As restaurants around the country make the humble mushroom an essential main dish, home cooks can learn a few tricks for dinner, too.
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How would you like that mushroom? Medium-rare perhaps? Increasingly, an epic mushroom main course is becoming as essential as a steak or fillet of salmon on restaurant menus around the country.
At Café Chelsea in Manhattan a meaty, ruffle-edged slab of maitake, also known as hen-of-the-woods, is prepared like steak au poivre with a velvety peppercorn-riddled sauce, listed among the grill items and appointed with a steak knife.
“I had to have a vegetarian item and I knew a mushroom could be more than just a side,” said Derek Boccagno, the restaurant’s executive chef. “The mushroom au poivre is one of our most popular dishes.”
Recipe: Maitake au Poivre
The creativity abounds. There’s king oyster mushroom and eggplant kebabs at Acadia in Midtown, porcini fondue at the Lavaux Wine Bar in the West Village and the medley of “Take-out Mushrooms” with scallion pancakes at Tatiana, Kwame Onwuachi’s jewel in Lincoln Center.
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