We had a pretty successful farmer’s market run on Saturday, so we’re trying to meal-plan our way through the week so everything gets used. This dinner was designed to use up a bag of truly splendid oyster mushrooms and a bunch of spinach from Frog’s Song Farm.

I wanted to do some sort of tart, to really feature the mushrooms’ flavor, so I took my usual approach of opening three or four different cookbooks and kind of combining ideas from all of them. What I ended up with were two galettes of part-whole-wheat pie dough, folded around a filling of shallot, oyster mushrooms, white wine, mustard, chives and parsley, along with some goat cheese. The filling was based on a recipe from A Culinary Journey in Gascony by Kate Hill, the pie dough was my own variation on the Joy of Cooking “pie dough cockaigne”, and the general baking guidelines from a Deborah Madison recipe for mushroom galettes.

The spinach salad was a great foil for the little pies. I made a dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper, and boiled two eggs until they were just firm. The spinach was big-leaved and heavy textured, but had a wonderful sweet flavor. And we opened a bottle of red wine from southern France, a Domaine Lafage from Roussillon, which gradually opened up into something really beautiful that went splendidly with the earthy mushroom and spinach.

It’s so nice to be back in our own kitchen again!

Mushroom Galettes with Goat Cheese

(recreated as well as possible, given that I did not measure a single thing except the flour for the dough)

• one half recipe pie dough, preferably with some whole wheat flour included
• a tablespoon of butter
• one bag oyster mushrooms, chopped
• one shallot, chopped
• about half a cup of white wine
• a spoonful of Dijon mustard
• a scant handful of fresh chives, chopped
• a handful of parsley leaves, chopped
• a small round of fresh goat cheese

Preheat the oven to 400°. Melt the butter in a skillet and add the shallot. When it starts to soften, add the mushrooms. Once they begin to cook and release their liquid, add the white wine and mustard and mix thoroughly. Let simmer for ten minutes or so, until the wine has almost cooked away. Shut off the heat and mix in the fresh herbs. Set aside.

Divide your pie dough into two pieces, and roll out into rounds of 9 inches or so. Set the rounds on a baking sheet. In the center of each round place several small chunks of goat cheese, then half the mushroom mixture. Fold or pleat the dough over the filling – you want some of the filling to show, so don’t try to seal it off at the top. Bake for 25 minutes.