Last month at a dinner meeting of the Mycological Society of San Francisco I was the fortunate winner of a raffle, which was a rather huge basket of gourmet mushrooms from Mycopia Mushrooms in Sebastopol. The beautiful wicker basket was stuffed with five of their mushroom varieties: Trumpet Royale, Velvet Pioppini, Forest Nameko, Alba Clamshell and Brown Clamshell. One of these mushrooms, the Forest Nameko mushroom, was one I had not tried before. It is a beautiful walnut brown color cap with a gelatinous texture on a long stem. I put some in a wonderful miso soup but the texture of the mushrooms, which is vaguely slippery, was not one of my favorites, but the flavor was wonderful.
The remainder of the glorious mushrooms in the basket were incorporated into a mushroom lasagna that a friend and I made for our weekly “friends who are family” dinner, and out of all of the various lasagnas I have made over the years, this one was by far my absolute favorite. We served the “Shroomasagna” with a simple salad of romaine, halved seedless Thompson grapes, and a light vinaigrette of apple and balsamic vinegars, chased with glasses of chilled rosé. It was hard to wait for the lasagna to cool enough to slice!
I did not snap a photo this in all of its sliced glory, so you may just have to make a batch for yourself sometime. It was really, really good.
Recipe: Gourmet Mushroom Lasagne (Shroomasagna)
Heather in SF 
