Mushroom Marsala with Artichoke Hearts

Looking for some guidance on how to best prepare mushrooms? Give this rich, decadent pasta dish a try. As much fun to make as it is to enjoy!

I have not eaten a mushroom since I was nine and my mom tricked me into eating one, telling me it was just “a bean.” Standing in the kitchen near the stove where she was making dinner, chewing with an intesne curiosity, I was actually enjoying the damn thing (somewhat). Then, she revealed to me that the bean was actually a cremini mushroom at which point, I lept to the sink, spit it out and declared my total disgust and feelings of betrayal in the most dramatic way I could possibly fashion.  Having watched a lot of Dallas as a kid, I’m sure I really managed to sell it.

Were these NOT the same things that occasionally grew on the corners of our front lawn? Were these NOT the same things dad warned me away from because of their possibly poisonous nature?

Was my mother out to kill me?

Well no, in fact, they were NOT the same things as the possibly toxic (but probably not) varieties making homes out front the house. And I quickly understood that. But divorcing myself from a distatse, an almost irrational fear of the mushroom, has taken me decades.

I pick them off pizza. I fish them out of salads. And pack anything you damn well want into the caps, heat them up and drop them in front of me. I’ll suck on my sneaker instead.

And yet… I could not get this recipe out of my head. Maybe a mushroom on its own didn’t sound all that hot, but mushrooms with wine, pasta, cheese, and onions? This is something a spore-bearing fungus hater might be able to get behind.

Mom has often told me I was missing the boat on mushrooms. This patsa dish looked and sounded so rewarding that maybe, I thought to myself, just maybe, this would be the meal that could lead me to welcoming mushrooms into my kitchen on a regular basis.

And it was! Moms always know.

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Brussels Sprouts with Figs and Bacon

Too many people don’t know how to cook sprouts. If you’re one of them, here’s a sweet and savory recipe to get you started!

One of the most common ways Brussels sprouts are prepared in the United States is by boiling, steaming or roasting – more than enough reason right there to stay the hell away from them. Brussels sprouts are of the same family as cabbage, kale, and collard greens, and if steaming, boiling or roasting a plate of any of those vegetables and serving them up to your family sounds like a fab-oo idea, then by all means stop reading here, head to the kitchen and take one giant step toward complete familial alienation.

Say it out loud… “how does boiled kale sound to everyone tonight?” and you see my point.

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Simple Marinara Sauce Recipe

Of all sauces for pasta, marinara is the easiest. If your mother forgot to teach you how to make spaghetti sauce, here’s the recipe for you.

Learn from me, dear readers.  DO NOT watch FOOD NETWORK after 10pm!  Last week there was a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives marathon on, and I was only about 20 minutes into it when I could no longer resist the call of the kitchen.  Unfortunately, raw materials were limited, so instead of replicating the corned beef and cabbage, baked mac and cheese, polenta, and stuffed meatballs Guy Fieri was lucky enough to inhale, I was stuck sucking down three slices of garlic bread and a handful of peanut butter chips.  Not quite up to my usual standards, and also slightly embarrassing.  Yet still most satisfying!

Changing topics now.  Marinara sauce is something you can always put to good use.  And a simple homemade spaghetti sauce recipe is something every cook should have committed to memory.  Of course you can use it to top pasta, but don’t stop there.  Slather up a grilled vegetable sandwich, or just drop in some meatballs and Italian sausages, heat it up, and eat it straight from the pot right there over the sink!

As you can see from the above, I used this batch of sauce for sandwiches (sausage, cheese, bell pepper and onion) and got the big thumbs up from MG.  Wrap these babies in foil and cook at 400 F for about thirty  to forty minutes.  Good hot, good cold the next day, good at 4 am in the morning when your building’s fire alarm goes off and you want to nosh on something while standing in your slippers on the street.

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Jalapeno Cheddar Scones

Scones make me think of a stodgy, listless tea party with Joan Plowright and Emma Thompson in a Merchant-Ivory picture, where no one reveals a single true emotion, Joan peers down through half-spectacles and huffs disapprovingly at everything she sees, and Emma is fraught with concern over relatives on deathbeds, if she’ll be invited to a respectable home for the winter, and whether or not Fanny the chambermaid has located the missing bed warmer.

No… scones do not interest me in the least. I’ll happily pass them up in any bakery case or grocery aisle, in any stage of freshness any day of the week. I’ve always found them to be heavy, cumbersome, and a real effort to get through, much like many a Merchant-Ivory picture.

Then I discovered this recipe for jalapeno cheddar scones.

If Merchant-Ivory had ever made a film where Emma and Joan have a hot-oil wrestling match and Grace Jones kicks in the salon door and snaps Hugh Grant’s neck between her thighs, these are the scones that would be served.

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Season of the Cookie: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Through these cookies, you will come to understand why it is necessary for me to keep all my toilet paper in the trunk of my car.

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Salami with Fennel and Asiago Pizza

I’m giving this pizza four stars.  One for every slice of it MG polished off last night.  And they weren’t small slices, either.  They weren’t even reasonable slices.  These were some seriously wide and weighted down wedges!  You really have to respect MG’s tenacity.  He gets the job done!

Underneath that deceptively simple asiago/mozzarella cheese canopy are hiding chunks of shiitake mushroom, aromatic fennel, tangy tomato, onion, and thick cuts of spicy salami.  I had complete confidence in all of these ingredients with the exception of the fennel.  I’d never used it in a pizza before, and I was worried its flavor might overwhelm.  No need to fear.  This pizza was all sorts of savory, rich, and meaty, with just pings here and there of fennel sweetness.

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Pizza and a Movie #5: Honey, Brie and Onion Pizza with The Jungle Book (1942)

The 1942 live-action adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book offers up an entire menagerie of real-life jungle animals in its opening minutes. Before we meet any of the film’s main characters, we are treated to footage of predatory wolves, mischievous monkeys, lumbering elephants, leopards, bears, hyenas, jackals and a man-eating tiger.  It reminded me of the terrific Disney True Life Adventure documentary series I watched when I was a kid.

The footage is a masterful way to open the story.  Unfortunately, real-life bears, leopards and gazelle are notoriously temperamental when it comes to performing traditional movie duties like, say… delivering lines, hitting their marks and recounting their cocaine addictions to Mary Hart.  So, after these few fun first minutes, the live animals all but disappear, and we spend the next ninety minutes with stuffed tigers, rubber snakes on strings, and an alligator who’s head completely separates from the rest of his body whenever his jaw opens for the camera.  I choose to believe this particular alligator merely suffers from a herniated disc in its neck and just needs some good acupuncture.  I’m still working on an excuse for the fact that I could hear its motor.

Still, considering it’s nearly seventy years old, The Jungle Book is a pretty ambitious film. The human actors, once they arrive, do a fairly good job at moving the story along.  And even though most of the animals may be constructed from fiberglass and paint, they still demonstrate more charisma than my actual living cat does any day of the week.

Oh Z, what would become of you in the wild?

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Tv Food and Drink: Podcast #1 Featuring Sammy Davis Jr, Ann-Margret and Frank Sinatra

I know… you’ve been asking yourself for over two years now… “What does Gary Green actually sound like? Could his voice possibly be as masculine and virile-sounding as I’ve always imagined??”

Well, your curiosity is about to be satisfied. Please enjoy my debut podcast. This was truly my very first attempt at something I’ve wanted to tackle for a long, long time. As it progresses, I hope to involve all of my regular visitors into the conversation via phone interview, so all us food/drink/tv bloggers can connect to one another on a more personal level!

And because it wouldn’t be a Gary Green/Tv Food and Drink Production without a game show element, there’s, of course, a giveaway element. If you know the answer to the trivia question I ask mid-way through the podcast, and you’re the first person to e-mail me at TvFoodAndDrink@gmail.com, there are two inaugural podcast prizes on their way to your doorstep!

Thanks for taking a listen!