You've seen those big beautiful, meaty mushrooms, portobellas, and, if you've been hanging out with me here on the blog, you know I love them. I love to grill them, roast them, put them on salads raw. I like to chop them up and saute them with onions. Yet most people don't know how to clean a mushroom -- that you should remove the gills, the mushy dark matter on the underside.
Mushrooms are a part of our human heritage, our collective consciousness. Ancient cultures used psilocybin, the “magic” mushroom, to open the “gates of heaven” and communicate with the gods. Fungi grows in every part of the world; in crevices, on trees, in cow poo. They’ve been used for over 3,000 years in Chinese medicine as a way to prevent cancer and heart disease and promote longevity.
Recipes for cooking mushrooms can be found as early as the 4th century A.D. in the collection “Apicus, Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome.” Cooking techniques can be found referenced in ancient Egyptian tablets and mushroom motifs are prolific in the pre-Colombian art of the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica
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