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Recipe: The LocoMotive’s Portobello Mushrooms in Wine Sauce 14 February 2008 2:31 pm

Posted by Tracy in : cooking,recipes,restaurants,vegan,vegetarian , trackback

Happy Societal Expectations Day, everyone! Please follow that link to an excellent Dinosaur Comics about the problem with Valentines Day, but then come back here to read about a dish that’s so sexy-delicious it will drown out the taste of societal expectations 100%, unless you really don’t like mushrooms, in which case I guess the flavor of your hate will do the trick. Also, thank you for leaving more mushrooms for me! But I digress.

As I’ve mentioned before, I loved The LocoMotive Restaurant from the moment I first ate there, and I love its memory still. Their signature dish, portobello mushrooms in wine sauce, was part of the last meal I ate there, on Christmas Eve 2004, just a week before they closed their doors forever.
LocoMotive owners Lee and Eitan Zucker changed their menu every week according to the season and their whim, but these mushrooms were always offered as an entrée. Eitan once told me that there would be “a mini-revolution” among the restaurant’s regular customers if the portobellos ever disappeared from the menu, and I believed him. They are phenomenally good.

Now, I love mushrooms in general, but if I had to choose a favorite, it might be portobellos (including their delicious immature form, creminis, because I am a big cheater). So as far as I’m concerned this dish is a winner right from the get-go. We’re starting with something I love, and adding more things I love — butter, red wine, and shallots (follow that link for a nice Michael Ruhlman piece about why shallots rock). However, as with so many of my favorite recipes, the secret ingredient to this one is time. That’s what it takes to make mushroom stock and reduce it and red wine into a sauce so rich it makes my eyes roll back in my head just thinking about it. While the LocoMotive always served these mushrooms with garlic mashed potatoes, they would probably compliment just about any starch interesting enough to hold its own against intense savory flavors — a nice creamy risotto, perhaps, or homemade pasta if you really feel like showing off. Anyway. If you choose your wine carefully, the only nonvegan component to this recipe is butter, which is easily replaced with vegetable oil. I’m just saying. And now, on to the food.

Portabello Mushrooms in Wine Sauce

Makes two servings, perfect for sharing with someone awesome. If I had to guess a cooking time from beginning to end, I’d say two hours, but whatever you do, don’t rush it! Some parts of the recipe can be made ahead of time; there’s no particularly good way to share the work but if you’re cooking this dish for someone else they could do a lot worse than be in charge of a delicious starch to serve it on, as discussed above.

Ingredients

What You Do

First, make mushroom stock. (This is a step you could do a day ahead of time.) Remove mushroom stems carefully, without cracking the caps. Set the caps aside for later, then trim off and discard the root end of the stems if they’re very dirty. Crumble the rest of the stems into a saucepan, give them a rinse, then fill the pan with water until the stems are covered by about an inch, and bring it to a boil. Reduce to a simmer; cook for one hour, adding water as needed to keep the stem pieces cover. Cool.

Scoop the stem pieces out of the saucepan with a slotted spoon or skimmer, squeezing their liquid out into the broth before discarding them (at least drain them in a wire mesh strainer, but wring them out through cheesecloth or a clean kitchen towel for full points). Measure the broth; if there is more than one cup, boil it again until reduced in volume (just pour it out into a heatproof liquid measuring cup every now and then until you’re good). If you want, you can stop here and refrigerate the stock until you’re ready to do the rest of the recipe.

When you’re ready to cook the main dish, wipe off your reserved mushroom caps and slice one into 1/4-inch (1/2 cm) strips for garnish (the smallest of the three, or maybe the one that leaves you with two whole caps of close to equal size).

In a heavy skillet, heat butter (or oil) on medium heat and cook the minced shallot until limp and slightly browned, stirring constantly (it will take maybe two minutes). Remove the shallots from the skillet and set them aside (leave behind as much cooking fat as you can).

Turn the burner up all the way. Yes, you read that right. Add the mushrooms, cap side down, to the blazing-hot pan, then add the mushroom strips and sprinkle everything with salt and pepper. Sear the mushrooms 2-3 minutes or until well-browned, using tongs to move the slices a bit to prevent them from sticking (but try to resist fussing the caps; let them sear all by themselves).

After 2-3 minutes, gently lift the caps to confirm their browning, then when you’re satisfied they’re good and seared, turn them over and add the mushroom broth to the pan. Note the liquid level; you’ll be aiming for that volume of finished sauce. Next, return the cooked shallots to the pan. Add the sugar, give the sauce a stir, and continue cooking on high heat. After about 2 minutes, turn the mushroom caps over again (back to cap down, gills up). Keep cooking, stirring occasionally, until the broth reduces to a thick glaze.

Add 1 1/2 cups wine (pull the pan off the heat for this step if you’re feeling cautious, but it should be fine, even on high heat). Deglaze the pan (stir and scrape the bottom and sides to get browned bits into the sauce) and continue cooking until the sauce is once again reduced to a thick glaze. Repeat with the remaining cup of wine. You’re looking to reduce the sauce to about 1 cup (remember the volume in the pan when you first added the mushroom broth).

Taste the sauce and adjust its seasonings if desired (a little salt or sugar can do wonders for the taste, and another splash of wine will correct the volume if you’ve reduced too much).

Each cap makes one serving; share the mushroom strips for garnish.

  • Peter L.

    This sounds really awesome! I must try it.

  • http://www.tracyfood.com Tracy

    Hi Peter!

    I cannot reccommend this recipe highly enough. Let me know how it turns out for you — and enjoy!

  • Peter L.

    Well, I made it and it was — pretty good. I was using a non-stick pan, which didn’t produce as many brown crusty bits to be incorporated in the sauce, which was too bad, and the wine I chose turned out to be a little too fruity when condensed. A drier red would have been better (as you say in the recipe — I had a limited stock to choose from), but it was OK, just a little on the sweet/fruity side which wrestled with the mushrooms rather than coexist with them in gentle harmony, as it were. I became a little worried at the long cooking time, so I pulled the mushrooms out as I added the last cup of wine and reduced for a while before returning them — this seemed to work pretty well (the caps were fairly thing, and they seemed in danger of overcooking to me; maybe I am just too timid).

    Something I have done in other recipes that might work here to reduce cooking time is pre-reduce the wine — maybe simmer the 2 1/2 cups until they are thickened to a cup or a little more, then add it all at once. Since my caps seemed to be cooked about perfectly, this would have removed the step of removing the mushrooms and reducing (my step, not yours, I hasten to add again).

    Anyway, it was good, and I will no doubt try it again. I served it over rice, which was OK, although I think buttered egg noodles would have been better (for the non-vegans, and I suppose there are vegan egg noodle options, too). It occurs to me that you could make a similar sauce out of smaller mushrooms and pour it over grilled tofu or the like for a somewhat different application….

    Anyway, thanks for this; it made me very happy….

  • http://www.tracyfood.com Tracy

    Hi Peter! I’m glad the recipe made you happy, even if it didn’t turn out quite as well as you might have liked. It sounds like you’ll be giving it or similar treats another shot (perhaps with a different choice of wines?), which is even better news. Now I wonder about the importance of pan choice for this dish — I’ve always made it in my biggest, heaviest cast-iron skillet, which retains heat something fierce, so the reduction steps weren’t a threat to the ‘shrooms. Also lately I have been wondering how my recipes can best address the difference between my home (electric) stove and gas ranges, especially professional/industrial strength ones like the ones I originally used for my Sundance recipes, and where this recipe may also have been invented. Food for thought…

  • Peter L.

    I think you are right. I generally have slow “reduction time,” since I don’t get a lot of heat out of my stove (gas, but a small apartment model in a ~80 year-old house with unimpressive gas lines), and my largest pan is a non-stick deal without a load of heat retention. I keep meaning to get a large cast-iron pan, but I have not done so yet. The stove is one reason that I have pretty much given up on using a wok for the time being — it just can’t get hot enough (without a *lot* of pre-heating) to be really useful. Someday, I will have a real stove….

    But, anyway, I usually assume that a recipe won’t work out quite the way it reads the first time, and sometimes that becomes a feature — I have a couple of pepper and tomato dishes that I ignore the “simmer covered” command because, if I do, the sauce will never reduce, and I prefer the dish more like stew than soup.

    So, thanks for the recipe, and I think I will try it again — different wine, mess around with the cooking time a bit. Thanks for all the ahrd work!