For Button Mushroom day, I’m making one of my most enjoyed recipes of… all time? I make this *not* just around Thanksgiving (5 Frimaire) but all year long.  It was one of the only vegetables my then-one year old would eat, so there was a time when I was making this once a week. The recipe is pretty simple except for the onion topping. I’ve always used Alton Brown’s recipe, but have developed a hybrid onion variation that involves some baking and some frying. I’ve included both variations so you, gentle reader, can choose to do one, the other, or both. Granted, button mushrooms are not really the star of this dish, but play a vital role, I assure you. And, did you know that button mushrooms are simply young portobellos? I didn’t.

Green Bean Casserole 

Beans and sauce

1 lb fresh green beans, trimmed

2 tbs butter

12 oz button mushrooms, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 tsp nutmeg

2 tbs all purpose flour

1 cup chicken broth

1 cup half-and-half

Topping, 2 ways 

2 medium onions, sliced on a mandolin

Baking

1/4 cup milk

1/2 cup panko

1 tsp salt

Frying

1 egg yolk

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups club soda

1 1/4 cups rice flour

Safflower oil for frying

First, preheat the oven to 350. Bring a pot of salted water to boil and boil the green beans for 3-4 minutes, until they turn bright green. Remove with a slotted spoon and reserve in a bowl of ice water.

Next, the sauce. Melt two tablespoons of butter in a large skillet. Add the mushrooms, some salt and pepper and cook over medium for about 4 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and nutmeg and cook for another minute. Add the two tablespoons of all purpose flour and stir. Cook for another minute or so and add the chicken broth and half. Simmer for a few minutes until the mixture thickens.

Place the cooled and drained green beans in a casserole dish and add the cream of mushroom soup you just made. Stir to combine and set aside.

Now, for the onions. If you are going to bake the onions, pour the milk into a medium bowl and the panko and salt into another bowl. In batches, wet the onions in the milk and then coat with the panko. Spread them on a large baking sheet that has been lined with parchment or a silpat. Bake until they start to turn golden brown about 20 minutes.

To fry the onions and get a crispier texture, heat up about two inches of safflower oil in a large pot. Mix the rice flour, salt, club soda and egg yolk in a medium bowl. When the oil is hot enough to fry, start dipping the onions into the rice flour mixture and dropping them into the oil with a spider or slotted spoon. Fry until golden brown and remove to a paper lined plate.

Once the onions are done, take about a half cup of onions and mix them into the green bean mixture. Top with the remaining onions. Bake the dish at 350 until bubbly, about 15 minutes. Enjoy!

 

Happy Rhubarb day! For 11 Floréal, we are celebrating the pie plant. David Lebovitz has an anecdote in Ready for Dessert about shopping in a French market and purchasing rhubarb only to have several French ladies instruct him that rhubarb absolutement must be peeled. For today’s dish, I am adapting Rose Levy Beranbaum‘s BluRhu Pie from her Baking Bible.

Rhubarb Blueberry Pie 

Pie crust (enough for the tin and a lattice crust)

1/2 cup plus 1 tbs of sugar

1 tbs plus 21/4 tsp cornstarch

1 tsp lemon zest

pinch of salt

1/4 cup water

1 1/4 cup blueberries

2 1/4 cup fresh rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

Add all the ingredients for the filling to a medium saucepan and cook over medium heat until it reaches a boil. Simmer for a minute. Let the mixture cool and then pour it into the dough-lined pie tin. Cover with the lattice and brush the crust with some milk. Cook for 15 minutes at 425 and then lower the temperature to 350 and cook until the rhubarb mixture starts bubbling (20 – 30 minutes more). Let the pie cool completely before cutting into it. Enjoy!

Joyeux Blueberry Day, mes amis! Today in the French Republican Calendar we celebrate bilberries, which Wikipedia tells me are:

Bilberries have a smooth, circular outline at the end opposite their point of attachment, whereas blueberries retain persistent sepals there, leaving a rough, star-shaped pattern of five flaps.

Here is a bilberry. Here is a blueberry (for comparison). I’ve decided to celebrate our American bilberry cousin by making blintzes.

Blueberry Blintzes

Crepes

3/4 cup milk

5 tbs butter, melted

2 eggs

1 cup flour

pinch of salt

Filling

2 cups blueberries

7 tbs sugar

1 tbs butter

1 tsp lemon zest

2 tbs lemon juice

1/2 tsp cornstarch

pinch of salt

First, combine all the ingredients for the crepes into a blender and mix for 30 seconds. Let the batter rest for 30 minutes (to overnight) in the fridge. You can also make the blueberry filling ahead, or make it just before you’re ready to eat blintzes.

Add the blueberries, sugar, lemon zest, salt and lemon juice to a medium pan and cook until the mixture is bubbling. Add the cornstarch and cook for a minute or two more, while the mixture is bubbling. Remove from heat and add the butter.

To cook the crepes, add a tablespoon of butter to an 8 or 9-inch pan. When hot, add about a quarter cup of crepe batter and move the pan around so that batter covers the bottom of the entire pan. Cook until the edges look dry and start to curl up. Flip the crepe and cook for 30 seconds more on the opposite side. Remove and start again.

To assemble the blintzes, put two or three tablespoons of blueberry filling in the middle of a crepe and fold the crepe like a burrito. Heat two tablespoons of butter in a pan and fry the folded blintz until it gets a little golden brown on both sides. Enjoy!