Thank you for reading Between the Layers! Please enjoy and share this free post with your friends. Mushroom Pasta & Social Change - No. 278Nashville one year later, gun violence + Deb Perelman’s wonderful Smitten Kitchen mushroom recipe
TWO RAINED-ON, SNOWED-ON, WIND-BLOWN red and black bows hang from my mailbox, reminders each day when I leave the house and return to it of the senseless gun violence and Nashville deaths that occurred nearly a year ago. Three schoolchildren, age 9, were killed on March 27, 2023, when a shooter opened fire at their school, also taking the lives of three staff members. My husband tied those bows, in the school colors, to our mailbox the next day. Those of you who have been with me for this past year know how a school shooting hits home. As a seasoned writer, I had never tackled news this hard. On a week when I was planning to write about something as mundane but seasonal as strawberry cake, I could only think about the guns. While this newsletter has been a tonic for me, I understand for some of you it has been hard to read. I appreciate your patience. Many of you have explained privately of being a victim of gun violence and how reading about it resurrects painful memories. By the time this year’s anniversary of the Covenant School deaths rolled around, I had thought my hometown and state would show the world what we’re made of. But the super-majority elected officials in my legislature have silenced lawmakers who want to affect change, limited space for grieving mothers and peaceful, concerned visitors to observe the legislative process, welcomed Smith & Wesson to East Tennessee with open arms, and just lately worked to advance legislation that would allow those with enhanced handgun carry permits to bring guns into businesses that prohibit them. Surely they know that gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens in the United States, more so than car accidents?
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, a grass roots organization that includes the volunteer action groups Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, since 2015, more than 19,000 people in America have been shot and wounded or killed in a mass shooting. (The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as a situation in which at least four people are shot and either injured or killed, not including the shooter.) In 2022 alone, the year of the Uvalde school shooting in Texas, more than 600 people were killed, with more than 2,700 wounded. In 2023, the year of the Nashville school shooting, 656 mass shootings occurred. And this year, there have been at least 16 school shootings, according to CNN, not including the Valentine’s Day Kansas City Chief’s Super Bowl Parade shooting which left one person dead, two dozen injured and hundreds running for cover. At least two AR-15-style rifles were recovered. I know this is a food column, but this is also a newsletter about life, preserving it, and being able to celebrate it. So how do we move forward?Moms Demand Action suggests three steps to gun reform:
The national group, March Forth, puts it more simply: No one needs an AR-15. Reinstate the federal assault weapons ban.
It might help to think about mushrooms, tooMy friend Jane forwarded an Instagram reel where on a BBC4 program called ‘’Ways to Change the World’’ Scottish climate justice activist Mikaela Loach was talking about mushrooms and how they create these underground networks called mycelium—the thready, vegetative part of fungi—and it’s all happening under the earth and no one knows about it until you take a walk and see an amazing wild mushroom like chicken of the woods in front of you. You think that mushroom is a miracle and came out of nowhere, but in truth, it’s been slowly growing underground for years. Scientists are learning about the powerful potential fungi like mushrooms hold for the future with their ability to recycle waste, improve health, and produce human food and animal feed. In a similar way, with social changes such as gun reform, civil rights, or climate change, work has been going on in and out of sight for decades. While at times the lack of progress feels discouraging, something substantial is being built.
In 1969, the esteemed food writer M.F.K. Fisher declared in her book With Bold Knife and Fork that ‘’mushrooms are friends of mine.’’Mushrooms bring an earthiness to recipes, a woodsiness, a feeling of eating meat when you’re not. It’s called ‘’Umami,’’ which translates to ‘’delicious savory taste” in Japanese. The best mushrooms for the Smitten Kitchen pasta recipe I share today are cremini (Baby Bella) or shiitake or oyster wild mushrooms. These mushrooms have more flavor than white button mushrooms. And the best way to clean mushrooms is not to wash them at all. Trim off the dry end of the stem, and brush off the mushrooms with a dry cloth. I was visiting my friend Sylvia who owns Green Door Gourmet farm here in Nashville and saw the gorgeous wild Shiitake and grey oyster mushrooms being grown by Hedgehog Foods in Beechgrove, Tennessee sold in her market store. I bought a pound and drove home hungry for mushrooms in a creamy, comforting sauce. First, I ran across this M.F.K. Fisher recipe, from the 1930s in Vevey, Switzerland, along the coast of Lake Geneva:
Tricks to cooking mushroomsDid you catch Fisher’s tip about cooking mushrooms? Let them release their juices and then reabsorb them. Another tip to bring out the full flavor of mushrooms is to wait to salt them until they have browned in the saute pan. Mushrooms are such a lovely rich taste over buttered toast or turned into a quick springtime pasta sauce. They feel substantial and somber, yet friendly, as M.F.K. Fisher noted. I thought the connection between mushrooms and social change was pretty remarkable. And believe me, I was looking for something hopeful to write about today. My writing this newsletter and talking with you about it, our contacting elected officials to urge common sense gun reform, and more young parents running for elected office—these actions will not bring back the deceased or protect the vulnerable in classrooms any more than a bow on a mailbox. But like the mycelium, they will emerge with change. The safety of everyone’s children is more important than gun rights. Plain and simple. We should insist on a safe America. Until then, cast a ballot and head into the kitchen to make a big pan of mushroom pasta with creamy sauce, seasoned with thyme from the garden, grated Parm, and a big pinch of activism. - xo, Anne
THE RECIPE: The Smitten Kitchen’s Simplest Mushroom PastaYou can find packages of Baby Bella (cremini) mushrooms in most all supermarkets. They are the favorite of Deb Perelman, who writes the wildly popular Smitten Kitchen Substack newsletter and loads of wonderful cookbooks. Deb Perelman is a big fan of mushrooms, and I had a hard time deciding which mushroom recipe of hers to try. A slight upgrade are oyster and Shiitake mushrooms, which are at Trader Joe’s, or might be grown by a farmer near you. If you don’t have marsala, substitute a medium-dry sherry. Or just use white wine. And while she calls for 1 pound of pasta in this recipe, I use just half a pound so there’s more sauce! Lastly, use crème fraîche. It is amazing in this recipe. With the starch in the pasta cooking water, it makes its own sauce. But if you only have heavy cream, cook a little longer to let the moisture in the cream cook off. Makes 4 servings
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