These are perhaps the best of all mushrooms for drying. In this condition they are easily kept, and add so much to an ordinary meat sauce.
OYSTER MUSHROOMS (Pleurotus).
Wash and dry the mushrooms; cut them into strips crosswise of the gills, trimming off all the woody portion near the stem side. Throw the mushrooms into a saucepan, allowing a tablespoonful of butter to each pint; sprinkle over a half teaspoonful of salt; cover, and cook slowly for twenty minutes. Moisten a tablespoonful of flour in a half cup of milk; when perfectly smooth, add another half cup; turn this into the mushroom mixture; bring to boiling point, add just a grating of nutmeg, a few drops of onion juice, and a dash of pepper. Serve as you would stewed oysters.
To make this into à la poulette, add the yolks of two eggs just as you take the mixture from the fire, and serve on toast.
Mock Oysters.—Trim the soft gill portion of the Pleurotus ostreatus into the shape of an oyster; dust with salt and pepper; dip in beaten egg, then in bread crumbs, and fry in smoking hot fat as you would an oyster, and serve at once. This is, perhaps, the best method of cooking this variety.
RUSSULA.
While in this group we have a number of varieties, they may all be cooked after one recipe. The stems will be removed, the mushrooms carefully washed, always holding the gill side down in the water, drained in a colander; and while they apparently do not contain less water than other mushrooms, the flesh is rather dense, and they do not so quickly melt upon being exposed to heat. They are nice broiled or baked, or may be chopped fine and served with mayonnaise dressing, stuffed into peeled tomatoes, or with mayonnaise dressing on lettuce leaves, or mixed with cress and served with French dressing, as salads.
The "green" or Russula virescens may be peeled, cut into thin slices, mixed with the leaves of water-cress which have been picked carefully from the stems, covered with French dressing, and served on slices of tomato. It is well to peel all mushrooms if they are to be served raw. To bake, follow recipes given for baking campestris. In this way they are exceedingly nice over the ordinary broiled steak.
One of the nicest ways, however, of preparing them for steak is to wash, dry and put them, gills up, in a baking pan, having a goodly quantity; pour over just a little melted butter; dust with salt and pepper, and put them into the oven for fifteen minutes. While you are broiling the steak, put the plate upon which it is to be served over hot water to heat; put on it a tablespoonful of butter, a little salt, pepper, and some finely chopped parsley. Take the mushrooms from the oven, put some in the bottom of the plate, dish the steak on top, covering the remaining quantity over the steak. Add two tablespoonfuls of stock or water to the pan in which they were baked; allow this to boil, scraping all the material from the pan; baste this over the steak, and serve at once.
Agaricus campestris and many other varieties may also be used in this same way.