You guys had better stay away from southwest Germany in the spring, then. It’s chanterelle season, and they put them in everything.
The Umbrians do the same with truffles, only all year long. Most places truffles are a rare treat, but after a couple of weeks in Assisi and Spoleto, and endless dishes of truffle risotto and truffle pasta, you’ll want a good long rest from truffles.
The Ukulele Lady loves fresh mushrooms but abhors dried ones. I agree that the dried make a marvelous flavor base for mushroom soups and other dishes. So I sneak ‘em in.
I LOVE mushrooms! Stuffed mushrooms are my absolute favorite, but I’ll also eat the raw, dipped in hummus, on salads, fried, sauteed, mushroom ravioli, you name it!
(Now I’m hungry for mushrooms. I hope there are some in the fridge)
Now I want to cook some mushrooms and shallots in a little butter, and then melt stinky cheese over it.
I can’t even begin to understand the dislike of mushrooms. I love both the (usually) delicate taste and texture, and like to have 'em on all kinds of things – pizzas, sauteed whole mushrooms on spaghetti, marinated grilled mushrooms on steak, etc. etc. Rice made with vegetable broth gets extra zing from dried porcini mushrooms. Steak is mightily enhanced with large cremini or portobello mushrooms marinated in Japanese vinaigrette and teriyaki sauce and thrown on a hot grill. Whole small creminis are great sauteed in Provencal garlic butter. I had a wonderfully delicious bowl of mushroom soup from a takeout the other day, just brimming with rich mushroom flavor. All it needed was a dash of cognac and a garnish of fresh cilantro and it would have been fit as a starter in the finest restaurant. 
It’s pretty much de rigeur for Polish mushroom soup. I was a bit surprised, as these mushrooms had been sitting in my freezer for a couple years now (totally forgot I had them until I found them a couple weeks ago), and they were, as far as I remember, from the forest near my aunt’s farm in Poland. I thought for sure they would have been freezer burnt or something, but, no. Tasted absolutely delicious! Reconstituted them with some hot homemade chicken stock and they weren’t even the least bit rubbery or tough when rehydrated and their liquor wasn’t the least bit bitter (as has happened to me in the past with certain dried mushrooms.) They’re some type of bolete/porcini mushroom.
But, yeah, other than that, nice and simple: a little onion, salt & pepper, fresh & dried mushrooms, light homemade chicken stock, some grated fresh pasta I had in the freezer to make it a little more filling, and a touch of cream. Just let the mushroom flavor shine.
While I love them, I can easily understand why people don’t. They have a texture that puts off many people and a particular earthy taste and scent that I can see as being polarizing.
Yeah, I was being a little facetious. Of course I understand that people have different tastes, I was just saying it’s so much the opposite of my own taste that I can’t really identify with it. It’s the subtle earthiness and texture that I love.
That said, truffles are essentially an extreme version of the earthiness of mushrooms and I don’t necessarily rave about them the same way. There’s a boutique grocery near me that makes truffle mac and cheese, and I don’t care for it. Mac and cheese is a basic comfort food that shouldn’t be pungent and earthy. The truffle-ization of it is all upscale and stuff, but it’s just wrong.
Just remember these two simple rules:
You can eat any mushroom you find in the wild.
You can eat some mushrooms you find in the wild a second time.
I can eat em creamy like in carbonara, or with with braised red meat, or vinegared in salad, or buttered, or toasted along with the onions during a barbecue steak meal. I’m just not crazy about it in any kind of soup. And I really hate chicharooms (battered and deep fried.)
Yeah, I love truffles, but truffle mac and cheese doesn’t appeal to me. To me, mac and cheese is supposed to be mild and homey and not strongly flavored at all. I don’t like any of those fancied-up mac and cheeses (except maybe for beefy mac and cheese, but that’s not exactly “fancied-up.”) That said, my favorite truffle dish (not that I’ve had a lot) is just a simple pasta with butter, parmesan, and truffles, and little else.
Yep - I adore mushrooms and most things mushroomy, including a wide selection of wild varieties. I even took a graduate course on mushroom taxonomy ;).
But as above I’ve been trying for years to cultivate a taste for truffles and so far I’ve been unsuccessful. In tiny amounts( or as oil or salt flavoring) find them edible, but they overall detract from every single dish. In large amounts, like shaved pieces, I find them pretty much inedible. The flavor is just too much for me. Go figure.
I forgot, the only burger I eat nowadays are cheese melts with mushrooms. I’ve come to despise any kind of spread in a burger; whether white, red, or yellow.
That sounds perfectly lovely!
The poor man’s alternative in the absence of truffles is a simple pasta with a nice mellow semplice sauce and brown cremini mushrooms sauteed in Provencal garlic butter. I’ve tried different ways of doing the mushrooms including the lazy way of popping them in the oven smothered in garlic butter, but nothing beats my heavy Cuisinart saute pan for mushrooms. There’s more splatter and mess but that’s the nature of cooking!
Mushrooms are delicious. Period.
I voted yes…not because I particularly like to eat them but more because I appreciate the natural beauty of their varied forms and colors.
I found it very odd overseas that twice, French people identified a dish as being “meatless” when it contained ham. Of course, 2 people don’t represent the whole country, but I found it very strange.
Here, the mushrooms go on top of the cheese, raw. They tend to be grilled and yummy, not soggy.
Which is why you should have them both together.
I answered yes because on balance, I like mushrooms. But there is one MASSIVE caveat: they have to be completely solid. They can be sliced, whole, chopped, whatever, but they cannot be at all liquidy. This includes being in a liquid and giving flavour to that liquid.
Reason:
When I was in college I came down with very serious pneumonia and was hospitalised for 8 days. I was coughing up so much that the nurses had to change the cup by my bedside every few hours.
After a few days when I had recovered enough to eat, they brought me mushroom soup. Which looked exactly like the stuff in my cup.
This was over 20 years ago. To this day, liquidy mushrooms still make me retch.