Porcini Mushroom

A true demi-glace — the luscious sauce made by reducing homemade stock and red wine to a rich concentration — needs to simmer for several hours, making it the perfect activity for a lazy winter Sunday.

With its use of dried porcini in the turkey rub and fresh shiitakes in the light gravy, this recipe from the late food writer Michael McLaughlin is a fine example of his signature style: deeply flavorful seasonal cooking. You can make the turkey stock for the gravy up to two days ahead.

Serve buttered green beans with this, and uncork a chilled Viognier.

For a light meal, all you need is some crusty French bread and a garden salad to go with this comforting soup.

Also delicious with steaks or roast chicken.

Orzo—rice shaped pasta—is easier to find than Arborio rice (the traditional ingredient in risotto) and makes a delicious risotto-style side dish.

Rick Rodgers, cookbook author and teacher, says, "When planning my holiday menu, I'm always sure to include a green vegetable for its bright color and clean flavor, and this year that vegetable is going to be broccoli. But it's not enough to serve it plain or too simply, because that's not what a big-time food fest like Thanksgiving is all about. So I decided to add a luxury ingredient—porcini mushrooms. Now that makes an ordinary vegetable extraordinary."

Be sure to refrigerate the oil, and to use it within three weeks of the date it was made.

Italian risotto, traditionally served as an appetizer, makes a great vegetarian meal when served with a salad. In this recipe, butter and cream have been replaced with a flavorful mushroom broth. Porcini mushrooms and Arborio rice are available at Italian markets, specialty food stores and some supermarkets.

Although polenta is traditionally made with cornmeal, we substituted matzo meal—with great results. It's far more tender than regular polenta, and tastes especially wonderful with the sauce from the braised veal with gremolata .

One surprise to Europeans who settled the plains was the abundance of wild mushrooms, including morels, chanterelles, and other varieties familiar from home. Free for the picking, the mushrooms were hung on strings and dried, providing a winter's worth of eating. Wild rice (actually a grass seed) is a New World native that combines well with the earthy mushrooms the French cèpes. (The Italians call them porcini, and they are easier to find than cèpes, which is why we call for porcini in this recipe.)

Porcini and shiitake mushrooms are the delicious difference in this fondue. Other varieties would work well, too.