Mushroom Makeover Extravaganza

Hey there, I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and today we're here with my mushroom extravaganza, mushroom makeover extravaganza. We're here to support the Mushroom Council and nature's hidden treasure, fresh mushrooms, which I as a chef absolutely love, and I use them quite often in a lot of dishes. But we're going to talk to our guests, and everyone has something unique and fun to share with us today. And we got a pretty big superstar lineup here, so I'm just going to go to my left and I'm going start with the person who's representing the Mushroom Council today and my friend Leah. How you doing, Leah, from Momovation?

Hello, Chef Dennis. It's so good to be here. My name is Leah Segedy. I'm also known as Bookie Boo. I do the Momovation campaign. And just for a little bit that you guys know about what we're doing with the Mushroom Council is I've organized 15 ambassadors. It's called #MushroomMakeover, and we're actually doing a weight loss campaign with mushrooms right now. So a lot of the information I'm going to share with you guys is how to use Mushrooms to Lose Weight and Keep Your Weight Off, weight maintenance, and a couple other things about the nutrition. But thanks so much, Chef, for having me on.

Oh, you're very welcome, and I'm so happy to be a part of this today with the Mushroom Council and everything you've done to bring this together. So, and following next to you is my friend Larry Fournier. It's so good to have you here coming to us from the Caribbean, and I've got the Caribbean shirt on.

Yeah, we sort of switched. Yeah. Hi, Chef. Hi, everyone. I'm so glad to be on your show today, Chef. Mushrooms is something that I use when I cook. However, all the mushrooms that we use here on the island is imported. So we do have wild mushrooms growing, but of course they're not safe and, you know, we can't eat them. But I love mushrooms. However, I did find out one thing that It's an important thing in losing weight. I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that.

We can talk all about that.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

For sure. And Jenny Field coming to us from North Carolina. North Carolina.

Yes, North Carolina, just south of Raleigh. I'm Jenny Field from Pastry Chef Online. And I'm excited that Dennis asked me to be here today because I normally do dessert type stuff. And today I get to play with mushrooms. So I've been teasing people throughout the morning showing pictures of what I'm making. I haven't told anyone what I'm actually making for dinner tonight, but we're sort of doing it step by step. So tune in at the end of the day, you'll see what we have for dinner.

It's looking really good so far, so I'm happy about that. And then next to Jenny, we have Isabelle, Isabelle Lacy from Sunday Supper and Family Foodie. So nice for you to join us today. And I know you got some new friends here, you know, some of the crowd, but you don't know everybody. So I'm glad to introduce you to them as well.

Thank you so much for inviting me. It's such a pleasure to be here today with all of you. I'm absolutely thrilled. This As you know, I'm the founder of the Sunday Supper Movement, and we're all about gathering families, cooking together, shopping together, about the whole experience. So I love mushrooms. I'm very excited for today because I'm looking for new ways to use them, and I have to agree, I had no idea that they could be used for weight loss. So this is awesome. Thank you for having me.

You're welcome. And do mushrooms figure into Portuguese cooking much?

You know what, not so much. I have to say they are not a huge part of Portuguese cuisine. But, you know, always looking to incorporate new ways to cook. I personally love them and have a lot of recipes on familyfoody.com with them.

And now we're going to move over to my friend Gisele Akiar from Eco Rico TV.

Akiar!

Akiar! Akiar! I can't get that right. I don't know how to say it. But I got Eco Rico TV.

How many?

How many?

You're from Florida, you should know exactly. I have to say, I'm very happy to be here today, and I thought you had forgotten me because I'm right next to Miss Bookie Boo, and I was like, what am I, a chopped mushroom?

Come on!

You're a sautéed mushroom.

You're a sautéed in butter mushroom.

Yeah.

Uh-oh, let's not talk about I love butter. Grease her up with some butter now.

Butter is low glycemic, by the way.

What was it?

Butter? I don't eat butter. Butter is kind of low glycemic. No butter.

No butter for me. Sauté these babies in fabulous olive oil with balsamic and season them with my cilantro balsamic vinaigrette, which Larry knows all about. I'm already drooling. Grill those puppies, and it's like a steak, which again, I don't eat, but I eat those portobello mushrooms, so I'm thick and meaty, Chef. I'm thick and meaty.

Oh, I know what you're talking about.

I know what you're talking about.

But I taste good.

I mean, I'm not—

We're gonna move to David right at this point before I start to get a little too hot under the collar here. David, thanks for coming on today, and I brought you on because, you know, you are the amateur chef of the bunch, and you cook, and you were with me for one of my shows. Couple weeks ago, but you're also developing something that I wanted to bring to the attention of everyone, and it's called PlusMyReach. So, you know, this is about the Mushroom Council, but you're going to help us gauge how we do today with this little endeavor, and so we can show the Mushroom Council, you know, that we did a good job for them.

Yes, can you hear me now?

Okay, sure can.

I've had issues for the last hour with Google+ Hangouts on air, but Welcome to the fun.

Welcome to the party.

I'm on a different computer right now, but I am— well, thank you for inviting me to this group, Chef. I don't know, you're making me get back into doing some things. This morning, at 6 o'clock this morning, I did a YouTube on making a mushroom appetizer that I made up as I was going. I totally made it up and had a lot of fun. It's indeed an honor to be a part of this group. Thank you, Chef.

You're welcome. Welcome. Happy to have you here today to join us. We bring a lot of people together on these Hangouts and a lot of different just types and ideas of things. So, you know, it's good to get you in here with us and mix it up. So we're really happy to have you here. So let's get this mushroom party started. Oh, I see it. Let's get this mushroom party started. And Leah, I'm going to turn it over to you for a minute and let's get us going, get us talking. What are we talking about?

I have this like new dance that I started. It's like, can you blend? Can you blend? Can you blend? And that's kind of like the idea behind, you know, Mushroom Makeover is blendability. What they discovered was if you take one meal that you would normally cook with beef and you replace it with mushrooms, you're actually saving 20,000 calories in a year, which is equivalent to 5 pounds. Think about that, how simple that is. If you do a replacement like that, you're saving 20,000 calories. If you blend— can you blend? Can you guys remember this? It's like the Cabbage Patch.

Can you blend?

Can you blend?

If you blend the mushrooms with the meat, and what you have to do is, you guys are really good at this, chop them up really fine and blend them together and make a meatball or something like that. What you're doing is you're increasing the flavor because we all know how amazing mushrooms taste, right? They also make us feel very full, but we're not getting the calories. That's why it's one of those amazing tools for weight loss. In addition to that, you're also going to be bringing down the amount of sodium you need because there's something called the umami umami. I always get that wrong. Thank God I have you guys, right? It's using that umami part in your tongue, and if you use umami, the studies show you don't need to put as much salt on it. So you got more flavor, less calories, it boosts everything, and then when we're talking about weight loss, it's also low glycemic. So that means it's controlling your blood sugar. Low glycemic is a big deal right now because the low glycemic diet is the best diet for weight maintenance. When people learn the low glycemic diet, they actually are able to maintain their weight far better than a low carb diet or a low fat diet. Think about controlling your blood sugar. When we did the Mushroom Makeover campaign, and we've been putting these blogger ambassadors through a 30-day boot camp, my husband does that. My husband's the trainer. We have a dietitian that did a low glycemic diet. They are doing so good right now. Next week we're going to talk about how much weight they all lost. I'm very excited.

Oh, and the fact that it's gluten-free.

Gluten-free. We know that there's so many more people right now with gluten sensitivities and celiac disease, so you don't have to worry about mushrooms. Can you blend? Can you blend? I'm going to keep doing the cabbage patch.

I guess my deep-fried breaded mushrooms wouldn't really be a good option.

That's not low glycemic.

You can use rice flour. At least it doesn't have gluten in it.

You can use rice flour. We have a lot of rice flour in my house because I have a child with 20 food allergies, and that is just He's crazy. He's not allergic to mushrooms, so I actually sauté those bad boys up for him all the time in olive oil and Himalayan salt, that pink salt. It's got vitamin D in it. It's got potassium in it. It's got B vitamins and antioxidants, and it doesn't add to his cholesterol. It's just an amazing food. Can you blend?

Can you blend?

I meant to say something about the diet issue a little while ago. Were any of you in that craze? I don't diet, and I only see D-I-E in the word diet anyway, so I only put healthy in front of it, and then that's kind of it. You can do mushroom teas, and mushroom teas are great for dieting. Of course, if you're going to do something like that, you guys, please don't starve your body. Just add it as a supplement. The other thing about mushrooms that people who cook know, but they have a lot of water in them. It's a very high water water-dense food. What you always see is when you cook them, you're going to see a release of a lot of liquid, and you always want to cook your mushrooms down, which I did for that fabulous cream cheese mushroom dip that I posted there, Mr. Chef Dennis Littley.

I saw it, and I shared it.

Yes, I know you did. You and Larry. Thank you. I love it. I love it. It's so good, and of course, I used all organic ingredients, which is my thing. Mushrooms really absorb flavor. Leah's absolutely right. Take on the flavor of the food that you're adding to them and the spices you're adding to them. It doesn't take too much, but you can really boost flavors with mushrooms because they absorb everything because of that high water content.

When I was in the restaurant, they were good. When I was teaching classes, too, I always told the girls— a lot of them would say, "Oh, I don't like mushrooms," until they ate them in a dish. I said, "Well, you have to taste them in the dish." "Oh, they're pretty good." They do absorb other flavors. They do blend really well. With other flavors, and they're an extender. Like Leah was talking about, this is before we found out that they were good for weight loss. They're good cost-wise. They're cost-effective. In the restaurant, a lot of the dishes would have mushrooms in it because it made the dish look bigger when you presented it. It gave it more body. It added to it. Again, they fit in well. They are tasty. They absorb other flavors. They're great in so many different dishes that it's a natural add-on.

And that's interesting that you said, Chef, regarding the price point, because like I said earlier, I live on an island. Mushrooms aren't grown here. Everything is imported. But the price of mushrooms lately have really come down at the local supermarkets, and a lot of people now are including mushrooms in their dishes. So it's now becoming part of the Caribbean cuisine, you know. We curry mushrooms, we barbecue them, you know, we do mushrooms every which way.

So Larry, should I change my dance to something else? If it was like a Caribbean blend dance, how would you do it?

It has to be a Caribbean wine.

It has to be a Trini wine. It has to be a Trini wine. That is kind of seductive, but anyway. Yeah, but the price point is important and what's happening now here, a lot of people are now trying out mushrooms today for the first time because the prices, you know, they're cheaper and it's great. I usually use mushrooms all the time in soups and in, like I said, my curries and my stews.

And they go so well with other dishes. I mean, some of my appetizers were always involved in mushrooms. I posted my crab meat stuffed mushrooms this morning. In restaurants I worked in, that was always a biggie because it was a smaller portion of crab meat. You're still getting crab meat. When people were coming to the shore to eat, they could at least, if they couldn't afford the big crab imperial, they could get that for a taste of it. They just really go so well. I like them raw, too. A lot of people eat them— yeah, I like them in salads.

I eat them raw. Absolutely. I grew up eating them raw.

Yeah, sliced in salads raw.

Absolutely.

My first encounter with mushrooms when I was little growing up was my father loved a steak, and back in those days, back in the '60s, B&B mushrooms came in these little bitty cans.

I ate them by the can.

I remember those cans.

I would buy a can, water pack, a can, and a jar.

Every now and then I would just eat a can.

Just as a snack.

There's a comment here I want to bring up. Scott Scott Croft, I don't know if I'm saying it correctly. Scott Croft, okay. Looking forward to learning about mushrooms. Are mushrooms considered expensive or cost-effective? And that's what we've been talking about. The cool thing about it is that you can get really super expensive mushrooms and you can get really, really reasonably priced mushrooms. So if you're feeling fancy, you can go get some really expensive mushrooms, but just for everyday cooking, you know, just the mushrooms at the regular grocery store are fantastic and are so versatile.

Yeah, that's what we get down here, the regular button mushrooms. I mean, we do get the portobellos, but they are expensive like everywhere else. But the small regular button mushrooms, those are very cheap.

Those are the mushrooms we get.

Mary, in comparison to beef, how do they match up? So it's like portobello versus beef.

Well, you know, the funny thing is I had a portobello the other night. And I had it with some shrimp. And I'm telling you, the portobello basically filled me. I couldn't eat all the shrimp. I could not eat all the shrimp.

Well, I can eat both, a lot of both. But you know, one of the things that's interesting, you know, we're from the Caribbean, I'm from Puerto Rico, and the cream cheese mushroom dip that I posted today on my blog I literally got from my cousin Arlene, mi primita. She made a plantain dip. She made a mushroom dip, and of course, I ate everything, and I ate it all. You serve it with pita chips or whatever. You can make your homemade pita chips, make everything a lot healthier. There are so many different varieties of mushrooms now. I love mixing mushrooms. Just like with cheeses, I love mixing cheeses, but with mushrooms, I'll do crimini, button. The porcini really kind of lives on its own.

One of the other things I wanted to bring up is I love a mushroom risotto.

Reconstitute—

Great. You can buy a bag of dried mushrooms, and you can add them to all kinds of things. You can reconstitute them with water, of course, and then use them with whatever, with rice, with pasta. They're incredibly, incredibly versatile. I'm on the raw mushroom thing as well. I love them. When I'm chopping some up, I'm yum, yum, yum, yum.

Oh, yeah. They go so well in things. I like them in salads because it almost makes you feel like you're eating some meat with it. When I was wrestling and I was dropping so much weight, and I would eat nothing but salads, and I'd make sure there were lots of mushrooms on them because they were basically free calories. They would at least give me the sensation of eating something rather than just like a rabbit, just munching on greens. We have a lot of great comments here. I'm going to put one up from Dion Baldwin. Dion's here, thanks for being here. Dion says, "I love to use mushrooms when I make meatballs or meatless meatballs." Yeah, I love that comment.

Do they just take the place of the breadcrumbs then, I guess?

I have never made them. I think if you grind them up though, you could probably get the consistency and squeeze some of the water out, get the consistency towards meat and just make meatballs Mushroom balls, meatballs.

What you can do with mushrooms, for instance, to really add moisture to turkey burgers and things like that, you chop mushrooms in with the meat. It doesn't dry out when you're cooking them. Mushrooms are a great addition to just a turkey burger. If you're going to do a meatless meatball, you really have to use a binder, so you've got to use plenty of breadcrumbs, something that's really going to bind them because they release so much water. So just remember that, folks. But they're great with turkey burgers, with any turkey meat that dries out. You can add mushrooms, and it really adds a lot of the moisture. And again, because it absorbs the flavors of what you're adding, the spice blends that you add to the meat, it just really enhances flavor, and it gives a real depth of flavor that is wonderful.

Megan, she noticed how much money she saved buying mushrooms rather than meat, much cheaper. So it's a bonus. It's interesting. And Joanna Liberty was talking about a comment that Minerva Thai— I'll put that one up first. I found a 5-pound bag of gorgeous oyster mushrooms at a local Korean supermarket for $7. Wow!

Wow!

5 pounds for $7?

Where is that market?

Absolutely.

You know, that's one of my favorite things to do is I love taking my kids to our international market, and it's amazing how many different kinds of mushrooms that there are.

Yeah.

And you know, it's so great to introduce your kids to just different, not only flavors, but all the different varieties of mushrooms. And my daughter is actually the one, she loves mushrooms with quinoa. That's like her big thing. So every summer when she comes home from college, we make sure we go to the international market. And like you said, they're so inexpensive, it's just unbelievable.

Yeah, and it's always good to expand your food universe, you know.

Absolutely, absolutely. I have 4 children, so, you know, our meals have to go a long way.

So mushrooms are perfect when we can pick them up.

Good God, my 9-year-old's eating me out of house and home. It's like she's a a Hoover, and she's healthier than me. It's ridiculous. She's also in school, and it's like— so imagine the amounts of food.

My almost 2-year-old eats more than my husband. And I got 3 boys plus my husband, and they're like 8, 5, and 2. So I can't even imagine what my grocery bill is going to look like in the next 10 years.

Just wait.

Buy more mushrooms, Leah. Buy more mushrooms.

I love mushrooms.

You've got to get some of those mushroom kits and start growing your own.

I'm really big on— the other thing that— one of the reasons why I decided to work with the Mushroom Council is because mushrooms are part of the Clean 15. One of the things that's really important in my house is pesticide residue. We know that the top— the Clean 15 are basically the 15 fruits and vegetables that have the least amount of pesticide residue on them. That's mushrooms. You can get them organic, or you can go and if you're worried about how much money you have and you have to budget, mushrooms are one of those safe items that you can get and not have to go organic. That was one of the reasons I picked them up. That's a huge thing for me. I love that little added benefit about mushrooms.

Thank you so much, Miss Leah, for mentioning that because you guys know I'm a big proponent of the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen. Just so you know what she's talking about, you can go to ewg.org, which is the Environmental Working Group and you can get your list there. You can download a list that will give you the top 12 dirtiest fruits and vegetables of this year, and last year, and the year before, or the Clean 15, which you can feel safer buying, just like Leah's talking about.

I love the Working Group. They're awesome.

Chef, I'm interested in the kits. You want to expound on that a little bit?

Yeah, Leah's got some mushroom kits for us that we're going to be handing out to some of the bloggers that have been working with us. In this. And what exactly are they? I've seen them. I saw the picture of it.

They're these cool little kits where you can actually grow your own mushrooms in your home. I mean, like, it's like a little farm thing in a box, right? And if you— I don't have the picture with me right here, I don't have them with me, but if you go to mommovation.com, we set everything up with a Twitter party. So if you go on the Mushroom Makeover, there's a picture of them. And Martha Stewart was promoting them the other day, and they're really, really cool looking. And We have that, and we have some more giveaways as well. So we're going to be giving away 10 of these boxes randomly after the show. We can't do it right here during the show. We got rules about that.

We're not allowed to do it during the show.

But we're going to be doing it after the show.

Well, if someone wants to purchase a kit, what's the price on a kit?

Oh, I think they're $20, $30, maybe $40. I'm sorry. I wish I knew off the top of my head.

No, you said they were value—

They're under $50. That's for sure. Maybe Joanna from the chat room can tell me. Oh yeah, Joanna put the information— she'll put the information up there for me in the chat room so you guys can click through.

Now, I hate to even bring this up, but it's a good question. Amanda Boyerschnov— Boyerschnov—

I'm answering it right now.

As a non-mushroom fan, are they around? Oh, please.

There's people that don't like mushrooms? Yes, there are.

Because they can be too strong. I just posted my answer to I would just start with buttons.

What did you say?

I said start with very fresh white button mushrooms because they will have the least mushroomy flavor. What you can do is start there and then add some really great flavor profiles. When you're— sauté some garlic and chop up your mushrooms. Add a little olive oil. Sauté them. Get the water out of them. You can even cook them in a broth or whatever. They will really enhance the flavor, but start with fresh white button mushrooms. As they get a little older, that mushroomy— they'll get a much stronger flavor, which that's when I throw them into soups and things like that, or a pasta sauce or something like that Italian. But yeah, start with those.

You know what? I'd like to add to that because I didn't like mushrooms for a very long time. It wasn't the flavor that I didn't like. The flavor is actually lovely, and it enhances so many things. It's the texture of the mushrooms. It's kind of boingy and weird, and I was like, "Agh." I just did not like that. I would suggest to start mincing the onions up really, really small so you don't have to deal with that texture so much. Then slowly you can do really thin slice and put them on a pizza or whatever. That's how I learned to like them, is to get rid of the texture issue. Entirely by just mincing them up really, really tiny like in a duxelles or something, and then slowly eating them in larger pieces.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I have— my oldest son has Asperger's, and a lot of children with special needs have those texture issues. So that's why the blendability, the blending stuff, it's almost like he doesn't know it's there. And the other thing I do with mushrooms is I make my own, like, like I redo second-day chicken, and I make kind of like a curry sauce sauce, but I put it in my blender, and I do peppers and mushrooms and all kinds of stuff, vegetables and olive oil and spices, and blend it up. The kid has no idea there's mushrooms in there. It's hysterical.

You can make a paste out of them, too. If you really puree them up well and make a paste out of them, then you can use them in other things and other dishes. Yeah, make them a little less aware of what's going going on and get those flavors in there.

Mushrooms and chickpeas, Chef, as you said, a topping, make a nice tapenade. The mushrooms with the chickpeas, that is awesome. A little salt, black pepper, off to the races.

Larry, can you cook for me?

Pardon?

Can I come to your house? I need a vacation too.

You will have to take a number because everybody wants to come.

About getting a hurl together to go visit Larry.

What if I bring you a 20-pound bag of mushrooms? Will you let me come over?

Of course.

I'd like to see you going through customs with that though.

Go get them at the Asian market, they're cheaper there, Leah.

That's right. We do have a Korean market in the valley, I'm going.

Hey Dennis, there's a great question here from Kristen Drysdale. Hey Kristen. What are the panel's favorite spices to work with when sautéing mushrooms?

That is a good question.

Yeah, I can start. I sauté with garlic. I love them with garlic, shallots, and then I use my Caribbean spices, you know, my seasoning blends, my adobo, and that's granulated garlic, a really good salt— please, no table salt, my friends. Larry knows how much I just Stop it.

You have a whole table salt.

Some oregano and turmeric. That is just great, simple, really fast. Again, I'm just going to plug it again. I posted a great recipe for sautéed mushrooms in a dip on my blog today on eco-rico.com. You can take that and amend it and put that as slice them and use it as a side dish, use them with the cream cheese dip, put that exact same thing in a tomato sauce. You can do anything with it, and I do. I'll make a huge batch of that, and then I will use one for a dip. I'll put another bunch, and I'll throw it in a basil marinara sauce. I'll take another, and I'll put it in something else. Very, very versatile, basic recipe.

We haven't even talked about one of my favorites, too, which is mushroom soup. Nothing beats a good cream of mushroom soup. I was on this trip one time, and I was cooking for a restaurant owner. It was back in the days of film when I was a photographer/chef and doing these trips we used to go on. I'm making the soup, and I went to make mushroom soup. Sometimes mushrooms get a little dark on you if you let them sit a little too long. I cook, and the soup is turning way too dark. For mushroom soup. So I'm stuck. People are coming to sit down. I got the soup. It tastes wonderful, but it looks a little funky, so I called it a Black Russian mushroom soup.

There you go.

I had to give the restaurant owner the recipe so he could come back and make it for us.

That's awesome.

That's clever.

But mushroom soup is just— One of my favorites.

Regarding the question of the spices that I like to use, well, I— garlic, simple, a little cumin, and some cilantro chopped up.

Yummy! That's perfect. And by the way, I can attest to Larry's curry being outstanding.

Oh yes!

Oh, you've had it?

Yes, she had it. And I cooked with apples. Curry apples with chicken.

Okay, I have to say, like, I really wanted more, but I didn't want to be a complete pig, and I served myself like 2 or 3 times, and I wanted more.

You know what's so great about mushrooms, I think, is that as everybody has said, they soak up flavor, and so you can really set the flavor profile based on what you use to cook your mushrooms. Of course, Larry and Giselle are using Caribbean flavors. I generally use— somebody said thyme. I use thyme a lot with mushrooms and usually toss some wine, maybe some vinegar in there with them and let it reduce down. They're really, really flavorful that way. That just lends flavor to whatever you throw them in, whether it's a soup or in a sauce or whatever. I agree with you, Jenny.

Totally with you, Jenny.

I love just doing some caramelized onions and throwing in some mushrooms. And what I love about that is during the week, like I said, 4 kids, we're always running to sports, but there's so much you can do with that. You know, whether I cook just a simple chicken breast and throw that over it, delicious. It's a sauce, add a little bit of wine and it's perfect. Or a lot of times we'll just do like quick flatbreads, you know, just absolutely tasty, delicious. Wraps. If we have leftover rice, we throw that over the leftover rice, blend it all up. So it's just something that's just so versatile. And really, 1, 2, 3, and you have, you know, dinner for the family on the table, which is, you know, just amazing, especially for busy moms.

Yes, absolutely.

We have— I'm trying to find it now. We had a really good— Megan Brewer is really getting us hungry here.

Yeah, I know.

Mushrooms, peas, and sun-dried tomatoes also make a nice tapenade.

I saw that. That sounded good to me, too.

Then she's talking about the soup she made for the Mushroom Makeover. It was a mushroom and green lentil soup and a mushroom green pea gazpacho.

Oh, wow.

Now we're talking. Christina Sloggett's here, and she made a roasted shiitake mushroom bisque with cashew cream base with tamari.

Wow.

That sounds amazing.

We're really going over— we're thinking out of the box. The box doesn't exist. With mushrooms, there's so much you can do. Here, Kristen Drysdale is mentioning about your curry apples. She loves curry. Got to try that one.

Yeah.

Curry apples. Works.

Absolutely. We're having some fun here today. There's one. Tony Rose, they also go well with finely chopped fennel and garlic.

Fennel sounds lovely with it.

Cheers to you, Tony. That picture is fabulous. A little vino, baby.

We've had some outstanding recipes shared today on the stream, and so many different beautiful mushroom dishes and all kinds. It shows you how versatile they are, and when you think about it, like you said, it extends the dish, it makes it more cost-effective.— and then the added benefit that I think I could certainly use of the weight loss. That would be a good thing.

That was pleasant news to me. That was really, really good news, Leah, when I read that.

Yeah. The other thing I wanted to add really quick about your health is because I'm Little Miss Bookie Boo all about your wellness is decreasing sodium. Did you know the average American is inhaling 3,400 milligrams of sodium every day? Per day. We're actually only supposed to be having 2,300 milligrams. If you're over the age of 50, or if you're African American or have high blood pressure, you're only supposed to have 1,500 milligrams. The umami sensation when you're using those mushrooms, you don't have to put as much salt in. Of course, I hate table salt too. I'm right there with you. Himalayan, kosher, anything but. Anything but the table salt because it's got nothing in it that's good for you.. But if you go anywhere else and get those Himalayan salts or kosher or anything like that, they have actual minerals in them. Sodium is a big deal because we're all— we're talking about your heart. We want to protect our heart because we want it to keep beating, right? If you go to McDonald's and have a burger and fries, right there you've just blown your sodium for the entire day plus some. Then imagine you have to keep eating. What I like the most about mushrooms is it forces It forces you to cook it in your home. You're not using processed food when you're doing it, most likely. You're cutting down on sodium. You're doing such great things for your body, and you don't even realize it because it tastes so good.

Dr. Pompa: Absolutely. I've noticed some people are posting recipes in the stream now. Thank you so much. If you have some pictures you want to throw in the stream, please do that as well. I put a really nice Japanese-style enoki mushroom recipe miso noodle soup.

Yummy. Marilyn Ritter has a wonderful question for the panel.

Okay.

She says, "What are the panel's favorite mushrooms?" I think we've been discussing a lot of that. I think shiitakes are— I love them because they're— I love a lot of the Asian mushrooms because I'm going to go with the texture here and what they add, and I just think they're funky looking, and they're fun in food. And I don't have a problem with the texture at all. I really love cooking with them. They also hold up really well when you're sautéing.

I like all kinds, really.

Me too. I guess my favorite, if you have to pick one, would be portobello because I like to serve them with a little goat cheese.

Oh, yum.

Goat cheese makes everything better.

I was gonna make a burger actually, and I was gonna do a portobello burger, but I'm thinking, well, what I'm gonna put on it, people are gonna think I'm really strange, because I was gonna put bacon and blue cheese on it to make my portobello burger. Maybe some caramelized onions.

Where's the issue with that? I don't understand the problem, Dennis.

People look at me strange. I don't eat beef, and I'll get a chicken or turkey burger, and then I ask them to put bacon on it though, and they look at me like—

I'm not fine.

It's all about that.

You just love bacon. You're a pluser. All plusers love bacon.

Hey, hey, I love turkey bacon.

Turkey bacon's getting much better. I used to eat that all the time, and then I kind of went back to the dark side.

Uh-oh.

I just like regular bacon. I'm just down with regular bacon. I just avoid it with nitrites. I just avoid the stuff with nitrates. It's hard for me to find the turkey bacon without nitrates.

Absolutely.

Turkey bacon without nitrates? Just go to Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. It's uncured.

Whole Foods is like the way other side of town over there. Why don't you guys be close?

I don't want to digress, but Aslan Blow made a statement that back to the kids, it would be a great thing to get kids involved.

Oh, absolutely.

Yes.

Growing those things. Just wanted to say that.

What's the yield on one of those, Leah?

What's the yield on one of those? Do you know? Like how many?

A lot. It's like this much. Like, okay, so the thing is about this big, I want to say. Can you guys see that? It's like about— And it's full. It's full. So I don't know like pound for pound how much, but I'm sure Joanna can tell us in the chat room. She'll go look for me real quick. If you go to mushroominfo.com, and that's their website, they actually have the kits up there. And the kits are really, really cool. They're really pretty with the design and everything, so they look kind of attractive to children. And they are being used by kids because it's a fun little experiment. It's like getting your feet wet with gardening and farming. You know what I mean? It's really awesome. No, but they do fill up rather large.

And that's a good way to get kids to eat their vegetables. Let them grow it. Yeah, absolutely.

Let them play around with it.

My kids would not eat Swiss chard unless I had it in my garden. They'd be like, "What is that? What is that red-looking thing in the middle?" You know what I mean?

Here's a good question from Delilah, the monogamous temptress, the love gooch. I love saying that. So, are there any mushroom drinks?

Well, you were talking about mushroom tea, weren't you, Giselle?

Yeah, yeah, but that's— that's different. The thing about mushrooms, when you use them as a tea, you grow them, you know, the one that— the big one that you grow in a bowl. And then what that does is it just runs through your body. It cleans out your intestinal tract.

Oh, one of those. Like you don't want to leave the house for 2 days kind of cleanse?

It's a very ancient Chinese mushroom tea. And of course mushrooms are used as a healing herb as well and dried in a lot of Eastern Chinese medicine. But yeah, that one specifically will— you need to stay home for a weekend when you're drinking it. You cannot run out to the store.

Unless of course you're stocking the Depends, right?

No, let's stop there. Stop there. I used to actually make vegetable broth to drink in the afternoons, and I could see throwing some mushroom stems into that.

Now I gotta try this savory broth.

Minerva Thai has put up some things that I love love cooking mushrooms with. She put up a recipe for fado with mushrooms and kale. I was going to mention earlier, spinach is phenomenal with mushrooms. Spinach lentil mushroom soup or even a sauté, my daughter loves that. Kale, of course, is fabulous, but it has that bitterness. What I would do at the end, I would squeeze a little bit of lemon on that to cut a lot of the the bitterness of the flavors if you're going to do kale and Swiss chard and all of that and throw some mushrooms in.

When I cook my greens, I like to add just a little teaspoon or two of honey and sort of— Oh, I've never done that.

That's a great tip.

Yeah, like in collards and stuff, a little bit of honey and a little pepper flake, a little sweet, a little heat. It goes really nicely with bitter greens.

I like how she says a little sweet, a little heat.

Add mushrooms to it and we have a little sweet, a little heat. Forget the meat and put in the mushrooms.

We need to make t-shirts or something now.

We're just a fungi and beer restaurant.

Any desserts made with mushrooms?

You know what, I'm gonna say probably not. However, I do know that Fran Herrera, my friend, made a beautiful flan that was infused with truffle, which sounds amazing. I was actually kind of toying with the idea of taking some roasted mushrooms and steeping them in cream and trying to do sort of like a savory mushroom panna cotta. I think it's possible. I've not really played with it. Before, but now I'm on the spot. Thanks a lot, Elizabeth.

Mushrooms are delicious. I love flan, so I'm all for it.

Mushroom doesn't really lend itself to sweet desserts.

Yeah, it's so earthy.

And truffle oil is so intense. I mean, it would be like a drop of truffle oil in a flan with something to pair with it.

I know this was a flan. She infused the truffle, actual truffle, into it, and I think it was— it sort of bordered the line between savory and sweet. It sounded gorgeous to me. Yeah, you would have to use a very light hand, I think, but very much.

And, and I mean, I can understand how you would infuse the custard with it. Absolutely. It would just be a little bit—

I don't—

I'm not I'm just not sure how—

Light-handed. Light-handed. And deep pockets, because truffle is not cheap.

Right, right.

But you know, it might be one of those things where you make it in a dessert form, but it's not sweet. So it looks like it might be a dessert, but then you're ending up with a savory canapé.

Mmm.

I'm down to try it. I'm down to try it.

Do it.

I have a really great recipe for something that's super healthy. My kid loves it, and it's mini frittatas that I make, and I do it with red bell mushrooms and zucchini.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah. They're totally healthy. It's half egg whites and half eggs. I'm going to grab the— I'm going to— excuse me while I go get that post so I can put that up there because it's a really great recipe that I tested a zillion times on my kid, and she asked for them to take to school for lunch.

Oh, my kids call that egg pizza. Good stuff. We got chickens in the backyard, so I'm never out of eggs. I got so many eggs. I've got like 4 cartons in my fridge from all the chickens. Like, you know, one of them's a double layer, so we got 3 to 4 a day, you know.

These are great for brunch, and Easter's coming up, and these little mini frittatas are so fabulous, and they can be cold, they can be warm, they can be room temperature. They're great, and what I do is I brûlée Gruyère on top. You can do it without the Gruyère or with, but they're really wonderful, and they're not a crust. It was the inspiration for trying to make something healthier than a mini quiche. I just did the little frittatas, and they came out phenomenal. Let me post that.

While you're looking for that, Tony Rose left us a comment. He says, "When I have red wine, there's not much room for anything else in the glass.

That's a man after my heart right there.

I think Tony's enjoying a glass right now.

It's like 11 here.

If you watch my show, you will see—

happy hour somewhere.

Because as I like to say, it's 5 o'clock somewhere.

So is that the official cocktail hour, 5 o'clock? Because it is 5 o'clock.

Yeah, I think it's the time when we don't have to think of ourselves as alcoholics if we're drinking.

Or you know, you can just call it brunch and then it's okay to have alcoholics all day.

Champagne!

Champagne!

Here's a frequently asked question on the Mushroom Kit: no yield amount, but it does say that you can expect to see at least 2 crops from in the box. So far the record has been 10 crops.

Wow, that's pretty cool. Depends on how big of a green thumb you have. Well, mine's not green, but kind of pink.

Yeah, we don't have a lot of luck growing things. We used to kill them and then give them to the neighbor to revive, so I don't know.

Whatever I kill, I kill for chickens.

David, how you doing down there?

David's been awfully quiet.

I'm learning a tremendous amount of stuff today, and I thank you for that. Leah, I really appreciate your comments about sodium because I watch my sodium very, very closely. Weight issues, but also I've got some heart issues, so I watch it. Let me throw something out there that I've learned about sodium, and it might be applicable to recipes where you use sodium. I had a fellow tell me one time that if you triple the amount of potassium that you are using against the sodium, you override the badness of sodium with that potassium, 3 times. If you've got something and you've got 100 milligrams of sodium, if you put If you put 300mg of potassium in, you override the badness.

I think what that means is you're just eating more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Eat a banana with your salt.

Eat a banana, yeah.

Eat a banana and mushrooms. How would that—

It's loaded with potassium. Bananas are loaded with potassium, yeah.

The interesting thing about salt is we need it to survive. We have to have it. Your body needs it, but then there's too much of it. I think in modern times, if you notice, most people are eating what we call the Standard American Diet, and that is packaged, processed food. When you eat processed food, you're eating so much sodium and you don't even realize it. It's not really— it's not even salty. People are adding more salt to it, not realizing. The thing to get around that is if you just If you just cook it using whole ingredients, you can salt it, and you typically do just fine. You don't have to worry about it. The sodium is hiding inside, and it's not really— you're not getting any benefit from it. Cook it yourself, and you can taste it. It's way better.

You were talking about how bad table salt is. In defense of table salt, it's great when you get grease on the floor. We used to keep it in the pantry.

Yeah, so it wouldn't trip and slip and fall.

You can use it to put out a fire on the stove. There you go.

Oh, I didn't know about that one. I'll remember that.

It does have some uses.

Well, the other thing, Chef, is we had the other day my son had this like a science experiment that used salt. And so I'm like looking around, I'm like, we don't have table salt. All I had was Himalayan and kosher and sea salt. And we tried doing it, it didn't work. And my son's looking at me like, ooh. And I'm like, sweetie, I'm sorry. We have to go get table salt. And I was like going, The whole time. But no, you're right. You're right. But it is like a— they do something different to it. So they're adding— what are they adding to it, Iko? I can't remember off the top of my head. Iodine.

Iodine.

Iodine.

Iodine.

Iodine.

Table salt.

Oh, yeah. But here's the thing. If you have to have your little round little thing, go get some Hain sea salt. Just get some sea salt. Start there. Take your baby steps. I really love ancient sea salts. I love getting the clay salts from Hawaii, which are really wonderful. You can put those little chunks of salt on the table, and as a finishing salt, add it at the end, and it really enhances the flavor of whatever you're adding because the minerality of the clay— first of all, it's great for you, but then it adds a different depth and depth of flavor. On top of that, you were talking about Himalayan pink salt. I use that on my popcorn instead. Do you know what I mean? It's all over the place, and it really adds a completely depth of flavor. You can play with gray salt, black salt, all kinds of different finishing salts if you'd like.

The black salt is so good.

I've had the rest of those.

It's because of, as with everything, The soil it's grown in. So here we go, Mr. Dennis Littley. Here we go. That's why pesticides are so bad. That's why GMO foods are so bad because what's happening is as the soil gets depleted of nutrients and minerals and it's full of toxins, all that is coming up into the food we're eating and then we wonder why we're having so many cancers and everything else on the planet because we're We're poisoning our soil. Try to get some things that are non-GMO and healthier for you, and take Leah's advice. Eat the Clean 15. Understand the Dirty Dozen, and then get some fabulous salt, and ditch the table salt.

Wait a minute. We have a—

Preach it, yo.

I'm going to do a Cabbage Patch just for you.

Anagamus Tantra says, "Put table salt under the beer bottle so it won't stick to the cocktail napkin.

Another use, add that to the list.

And another use, if you have a frog problem, you use table salt and just throw it, the frogs will scatter.

Oh, really?

Also, Mel's theory, don't put the salt on the frogs.

Sounds like witchcraft to me.

Are you talking about throwing the container or throwing the salt?

Just throwing the salt on the frogs. Because every time there's a rainy season here Trinidad, the frogs— I live near a river and the frogs just come up close by. There's a street lamp right next to my house and they sit there for the rain flies and they come in the yard, they're on the steps.

Yes, are they loud?

They're loud, they're so loud.

We have them here, so loud.

The salt kills the frogs.

Just take the salt, throw on them little scoundrels.

Who let the frogs out?

Who let the frogs out?

Stop eating it, man, you're killing the frogs!

Okay, okay, okay, I was just salting the legs.

You can eat them!

Hang on, I'll eat some frog legs, but not to salt and murder the frogs!

Frogicide.

It looks like there's an overpopulation over there.

Trust me, we have a lot of frogs here.

Do you guys have frogs in cuisine? Do you guys eat a lot of them during that time when there's too many?

I don't think we have any frogs.

No, I mean, I've had frog legs. They're not bad.

I just tried them recently. They were great.

Yeah, they look like little Kermit, but you know, that's the thing.

Tastes like chicken!

Tastes like chicken!

Everything tastes like chicken!

Except chicken, unless you buy real chicken.

Right!

Then it doesn't taste like chicken anymore.

I will only say, naturally I have a video on why to buy organic chicken, okay? Just go watch 'em!

Yeah, go on!

And as I mentioned, she has a video on organic frog legs!

Do they have organic frog legs?

You have a video on why buy organic chicken, and I won't disgust everybody here. By the way, chicken with mushrooms is good.

Yeah, chicken with mushrooms, very good. Chicken Marsala, chicken stir-fry. It's almost, I feel like Bubba Gump there going with all the chicken.

Chef, you did the chicken Marsala on your first cooking show, correct? Did you use mushrooms in that? Yeah, right. Yeah, you did.

Yeah. I used baby bellas for that one. Any mushroom would work well on it that you like. My wife can't eat chicken Marsala out anywhere because mine is just that flavorful, and she's gotten used to it.

She says, "This is awful," and she says it out loud, right?

She won't get it anywhere else. She just knows better. There's certain things she won't get, like spaghetti and clams, which is so simple to make.

Oh, God.

Spaghetti and clams. Clams and sausage somebody was making the other day, which was really interesting. Yeah, I would—

Have you guys tried chorizo and mushrooms? Oh my gosh!

Sausage and mushrooms were made to go together.

Chorizo and clams. I have it on my website if you want the recipe.

Okay. Yeah, I like chorizo.

I love chorizo.

My mother would make that with some eggs and peppers and onions and tomato mushrooms and take tortillas and tear them up and throw them in the eggs.

Oh my God.

I think they have an organic Soyrizo brand that you can do them with mushrooms as well, and it's really good.

They absolutely do. You can get a soy— it's called Soyrizo.

Really?

You know, as a good Puerto Rican, Boricua, this is part of my— the biculturalness here, okay? This Caribbean girl has eaten Soyrizo. Now, my grandmother just rolled in her grave. God bless her.

It's true. Go ahead, Larry.

No, go ahead, Sheriff.

I was going to say Minerva Thai just mentioned about putting salt on raw froglets. It makes them dance due to a chemical reaction in their nerves.

Oh no! Seriously, all of you frogicide people, it's not funny.

They die.

They melt. Their skin melts. It's so funny. I'm just going to take— yes, exactly.

Well, okay, we're going to get off the frogs now, but at least—

ask your husband, don't kill the larvae.

Exactly. So you don't want West Nile, use this.

Okay, that's good. Larry, write a blog on that. Write a blog on the death of West Nile virus. With table salt. Therefore, don't do it.

She's daring you now, Larry. She's really daring you.

To all my brothers and sisters in frog land.

It's not easy being green.

You know what? I should have worn green. I should have, had I known. Had I known what was coming.

You need to represent for the frogs. Giselle.

I'm representing for every frog out there.

Do frogs eat mushrooms?

They will if you open their mouths up wide enough. You have to stuff them in. They're not happy about it. You salt them enough, they'll eat them.

Christina's slogan says, "Sorriso is very good, Giselle." My people are out there, even if they're not on this panel. My people, I love you.

Your peoples?

My peoples.

I'm not a vegan or vegetarian, but I've had some of those, like, Gimme Lean, those sorts of fake sausage. I think they're quite tasty, actually. I don't mind them at all. I think they're good.

I eat fish and fowl. I eat fish and fowl. I would just say, you know, I mean, I mean, for a long time now. I guess my diet is probably, I don't know, 95% grains and greens and plants, but I love me some duck, so quack, quack, y'all.

Oh, the poor little ducks.

No, don't eat them. Duck and mushrooms.

Duck and mushrooms. Oh, yeah.

Duck and mushrooms, baby.

Oh, yeah.

There's nothing like a fried king duck. Xian or Peking or Beijing in China where they dry them upside down and they're so good. Go to China and have some Peking duck.

I love Peking duck. Love it.

Peking is now Beijing. Yeah, Peking is Beijing.

Beijing duck.

Beijing duck.

Beijing duck.

Beijing duck.

I remember an old cartoon of a guy at a table sitting and the waiter had a big platter with a silver dome on it and there was a little wing poking out from under the dome with a duck bill looking out. He says, no, no, I asked Peking duck.

Ba dum bum.

What about the Christmas Story where the turkey gets eaten by the dogs?

Have you guys seen that? And then they go to the Chinese restaurant and the duck comes with the head and she's like, "Ahh!" And then it goes, "Wok!" Cuts it off.

Well, we've been straying. Let's get back to mushrooms because we're going to be late again.

You can make a sauce, a mushroom sauce for duck.

Absolutely.

Oh, that'd be good. Yep. Ho ho ho, man.

Mushrooms and some fruit, even.

Okay, let's talk about that because I'm still back on the flan with the infused custard with mushrooms. Truffle is a little bit different because you can use that— I can see it being used for dessert. Though you've got to be very careful because truffle oil will overtake everything.

I'm telling you, I think if you threw some blueberries in a pan, sautéed them, threw some mushrooms in there, hit them with a little bit of anisette—

Yum!

Mmm!

If you went with a pickled fruit and mushrooms, like some pickled cherries or something, and mushrooms, and make a sauce out of that, I think that could go go with maybe a goat cheese ice cream. That can be sort of interesting, or you can put it on your duck.

Mr. Dennis Littley.

That makes me sound like a hairdresser. Dennis or Dennis? Mr. Dennis makes me want to go fluff and tease, alright?

So Dennis, this idea of mushrooms and blueberries, I've been I've been addicted this week. If you've seen any of my posts on my pancakes, I muddled some blackberries and did multigrain pancakes, and they were seriously foodgasmic right there. Mushrooms with blackberries and thyme with a red wine reduction.

Over a little pork? No, we don't eat pork.

Oh, yeah, bacon. Got to throw that bacon in.

That would be really good. Over some chicken. That sounds good. Well, we're going to go run through the pan.

Here's the thing, with a really kind of— I love taking thyme and sautéing it until it's just crispy. That, tarragon, all of those, they give a completely different flavor and texture in a sauce.

Oh my—

Oh!

You have to make that. Definitely.

That sounds good. It's lunchtime. I have to leave soon because I have another appointment.

We are going to say goodbye to everyone, so one quick run-through with the group and then we will be on our way. So Leah, thank you so much for helping us organize this and everything. Anything you'd like to leave us with? Any last thoughts?

I love mushrooms, and can I just get you guys to do the Can You Blend dance with me? Come on. Can you blend?

Can you blend?

Can you blend? Can you blend?

I love it! All right, that's it.

I'm happy. I mean, I'm happy. Blend those mushrooms, baby.

And it's a much safer dance than the clout clap, so we're going to leave it at that.

Oh, right.

Larry, thanks so much for being here today. Such a pleasure to see you.

Always a pleasure, Chef Dennis Littley. And what I'm going to try is mangoes and mushrooms.

I knew that was coming.

You guys give me an idea. Mangos and mushrooms.

Throw some onion in there with it.

I think that sounds fantastic.

I will post it. Mangos and mushrooms.

Sounds good. Sounds good. Jenny, I hope we got you thinking on some different savory things we're going to challenge you with. Come up with something.

Absolutely. I saw there are a few comments. People are like, yes, I think that sounds awesome, the panna cotta. So we'll see. Yeah, definitely gives me something to think about, and I will continue with my own mushroom makeover meal after we get done here, and hopefully I'll be able to post the finished dish at the— during dinnertime.

Sounds good. Thanks so much again.

Thanks for having me, Dennis.

My pleasure. Isabelle, so nice to get you in on this. I'm trying to get you more involved in Google+.

I know, you're doing good. You're doing great getting me out there. Thank you for the inspiration. I mean, really, that's what it's all about, just coming up with new ideas, getting excited about cooking. So thank you. This was great. Really enjoyed it. Thank you, Leah.

And Giselle, oh, so nice to see you again. And thank you so much for taking time.

I love you. And say it with me, rico rico. Mushrooms are rico rico.

Hi, Mommy.

Love that voice of hers.

I got you. We got to do your show again. I want to get you all hot and bothered again.

Oh God, you won't be able to turn off that Latina.

Luckily we're a continent apart, so we're not that far apart. Well, you're in California, right?

4 hours, baby, I'm right there.

All right, all right, you got next time. I gotta come out to California anyway, so yeah, you do. I'm coming out there this summer, I think.

We're gonna have to fight over him.

All right, now there's a lot of me to go around, so don't worry. Work some of that weight off. My friend David is being very quiet there. Thank you so much for being with us and all you do, all your help you've been giving us on this project, too.

Well, thank you very much. Leah, I'm a much better dancer than I am cooker.

I'd love to see that. Hahaha. All right, guys.

Absolutely, that'll be the new video he'll do for our next one. Mushroom shuffle.

As long as some salsa is playing.

Gotta have salsa. And we're not talking the Mexican kind, we're talking the dance kind.

We're talking the Boricua salsa, papi.

All right, guys, thanks so much for being here today. And thank you to the Mushroom Council for sponsoring this, and Mama Vation and Bookie Boo and all those wonderful people behind us. And have a wonderful day and use some mushrooms.

Bye-bye.

Bye.