She Stews to Conquer

By their very nature, the lead-weighted, low-slung clouds hanging over the land this time of year recommend foods of a substantial, ambrosial sort. Stews come to mind, the kind that cook slowly, exuding a complicated aroma that fills a house faster than laughter.

Good stews have the mysterious ability to ease aches in bones grown weary at the end of a cold, dark, rainy day. They are essentially simple dishes, yet this should not belie the way they taste, for the best stews have complex flavors that reach right into the blood, flavors that emerge from the heartiest ingredients in a cook’s larder--beef, onions, and especially mushrooms.

The stews cooked by Marguerite Margason always seem to achieve this state of grace. She learned to cook them from her mother who, in turn, learned from her mother.

Though Marguerite grew up in Seattle, her parents immigrated from France. They were intellectuals who retained the better part of their culture, including the food on the table. Marguerite’s grandmother had been a professional cook in turn-of-the-century Paris, preparing the meals for the household of Jean Jaures, the great French Socialist reformer. Grandmere saw to it that her own daughter knew the ways of the French kitchen, and Marguerite’s mother drummed it into Marguerite’s head as well, along with French verbs and piano scales.

This isn’t to say that Marguerite cooks only in the temple of Gallic tradition. Her tastes have become far more catholic than her mother could ever dream. She is as familiar with the foods of North Africa, North and South India, Thailand and various provinces of China as she is with the full breadth of the French culinary liturgy, let alone any of the other regional cuisines of Europe anyone might care to mention. Wherever she has traveled, she has shopped and cooked. Whatever she has learned, she has brought home with her, incorporating it into the regular meals of her house without a hint of pretension. She has about her a directness and honesty few other cooks ever seem to muster.

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Her pantry spills over with aloe wood, ras al hanout , green and red curry paste, edible camphor, ambergris and other exotica she has picked up here and there. The shelves bear up under the full weight of bottles, cans and jars of various condiments, spices and concoctions. But one container in particular stands apart on the shelf, and Marguerite has to climb up a short step stool to get it down.

It is an old, flat-sided tea tin with a hinged lid. Scenes of India have been embossed into the metal. The tin belonged to Marguerite’s mother. It was to this tin that she consigned the mushrooms she picked and dried from spring to fall. After a heavy rain, young Marguerite and her mother could be seen in their Seattle neighborhood, proceeding from lawn to lawn, picking the small fairy ring mushrooms known as Marasmius oreades. They knew better than to confuse these with the somewhat similar-looking, though slightly poisonous, Clitocybe dealbata or Inocybe umbratica. The neighbors were convinced that mother and daughter would be dead by nightfall.

Marasmius oreades is a tiny mushroom that shrivels down to nothing when it dries. But the smell it leaves in an old tea tin is big enough to vote. When Marguerite makes a stew, say a boeuf a la Bourguignonne , she reaches for the mushroom tin and sprinkles some of its dried contents into warm water, then uses the revived mushrooms and soaking liquid as a flavor enhancement. As simple as that. Leave the dried mushrooms out of Marguerite’s stew and the result simply isn’t all that it could be.

It takes a diligent mushroom hunter to comb the forests at the right time and come home with enough wild mushrooms to dry for use in winter. It takes an exceedingly wealthy individual to buy enough wild mushrooms at the market to dry. Packages of dried porcini imported from Italy and other dried wild mushrooms are easily found in specialty shops and some supermarkets. They add wonderful dimensions to stews and to risotti and should not be overlooked. But they too are prohibitively expensive. A cook thinks twice before dipping his fingertips into such a mushroom package, which isn’t the point.

By casually, but continually, harvesting wild mushrooms from lawns in her neighborhood, Marguerite is able to use dried mushrooms in her cooking with abandon.

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This same possibility is available to anyone with a lawn or garden bed. Sunlight isn’t an issue, though water certainly is. Fungi Perfecti, a mushroom grower’s supply company in Shelton, Wash., sells various kinds of mushroom spawn. One kind, Stropharia rugosoannulata , when introduced to hardwood chips, colonizes the bed and within a year produces masses of enormous, mild-flavored mushrooms that can be used fresh or dried. Just add water to make them grow. As long as the mushroom colonies have ample sources of nourishment, they continue to grow and produce mushrooms. Segments of fairy rings that date back 600 years have been found in Western states. Mushrooms dry in a day or two in hot sun and store well in a jar. Or an old tea tin.

Marguerite uses beef chuck in her stew, cutting it into fairly large pieces. She trims the meat of any fat, then renders the fat in a large, heavy-bottomed pan over low heat until she has enough oil in the pan to sear and thoroughly brown the chunks of beef. Using the oil from beef fat (which she discards when she has obtained a suitable amount of oil) to brown the meat heightens the final flavor of the stew. She removes the browned meat to a dish, then adds chopped onion to the pot until it takes on a little color.

She returns the meat to the pot, then dusts everything with flour, stirring and scraping and allowing that to cook for a bit. Then she adds a little beef stock, a few tablespoons of tomato paste, a medium-sized can of tomato sauce, bay leaf, thyme, a clove or two of minced garlic, salt and pepper, the mushrooms and their soaking liquid, and enough red wine (a Burgundy is traditional) to cover the meat. Lid in place, all of that slowly cooks and blends and joins hands in the pot and fills the house with ambrosial scents. Remove the lid for the last hour or so to cook down the liquid.

Depending on her mood, Marguerite would serve this stew with scalloped potatoes, or just good crusty bread and a big salad. It is guaranteed to clear the gray, wet day out of any system.

Sources

Cooking with wild mushrooms is a lot less expensive when you grow the mushrooms yourself. One good source for mushroom spawn is Fungi Perfecti, a mushroom grower’s supply company that sells its products by mail. Call (800) 780-9126 for information or write P.O. Box 7634, Olympia, Wash. 98507 for a $3 catalogue or a free color brochure.