Mushroom is one of those rare words that sounds NOTHING alike in CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), likely because each culture already had their own terms for mushroom as a food item and didn't want to adapt the Chinese Kanji, unlike other words that 1.) sound the same in all 3 languages (example: library) or 2.) sound the same in 2 of the languages, with one outlier). In the Romance languages there's more commonality, "champignon" in French and "champinon" in Spanish with a tilde I'm too lazy to add (both to champinon and to the actual tilde).
As a kid, I didn't notice mushrooms much: it was just a bunch of meats, rice, and shove down the green vegetables as much as I could without tasting it. Mushrooms were just kind of there, without any distinguishing tastes. My parents would sneak into some Chinese dishes like Mapo Tofu, chicken (with mushroom and black bean sauce), etc. I never even looked at the mushroom aisle at grocery stores; mushrooms don't look that appealing anyway and I always had a aversion towards them due to some growing in our front yard as a weed; it always made me shudder in that 친구로 feeling (word that MJ uses a lot meaning gross).
Little did I know that a decade later, mushrooms would be a large component of meals that I make, even replacing meat as the main protein. Indeed based on the instructions of the meal service we use called "Hungryroot" (I joke that it's named because it leaves people hungry even after you eat) I ate a taco with black beans and portobello mushroom as the main "meaty" ingredient.....and it was good. Amazing feeling to recognize food for its positives of low-grease, low-fat. Eleven Madison Park in NYC made their menu completely vegan, and MJ and I really savored the elegance of the meal designs without having to use any meat (especially duck, their previous signature dish). Unfortunately not everyone feels this way, as the restaurant got some backlash.
Apparently there's quite the science to eating mushrooms and types of mushrooms. The instructions today alerted me to the need to scoop out the black "gills" or a portobello, something that I wouldn't have thought to do... there are also ways of cutting mushrooms, nuances lost to the novice chef like myself who just cuts them like a pizza, into 4 equal pieces from the top, sometimes eliminating the stem if I'm feeling fancy.
Oyster mushrooms, Enoki mushrooms, shiitake, porcini... I find the most efficient is just the button mushroom that is the most common, although it feels the dirtiest, as I have to wash once before cutting, then again AFTER cutting them as the grime oozes out of the mushroom....it's not for the faint of heart, seeing all the grime that comes out. I guess that's the beauty and "humanness" of mushrooms: they're closer to human beings than plants. The elegant curves of mushrooms, the meaty texture, the sense that mushrooms are always growing, and negatively the dirt and imperfections of mushrooms, so well encapulates human beings. I could definitely see some people getting grossed out by mushrooms; they're not exactly the best looking food items unless you want rich mixtures of brown and white on your plate; but I just like the unsung hero role it plays in a lot of dishes, especially in the taco I made with them today; the first bite of that portobello hit the spot as much as any T-bone steak I've ever had.
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