Sometimes when you are cooking dinner, you suddenly realize that you really need a side dish to round out your meal. So you reach for something quick and simple, like mashed potatoes. Sometimes when you are cooking, it’s those last-second additions that end up stealing the show.
This recipe started life as a pot of mussels simmered in white wine with some Chinese chives I had happened across at the store that evening. We loved how it turned out, especially the rich, tangy broth leftover in the pot. Chele decried the fact that we didn’t have anything to mop up those juices with, so she boiled up a couple of potatoes and mashed them in with a fork. We instantly forgot about the mussels.
We quickly made plans to turn our new discovery into a proper recipe, but felt it needed just a little something extra. My first thought was “mushrooms”, because it pretty much always is. I remembered that I had a bag of dried black trumpet mushrooms (sometimes called “poor man’s black truffle”) sitting in my pantry, and we knew we’d hit on something special.
Black Trumpet and Chinese Chive Smashed Potatoes
Ingredients
- 1 oz dried black trumpet mushroom (or 8 oz fresh)
- 5 Yukon Gold Potatoes
- ½ cup butter or ghee
- ¼ cup Chinese chives minced (plus more for garnish)
- ¼ cup Pinot Grigio
- ½ tsp dried sweet basil
- ½ tsp savory
- Juice of half a lemon
Instructions
- Rehydrate mushrooms by soaking in a bowl of hot water for at least 30 minutes. Drain well through a fine-mesh sieve. Roughly chop and set aside.
- Scrub potatoes and cut into 1” pieces (do not peel). Place in a medium to large pot and fill with enough water to cover by one to two inches. Bring to a boil over high heat. Boil for 10-15 mins. Drain, set aside, and keep warm.
- While potatoes are boiling, heat butter or ghee in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add black trumpets to the pan and cook, stirring often, until the mushrooms start to pop (about 5 minutes).
- Add minced chives and cook for another 1-2 minutes. Add basil, savory, and wine. Stir to combine. Cook until wine has reduced by half. Squeeze lemon into the pan, stir, and then remove from heat.
- Add cooked potatoes to the pan. Using a fork, smash potatoes until no large pieces remain. Stir to combine thoroughly with the other ingredients. Serve garnished with additional chives.
Notes
- Black Trumpets (also called “trompette”) are true wild mushrooms that have thus far eluded attempts at large-scale cultivation. They are a favorite of wild mushroom hunters and are prized for their rich, earthy flavor. Dried black trumpets are frequently available at gourmet grocers, many Whole Foods locations, or online. When they are in season, they may even turn up fresh at those same retail outlets as well as at local farmers’ markets (if they are native to your area). Of course, if you are one of those aforementioned mushroom hunters, you know this already and probably came here looking for recipe to use them in. Naturally, if you want to use fresh black trumpets in this you can simply skip the soaking step.
- Chinese chives (also known as garlic chives and nira) have long, thin, flat leaves and taste more like sweet garlic than common chives. Try looking for them in Asian markets – here in the Chicago area we find them at Mitsuwa under their Japanese name (nira) and occasionally at Tony’s Fresh Market (under the confusing name of “chive flowers”, which actually refers to a different part of the same plant). If you can’t find them, try substituting regular chives or (if they are in season) wild ramps.
- Be forewarned that Chinese chives have a very pungent aroma that will fill the entire room if you try to store them for any length of time (which, from personal experience, includes putting them in the crisper drawer in your refrigerator). Their flavor is well worth bringing them home for, but plan on either using them up quickly or putting up with everyone else in the house complaining about the smell in the kitchen.
