Foodie Friday: Cooking and Mushrooms

 I remember the first time I had sauteed mushrooms, there was a Steak and Ale restaurant at the intersection of SR 50 and SR 436 in Orlando (SE corner of the intersection). They were finished with red wine. 

They really are simple to make. 

The ingredients are:

Mushrooms 

Butter

Brandy

Patience. 

Clean the mushrooms, I wash them, trim as needed and slice. 

Saute in butter, on medium heat for 15-20 minutes, turning as they brown.  If needed add more butter. 

When cooked, add a splash of brandy and allow it to cook off.  

Simple as that, the biggest challenge is being patient enough to allow them to cook without burning.  

The Cooktop. 

I learned to cook on a gas cooktop, when I was in middle school we started spending winters in Florida, and the house in Florida didn't have gas service, I adjusted to cooking on electric resistance coils. There were a couple of varieties of them, the General Electric Calrod was the best, they were wound tighter and heated faster. They were always a pain to control, they take longer to get hot, they take longer to cool off, and the drip trays were a major pain to clean.  I often replaced the drip trays rather than trying to clean them after a major boil over.  

When I bought the condo it had the original early 1980's GE cooktop.  One morning I was in the kitchen, when it went brrrrttttt, put up a puff of smoke, and the lights went out.  The nearly 40 year old control unit had shorted out.  

I replaced it with a ceramic or glass cooktop that was really resistance coils under glass.  The smooth surface was easier to clean than the drip pans, but it had to be cleaned every time you used it, it had the same delays in heating and cooling, within a year the top started to discolor.  I hated it. 

When we replaced the kitchen, the first appliance guy showed us the magic of induction cooktops.  These use magnetic fields to make the pan hot, not the surface of the cooktop. They heat fast, as fast or faster than gas, and cool off as fast or faster than gas.  The top wipes clean, after 18 months of using it, it shines up as well as the day it came out of the box.  The pans need to be magnetic, I parted with a few aluminum bottom pans, and the last of the Revere Ware copper bottom pans.  I prefer stainless steel cookware. I love cooking on it. In the high rise, gas was not an option, and even if it was after using Induction, I don't think I would go back.  This is much easier to clean than gas.