prompt: mushrooms (legal)
i love green bean casserole. it is deeply underrated and is absolutely one of my favorite thanksgiving menu items. unfortunately, i can’t stand mushrooms—the texture of them, anyway. things that taste like mushrooms? mostly fine. but texture, get that outta here.
and the problem is if you’re doing basic bitch green bean casserole avoiding whole mushroom can be easy, but if you’re going Big Fancy Style, say by doing alton brown’s recipe, you typically need to use real ass mushroom.
so a couple years ago i figured out how to avoid this. the modification kicks in at step 4, right before you turn the sauce into a roux. instead of doing whole mushrooms, i basically made a super thin mushroom purée, and cooked the liquid out of those. then, i sieved the sauce through cheese cloth before adding the garlic and nutmeg. i squeezed the living hell out of the cloth to drain as much mushroom flavor as possible. THEN i finished the sauce.
it was fucking delicious. green bean casserole with all of the flavor and none of the mushroom chunks. for those who liked mushrooms, i saved the chopped up clothed shrooms to add to the dish as a topping while eating. everyone loved it. i’ve made it multiple times sense.
there’s my shroom story. tune in next time for more microblogging.