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It was the perfect weekend to cook those homegrown Portabellas. It was the worst weekend to cook those homegrown Portabellas.
It was perfect because Carrie and I were snowbound in our Takoma Park home, our cars buried in drifts and walls of snowplough-created ice, snow, and slush. (Plus, I did mention our cable/internet was down all weekend?). It was the worst because, well, I refused to play suburban Gladiator just to get my hands on a cartoon of milk, some double-stuff Oreos, and a family-size tube of Ben Gay for the post-shoveling team.
So I had to do what cooks always did before the advent of convenience stores, 24-hour Harris Teeters, and farmers markets. I had to whip up some godforsaken hash from the ingredients on hand.
I cleaned out the freezer (don’t ask, it’s always embarrassing), poked through the pantry, and fridge, and found enough to put together a very simple recipe for those Portabellas.
I cleaned the caps with a brush, sprinkled them with sea salt and pepper, and drizzled a little olive oil on them to make sure they wouldn’t dry out during a brief 7-minute roast. Then I poached some eggs, whipped up an easy lemon/butter/caper sauce, and pour it over the top of this stacked mushroom cap/poached egg. As a final touch, I drizzled a little extra virgin olive oil over the top and cracked some fresh pepper on it.
The final dish was, if I may say, delicious. Carrie then one-upped me the following morning.
She improvised some duxelles mixed with leftover dates, garlic, parsley, and a bottled hot sauce. She then used the mixture as the basis for a sweet-savory omelet that included the duxelles and some Spanish tetilla cheese that Carrie’s sister, Molly, had given us for Christmas.
I wolfed that omelet down like it was a last meal.
