Food Talk
Low calorie, high value

Mushrooms can be cooked with minimal fuss, writes Pushpesh Pant

Mushrooms, for most of us, fall in the (beautiful) twilight zone betwixt plants and animals — these are fungi. Don’t let the word put you off. Remember, penicillin, the lifesaver, is a fungus and the most expensive and valued ‘vegetables’ in the world, morels and truffles, too belong to this category. Morels are gucchi, the delicately flavoured honeycombed mushroom growing wild in Kashmir, which bring to us a taste of that paradise on earth.

But the more common variety is the button mushrooms or the champignons — dhingri or khumb in Hindi and Punjabi. There was a time when these were a rarity and restaurants produced exotica for the shakahari using canned in brine variety.

Seldom did one encounter anything else but mutter mushroom. If one had westernised palate, mushrooms on toast was the break from the beans on toast routine.

Mushroom farming mushroomed in the 1970s and the easy availability almost round the year popularised these. The Chinese eateries introduced Indian food lovers to the joys of the black mushrooms.

On a recent trip to Shimla we were delighted to learn that good old Solan takes equal pride in its mushrooms as in the stronger brew No 1. Large signboards proclaim the town as the "mushroom nagari". Tell us how, after these temptations, could we resist the pickled mushrooms on our way back?

In the West, the mushrooms have long been used to enhance the flavour of soups and stocks, as fillings, in salads and as a garnish. It is a bit surprising that their large-scale farming started in France only after the Revolution.

The mushrooms were well known to ancient Indians. Ayurveda classifies vegetables into six categories — patra (leaf), pushpa (flower), phala (fruit), vrinta (stem), mula (root) and svasvedaja (born of its own spores).

Mushrooms are placed in the last class. These are listed in ascending order of "heaviness" — nutrition and digestibility. Modern researches in dietetics also confirm that mushrooms — low in calories, high in water content and mineral traces — are a valuable, healthy ingredient — tasty, versatile and desirable for diabetics, patients of blood pressure and those bothered by uric acid.

The mushrooms have a wonderful meaty texture, can be cooked with minimal fuss. Cleaned well, these can be consumed even raw and provide an opportunity to experiment with innovative recipes.

In Lucknow, they serve a delightful dhingri dulma and friend Jiggs has succeeded in purloining a rare sandali recipe from the Bawarchi tola in that city.

For us, it is always a toss up between a home style mutter mushroom curry, eschewing tomatoes and excess onions, malai-shalai or the nutty paste, with just green chillies and namak to let the mushrooms shine in splendour and the stir-fried mushroom mélange that we share with our readers this time.

The mélange allows you to stretch the more expensive mushrooms a longer way and has great eye appeal.

HOME