Basya Tsybukmakher
Sometimes you feel like cooking something a little special… Stuffed with something a little out of the ordinary… But what—and with what? We've already done peppers. Zucchini, potatoes, eggplants—done. Fish is sacred. And at the greengrocer's—huge, exceptionally fresh button mushrooms, white as snow maidens.
So, mushrooms. There are countless recipes for them, and they all begin with the words “cut the stems off the button mushrooms and chop them finely.” After that, you go your own way. You cut off those very stems. Using a little technical ingenuity, you hollow out the mushroom caps and stuff them with whatever you have on hand.
Then Aunt Betya arrives on a friendly mission—to have a chat “about life.” She spots the finished button mushrooms…
“Oh, how pretty…” she says. “What position were they in while you put them through their culinary torture: their natural one, legs down, and then you turned them over? Or legs up? I understand that you stood over them on your own two feet until they carried you out of the kitchen feet first… I understand. I understand. What's not to understand? But I need to understand better. Let me take a look at the mushroom anatomy… Oh! It's all simple. Caps with their backs down, and where the leg is, that's the top. So those legs have to be chopped up… What did you use, a food processor? Not a food processor? That knife of yours and those hands of yours? You're a masochist, you are. Working yourself to the bone! And at what point did you stuff all this into the mushrooms? Once you'd hollowed everything out of them? Logical: if you don't hollow it out, you can't stuff it in. And then what? You simmered them… But when did you hollow them out? Before you simmered them? I almost understand. I think I understand. Right. Let me write this down. So first you hollowed them out, then stuffed them, then simmered them… And when did you bake them? You didn't bake them… Uh-huh. Just simmered them... And in what? I understand it was in a deep frying pan. But what did you simmer them in, water? Vey iz mir… In a tomato-soy sauce made with date honey?! You've amazed me with your skills. Without you, I could never have grasped anything so complicated. I'm not much of an expert at gefilte fish, and when it comes to button mushrooms, I'm no expert at all. And where did the filling in the mushrooms come from? From carrots, onions, peppers, mushroom stems, and chicken parts? Fried beforehand? And they didn't fall out? Here's what else I haven't understood: where did the chicken parts come from? The refrigerator? And the mushroom stems… I still can't understand. They're stuck to the mushroom good and tight... How did you sever those stems so neatly from the caps? You have to tear them off, rip them away somehow. It's a complicated process. What? You cut them free with a little knife? And then hollowed them out with an ice cream scoop? Oh. What does ice cream have to do with this? Ah, I understand! It finally clicked! Ice cream has to come in balls. You make them with a scoop. A special one. Help! You dug a trench in the mushroom cap with the sharp edge of that scoop?! Horrible. I've written everything down. But the most horrible thing is that this recipe is completely useless to me: my children don't eat mushrooms at all, I don't have a husband, and I don't feel like cooking for myself. Life is complicated enough as it is. Why make it more complicated with mushrooms?”
Recipe, story, and photo by Zinaida Vilkoritskaya