Don't Sweat the Aubergine

them, and stew them, lightly salted, in a little butter. They’ll be tender in about 10 minutes. You could steam the slices, but they’ll be rather watery.
    Leeks sit happily in a béchamel sauce ( see here ), particularly one with cheese; pour the sauce over cooked, small leeks, or stewed, sliced ones, sprinkle cheese on top, and brown under the grill. Leeks also have an affinity with fish (see fish pie, here ).
Lettuce
    The pre-bagged, mixed salads you get in supermarkets may be convenient, but they’re also tasteless, I find. Further grounds for shunning them may be found in
Not on the Label
by Felicity Lawrence, who describes how these salads are processed. Buy lettuces and other salad greens (avoiding the tasteless icebergs) from the greengrocer; wash them thoroughly (you’ll wash the supermarkets’ ‘ready to eat’ stuff too, if you’ve read
Not on the Label
), and dry them in a salad whizzer ( see here ). A vinaigrette ( see here ) won’t adhere to wet leaves. Dress green leaves just before you’re due to eat them: the oil and vinegar soon cause them to go limp and discoloured.
    For a more substantial green salad, try adding chopped-up bits of blue cheese, and/or bits of walnut, and/or fried bits of bacon or pancetta (with their fat – reduce the oil in the dressing accordingly), and/or croutons. Fried croutons take up a lot of oil. Instead, I bake them (for 4): 3 slices of crustless bread cut into squares, tossed with 1 tbsp olive oil, laid out on a baking tray and put into a gas mark 6/200°C oven for 5 to 10 minutes, or until golden.
Mushrooms
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HOW TO COOK THEM
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    For 2, as an accompaniment or snack
    200g mushrooms, rinsed, 1 woody parts of their stems trimmed, thickly sliced
    1 1/2 tbsp olive oil, or about 40g butter, or a combination
    Salt
    1 garlic clove, finely chopped
    1 dstsp parsley, chopped
    Squeeze of lemon juice
    Warm a frying pan, or saucepan with a large base; add the oil or butter. When the oil is warm or the butter is melted, throw in the mushrooms, lightly salt them, and cook, stirring regularly, over a medium heat. They will suck up the oil; keep stirring. After a minute or so they will release their liquid; turn up the heat to let it evaporate. 2 Add the garlic and parsley, and cook for a minute longer. Turn off the heat; add a little lemon juice, and pepper if you like.
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VARIATIONS
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    This recipe will apply to most types of mushrooms. But chanterelles contain a tremendous quantity of water, and, like tender meat, toughen up if allowed to stew. Rinse them, salt them, and put them in a saucepan, with the lid on, over a high flame. Shake the pan to prevent sticking and burning. After a minute or two, they should be swimming in liquid. Drain them in a sieve, and sauté them quickly as above.
    Alternatively, you could sieve the liquid into another saucepan, boil it over a high heat until it has reduced to a syrup, and add it to the cooked mushrooms.
    The garlic and parsley – a Provençal theme, sometimes including breadcrumbs – are not compulsory. They are added at the end of cooking to preserve their freshness of flavour.
    Tarragon and basil are also particularly good complements. Or cook the mushrooms with spices ( see here ).
    Another possibility: add a small pot (142ml) of cream to the cooked mushrooms, and allow it to bubble until it has thickened slightly. That, on toast, makes a nice lunch; as does the same recipe but with sour cream and paprika. You could soften a chopped shallot or two before sautéing the mushrooms.
    Baking enriches mushrooms. Turn them, whole, in olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and bake in a gas mark 6/200°C oven for 20 minutes to half an hour, depending on their size.
    Fungal qualities are at their most intense in dried mushrooms. You soak them for about half an hour in tepid water, drain, then stew them in butter for about 10 minutes. Or simply add them to a stew or risotto, along with their flavoursome soaking liquid.
    All these mushroom recipes might be used as pasta sauces.
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WHY YOU DO IT
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    1 • Washing them . Mushrooms are mostly water, so warnings that washing them will ruin their texture are wide of the mark. I put them in a colander and give them a quick rinse under a running tap, scraping off bits of earth with a knife.
    2 • Absorbing oil, disgorging water . Mushrooms have the spongy qualities of aubergines. They are similarly greedy: if you add more oil, they’ll absorb that too. Be patient. The heat will force them