How'd you cook the mushrooms? Did you cook them in oil? Did you baste them with butter, garlic and herbs? Did you balance them with soy sauce and lemon juice? Did you make them delicious? These are the questions cooks ask cooks. I like garlic and butter. Often I am disappointed to find that herbs added to roasting mushrooms, meat, and fish taste of woody stems rather than bright aromatic leaves. We often avoid this step and instead add freshly torn herbs at the last moment. Soy sauce, lemon juice, and other similar ingredients are great flavor enhancers, which allow us to utilize umami and acidity to balance flavors.
Good pepperoni has a rich meaty flavor. It has a lactic tang. It has garlic, smoke, and spice. It is bursting with flavorful and aromatic fat. We used that fat to roast matsutake mushrooms. And we relied on its flavor to season and balance them. These gorgeous specimens happily absorbed nuances of my current flavor fetish and made them both shine.
Years Past
