Wild Mushroom Mac & Cheese

The other morning I just happened to be sitting in a waiting room at the doctor's office watching some snooty chef from an upscale New York City restaurant making this super delicious- looking mac & cheese with wild mushrooms on daytime television. There were several things about the recipe that bugged me. First, you can’t throw out the word “velouté” without sounding pretentious—especially when what you’re actually making a béchamel sauce, not a velouté. Secondly, in these treacherous economic times, who can afford to buy three pounds of expensive gourmet mushrooms only to use half of them to infuse a cream sauce and then throw them away? Third, who even has time to infuse a cream sauce with mushrooms? Fourth, and finally, even Paula Deen usually stops at one stick of butter, so really, two sticks of butter and four cups of heavy cream? After all that cholesterol and fat, you should either up Dad’s life insurance policy or grind up a couple of Crestor and a baby aspirin over the top of the whole dish.

For my anti-mushroom friends, I will include a fungi-free variation at the end.

So what I’ve done here is as follows:

•Reduce the overall fat of the original recipe by half.
•Use whole grain pasta to add fiber and nutritional value.
•Keep all the flavor of the original dish.
•Get rid of the snooty French cooking terminology – or at least explain it correctly when I do use it.
•Utilize easily accessible ingredients that you can find in your local supermarket and equipment you already have in your kitchen.



Wild Mushroom Mac & Cheese
Serves 6

Ingredients:
½ cup of butter (no substitutions)
4-6 oz. of assorted mushroom blend (white button, oyster, cremini/baby bella, and shitake) or about 3 cups total
½ oz. dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in ½ cup of warm water for 20 min.
1 shallot bulb, minced
1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
2 cups skim milk
2 cups heavy cream (may substitute half & half or whole milk to further reduce fat)
½ tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. coarse salt
8 oz. fontina cheese, shredded
8 oz. whole wheat rotini, cooked according to package directions
¼ cup dry bread crumbs
1 tsp. Herbes de Provence (or any blend of herbs of your choice)

Directions:
1.Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Spray a large casserole dish with cooking spray.
2.In a small bowl, break up the dried porcini mushrooms into small pieces. Add the water and soak for 20 minutes.
3.Meanwhile, break up the other mushrooms into bite sized pieces. You can coarsely chop firm mushrooms such as button, shitake or cremini/baby bella. More delicate oyster mushrooms should be separated by hand.
4.Mince the shallot bulb.
5.Melt the butter in a skillet large enough to accommodate the mushrooms and milk mixture combine. Gently brown the butter over medium heat until the milk solids are golden brown. Do not over-brown the butter, and stir frequently so the milk solids don’t scorch on the bottom of the skillet.
6.Add all of the mushrooms to the brown butter except the porcini and sauté for 3-4 minutes until soft.
7.Squeeze all of the liquid out of the porcinis and add them to the mushroom mixture. Strain the porcini liquid through a fine mesh strainer, cheese cloth, or a coffee filter and reserve for later. Sauté the porcinis with the other mushrooms for an additional 1-2 minutes.
8.Add the minced shallot and sauté along with the mushrooms until the shallot is translucent and soft, about 3 more minutes. Do not let the shallot brown.
9.Add the all-purpose flour and cook for about 3 minutes, stirring frequently, to make a blonde roux. This step both prevents your sauce from tasting like paste and controls how much the flour will thicken the finished sauce.
10.Add the milk mixture to the roux, whisking constantly, until the flour is all blended smoothly into the milk mixture. Add the salt and pepper.
11.Stir frequently over medium heat until the white sauce is thickened and reduces by about ¼, for approximately 20-25 minutes. Do not allow the sauce to boil. If it begins to bubble around the edges, reduce the heat.
12.Add the strained porcini liquid and whisk into the sauce.
13.Add the shredded fontina cheese, whisking until the cheese is completely melted and thoroughly incorporated into the finished sauce.
14.Combine the cooked pasta and the finished cheese sauce. Pour into the prepared casserole dish.
15.Sprinkle the bread crumbs and herbes de Provence over the mac & cheese. Bake at 375 degrees F for about 25-30 minutes, until browned and bubbly.

I served this with roasted asparagus, a rotisserie chicken from the deli, and a pre-made focaccia from the bakery of my local Kroger.


Fungi-Free Variation
You can substitute a chopped medium onion for the mushrooms, and still get a delicious, albeit less fancy mac & cheese. You may also use a roughly equal amount of any cheese you desire. The culinary police will not come get you.

*For the inquiring minds who want to know, a velouté is a white sauce made of meat, poultry or vegetable stock thickened with a flour and butter roux. In other words, it's gravy. A béchamel is a white sauce made of milk or cream thickened with a roux of flour and butter. These are two of the five "mother" sauces of classic French cuisine. And yes, I can name the other three if you are really dying to know.