Shroom: Mind-Bendingly Good Recipes for Cultivated and Wild Mushrooms

Chef and cooking teacher Becky Selengut’s Shroom feeds our enduring passion for foraged and wild foods by exploring 15 types of mushrooms, including detailed how-to’s on everything home cooks need to know to create 75 inventive, internationally-flavored mushroom dishes.

The button mushroom better make room on the shelf. We’re seeing a growing number of supermarkets displaying types of mushrooms that are leaving shoppers scratching their heads. Home cooks are buying previously obscure species from growers and gatherers at local farmers markets and adventurous cooks are collecting all manners of edible mushrooms in the woods. People are asking the question, ＂Now that I have it, what do I do with it?＂ Home cooks and chefs alike will need a book and an educated guide to walk them through the basics of cooking everything from portobellos and morels to chanterelles and the increasingly available, maitake, oyster, and beech mushrooms.

Shroom is that book and Chef Becky Selengut is that tour guide. In a voice that’s informed, but friendly and down-to-earth, Selengut’s Shroom is a book for anyone looking to add mushrooms to their diet, find new ways to use mushrooms as part of a diet trending towards less meat, or diversify their repertoire with mushroom-accented recipes inspired from Indian, Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese cuisines, among others. Recipes include Portobello Shakshuka with Baked Eggs and Israeli Feta and Smoky Squash Soup with Black Trumpet Mushrooms and Scotch. Written in a humorous voice, Becky Selengut guides the home cook through 15 species-specific chapters on mushroom cookery with the same levity and expertise she brought to the topic of sustainable seafood in her IACP-nominated 2011 book Good Fish. Selengut’s wife and sommelier April Pogue once again teams up to provide wine pairings for each of the 75 recipes.

When she’s not squid jigging, fishing, or cavorting through the woods picking wild things for her next meal, Becky Selengut is a private chef and chef instructor at The Pantry in Seattle. Becky is the author of the IACP-nominated Good Fish: 100 Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast, How to Taste: The Curious Cooks Handbook to Seasoning and Balance, from Umami to Acid and Beyond, and Not One Shrine: Two Food Writers Devour Tokyo. She lives with her sommelier wife, April Pogue, and their lovable and loony pointer mix Izzy.

Clare Barboza is a New England based food photographer who runs a full-service photo studio in Southern Vermont and works with food brands and publishers from all over the country. Her background is in fine art and her passion lies in telling stories, particularly stories about how food goes from the farm to the kitchen to the table. Clare is also the co-owner of Poppy Bee Surfaces, which she runs with her husband, making beautiful, lightweight photo backgrounds for food and product photography.

April Pogue discovered her passion for wine while working with the Fifth Floor restaurant in San Francisco and its award-winning wine list. Throughout her career she has worked for renowned restaurants such as Spago Beverly Hills, Seattle’s Wild Ginger, Loulay Kitchen & Bar, and most recently Cafe Juanita in Kirkland, Washington. April has taught classes on food and wine pairing for PCC Cooks, the Culinary Institute of America, and is currently Wine Director and instructor at The Pantry Seattle, a cooking school in Seattle.