Brushing up

Mushrooms are one of my favourite foods, I find them very versatile to cook with, and can often be the centre part of a dish or as a side. They are delicate little things, which grow in the dark, and need a lot of humidity to produce their familiar caps.

We have a farm about 45 minutes from us who grow some delicious mushrooms, and sell them at the local markets in the area. I particularly like their Champignon de Paris brun, which are quite tight in texture, very tasty, and their pleurottes, a bluish mushroom shaped a bit like a trumpet. These are wonderful sautéed in a bit of butter, garlic and parsley.

These fragile fungi often have the remnants of the earth they were grown in embedded in their caps and stalks. Washing them also washes away their flavour, and rubbing them with a tea towel easily damages them. So the other day, whilst we were in Troyes, we visited one of our favourite hardware stores and purchased a ‘Mushroom brush’. Shaped like a little mushroom itself, this brush allows us to get the dirt off of the mushrooms without causing harm. Splendid!