If you consider yourself a foodie, you need to follow Kenji Lopez and his blog, Serious Eats. I adapted his delicious cornbread recipe to use up some fresh ground heirloom red cornmeal and the overflow bounty of kale that showed up last Friday in my farm box, along with some mushrooms I had on hand. What I liked about this recipe is that it is not your typical sweet cake-type cornbread ala Marie Callendar's. I think most people would agree that sweet cornbread (especially drizzled with honey butter) is delicious. However, if you are watching your sugar and carb intake very carefully like I am, you need to make choices with what you eat.
This recipe was a great compromise between sweet and savory and produced a very hearty, earthy bread that could practically be a meal by itself. What I especially loved was the strong mushroom flavor this had, and how wonderful the candy cap mushrooms made the house smell as it baked. If you have never used them before, candy cap mushrooms are the most amazing thing ever. They smell like maple syrup and are often called the dessert mushroom. I first discovered them at Far West Fungi, a great mushroom shop in San Francisco's Ferry Building. I was walking past the store and could smell them through their sealed packaging as I passed by. Too hard to resist - I had to try this unique mushroom, so I bought a package of dried candy caps and made this awesome butternut squash and candy cap mushroom creme brulee from the chef at Pine Ridge Vineyards:
http://www.touringandtasting.com/desserts/pine-ridge-butternut-creme-brulee
I will admit, candy caps are not inexpensive, but I had 1/2 a bag left over from the creme brulee and this cornbread recipe seemed especially suited for them. When I read Kenji's post about making cornbread that wasn't sweet, it struck me that I could use these mushrooms to add sweetness without adding sugar. To intensify the mushroom taste, I also decided to add a package of shitakes that had been in my fridge way too long, and were starting to dehydrate.
You can find the base recipe at this link (I
don't think it's right to just copy someone else's recipe, so sorry for the redirect):
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/01/moist-and-tender-brown-butter-cornbread-recipe.html However, I will share the modifications I made.
1) In place of the fine yellow cornmeal called for in Kenji's recipe, I used 1 cup of coarse-ground heirloom red corn cornmeal. This added protein, gave the bread a very robust wholesome flavor, and intensified the crunch this bread derives from being cooked in a cast iron skillet.
2) To pack this cornbread with vegetables, I added the following items to the wet ingredients in step 2 of Kenji's recipe:
- 2 cups fresh lacinato kale, stems removed, cut into slivers
- 1 thick slice (3/8 inch) of yellow onion, minced (LOVED the way this tasted in the bread)
- 1 cup of fresh shitake mushrooms, finely chopped
- 1/2 oz dried candy cap mushrooms, ground into powder in a spice grinder (or a high speed blender)
I followed the rest of the recipe as described, including baking the cornbread in a cast iron skillet. It turned out great. As soon as it was ready to cut open, I couldn't resist spreading a slice with some truffle butter for that ultimate mushroom rush.
Today was a horrendously long day at work, starting with a 5 AM conference call/training session with Europe and ending with an evening call with Asia. I am very grateful for my incredible and supportive husband, who knew I would have no time to cook today, and took it upon himself to make a vegetable entree for me. Most likely he opened the refrigerator and saw the 200 packages of mushrooms I'd accidentally ordered for my farm delivery this week and decided to use them in this dinner. He did an internet search and came across Rick Bayless' recipe for Mushroom Tacos (which sounds less perverted than their official name, Hongos Guisados. Or maybe it's just me and my perverted mind that thinks that sounds perverted?) At any rate, I know he probably thought I would enjoy this recipe because I record all the Rick Bayless PBS "Mexico: One Plate at at Time" TV shows and force him to watch them with me while I meticulously take notes on how to make sopas, salsas, and tamales. And I also dragged him to dinner Frontera Grill when we were in Chicago visiting our daughter, who as it turns out is also a Rick Bayless fan and owner of several of his excellent cookbooks. Of course, he had an excellent time and a great meal at Frontera, and we are looking forward to going back and visiting some of Rick's other Chicago restaurants as well.
The recipe was tangy and garlicky, and very filling despite the absence of meat. The original recipe anticipates this will be made as a filling for soft
tacos, but I found it was a little too lacking in texture, so we decided
to pan fry some corn tortillas, dust them with a little salt and garlic
powder, and serve these as crispy tostadas instead. I spread a little guacamole as the base, then followed with shredded lettuce, the mushroom filling, some grated jack cheese, and fresh chopped cilantro. While a margherita would have been perfect with these, I settled for a nice glass of Pinot Noir (much lower in carbs and also readily available - as in handed to me as I walked through the front door at 9 PM). This dinner was a perfect end to a very stressful day - thank you Bob! The recipe can be found here: http://www.rickbayless.com/recipe/soft-taco-filling-stewed-mushrooms-with-onions-and-garlic/ 
