Today's Dinner: Failure Alert!

Lucy Waverman is a bit of a contradictory enigma to me. She's an Ontario chef who's both the food editor for the LCBO's Food and Drink magazine, from which we get a lot of good recipes, as well as several cook books at this point. Unfortunately at this point, none of her cook books have been "good enough" to own or even remotely related to our culinary point of view. On the other hand, her homemade macaroni and cheese recipe is one of our favourites. Her newest cookbook, A Year in Lucy's kitchen, is based on a great idea and has solid formatting, but doesn't present recipes that are truly accessible for all chefs. We still managed to find a few recipes that we liked though, and kept in mind how successful her mac and cheese recipe turned out to be.

Unfortunately, things didn't go nearly as well with the first attempt tonight. Mushrooms in Spicy Sauce was touted to be a tasty starter or vegetarian main course, so that's how we tried it.

Mushrooms in Spicy Sauce

4 anchovy fillets (not sure how its vegetarian with anchovy in it...)

2 tsp garlic

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 cup parsley, packed

1/3 cup olive oil

2 tbsp water

1 lb king oyster or mixed mushrooms

Salt and Ground Pepper

4 slices Portuguese cornbread or Sourdough loaf, toasted

Salad

6 cups packed baby arugula or mesclun mix

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp olive oil

Maldon Salt

1. Place anchovies, garlic, paprika, parsley and 1/4 cup oil in a food process and pulse to combine. Add water if needed and process until mixture resembles pesto. Set aside.

2. Heat a large skillet over high heat, adding remaining oil. Add mushrooms and saute for 3-5 minutes or until mushrooms are golden and limp.

3. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir in pesto mixture. Cook together until hot. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper.

4. Place toast slices on individual serving plates. Brush with a little sauce from skillet. Heap mushroom mixture on top.

5. Toss arugula with vinegar and oil in a bowl. Surround toasts with salad. Sprinkle with Maldon salt.

Reflections: Well, our first issue was that I've never heard of KING oyster mushrooms before, never mind seen them anywhere for purchase. I picked this recipe out when we found another nice batch of wild chanterelles, and used them with a mix of crimini and oyster mushrooms. I threw some enoki mushrooms in the salad for balance as well. Not sure what happened with my pesto mixture, but something was DEFINITELY wrong. I could have added too much parsley since I just free handed it, or it could have been something else. There definitely wasn't any "red sauce" to brush the toast with, that's for sure. Things were seriously overpowered by the anchovies, which aren't exactly my favourite ingredient to start with. My wife had some "gourmet anchovies" in the fridge so I used those; maybe I should have cut down on the amount. Otherwise I'm really not sure what went wrong. When I try this recipe again, it'll be withOUT the anchovies...