steam rather than brown, and four minutes a side will not fix it. Wipe them or rinse briefly and pat thoroughly dry before oiling.
- PeelingPeeling was standard practice in period cookery, and mushrooms of the day were more likely to carry tough or gritty skins. Cultivated white or cremini caps need no peeling; trim the stem end and leave the skin.
- The double broilerA hinged wire basket that clamped the food between two grids so it could be turned in one motion over coals. A cast-iron grill pan, an outdoor grill grate or a sheet pan under an oven broiler set to high all substitute; with an oven broiler, keep the pan close to the element.
- Size mattersWhole caps of a uniform size, gill side up first, hold their juices best. Very large portabello-sized caps will need longer than four minutes a side; small button mushrooms may need less.
- Maitre d'hotel butterButter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then chilled. Make it ahead and slice coins onto the hot mushrooms so it melts at the table.
- Toast"Six freshly prepared toasts" means six slices of plain toasted bread, one per serving; crusts may or may not have been trimmed. This makes six modest first-course portions, or three or four as a supper dish.
- The trimmings noteDemi-glace here is the classical reduced brown sauce kept simmering in a professional kitchen. At home, freeze stems and peelings and add them to stock, or simmer them into a small pan of mushroom broth.
- Seasoning levelA full teaspoon of salt to a pound of mushrooms is on the assertive side by modern taste, particularly with salted butter to follow. Start with half and adjust after broiling.
Broiled mushrooms on toast belong to the Anglo-French repertoire that filled the savoury and light-entree slots of a late Victorian and Edwardian menu, and this book's brisk professional shorthand — dress on toasts, spread maitre d'hotel butter, send the trimmings to the demi-glace pot — is the voice of a hotel kitchen rather than a home cook. The instruction to peel follows period practice, from an era when mushrooms were still often field-gathered or grown in caves and cellars; commercial cultivation of Agaricus in the United States expanded considerably around the turn of the twentieth century. Maitre d'hotel butter, generally traced to the classical French kitchen of the nineteenth century, was the standard finish for anything grilled, from steaks to fish to vegetables, and the direction to salvage stems for the stockpot reflects a kitchen economy in which nothing edible left the room uncooked.