The Mushroom Feast - Tapa dura

"'When all's said and written, there's nothing better than field mushrooms that you have gathered yourself, on toast, for breakfast.' Jane Grigson, The Mushroom Feast"

The Mushroom Feast is an indispensable classic for all those who love mushrooms. It is a fine, timeless, literary cookbook. Truffles ceps morels, they all conjure visions of one of the most intriguing and subtle of all gastronomic treats. Yet amateur cooks can be mystified by how best to prepare them, while epicures hunger for new ways to expand their repertoires. With more than 250 recipes, Jane Grigson describes the preparation of the best fresh and preserved mushrooms. Besides the traditional use of mushrooms to enhance meat and vegetable dishes, edible fungi are made into pate, powdered, pureed into mushroom ketchup, baked into a flan (an Alice B. Toklas specialty), baked as a cake and used in many other dishes - from the simple to the highly sophisticated for soups, sauces, stuffings, main courses, too intriguing to resist. Included are helpful tips for selecting and preserving the best edible mushrooms (both wild and cultivated), the folklore behind the recipes, a brief history of mushroom cultivation, guides to distinguish edible from poisonous fungi for those who venture to pick their own, and charming line drawings of the twenty-one most common species. Jane Grigson was one of the leading cookery writers of her generation. She was brought up in the north-east of England and took an English degree at Cambridge in 1949. She then worked in art galleries and publishers' offices and then as a translator. Her first cookery book, CHARCUTERIE AND FRENCH PORK COOKERY was the result of her time spent in France. GOOD THINGS, FOOD WITH THE FAMOUS, FISH COOKERY and THE MUSHROOM FEAST followed. In 1968 she began her long association with the Observer Colour Magazine for whom she wrote right up to her death in March 1990.