Roasting in beer does wonders for mushrooms

I love a chef who takes as much care with vegetables as with meat and seafood. And I don’t mean he or she can make a mean salad or stir-fry — dishes that, as delicious as they can be, often combine lots of produce into a single mélange. I’m thinking instead of recipes that demonstrate a focus on the technique of cooking a particular vegetable in a way that makes it shine on the plate.

That’s what Chris Bianco does. He’s the Phoenix chef and restaurateur best known for making some of the country’s best pizza, and the author of the new “Bianco: Pizza, Pasta, and Other Food I Like” (Ecco, 2017). Bianco is an equalopportunity chef, piling pulled lamb onto sandwiches and soppressata onto pizza dough, but also gently cooking beautiful beans for the classic Italian dish pasta e fagioli, grilling zucchini to combine with an egg and mint, and roasting mushrooms with a hoppy beer.

I jumped at the chance to make the latter. Bianco has you rub large portobello caps with a generous amount of olive oil, throw a bunch of smashed garlic cloves into the pan with them, along with a halfdozen rosemary sprigs, and then glug in three-quarters of a bottle of beer. Simple — and powerful. As the mushrooms roasted, the beer bubbled away and infused the fungi with a deep, slightly tangy flavor.

As instructed, I let them go until the liquid had reduced down to very little, then deglazed the pan with the remnants of the bottle. As soon as they were ready, I knew just what to do: I took some soft ciabatta I had on hand, and made a simple sandwich with a mushroom cap, a couple of those softened garlic cloves, a single slowroasted tomato slice and mayo. It was heaven.

Bianco suggests you serve the mushrooms whole, or sliced on the diagonal as you would a steak. I’ll try that next time, but for now I’m happy making sandwiches, and I can’t imagine ever wanting to cook portobellos any other way.