

Enter Wild Mushroom Lasagna($$$), which fit the bill like a champ... five types of mushrooms(porcini, oyster, chantrelle, shiitake, and cremini) and two cheeses (fontina and Parmesan)... score! Of course, the downside is that it's not always easy to find that many wild mushrooms... which we didn't. Of the three places we visited, we only saw some pretty sad looking oyster mushrooms and neither hide nor hair of chantrelles or shiitakes. Fortunately, the people at Cook's Illustrated anticipated this and provided a recipe for

One important note... the recipe calls for Italian fontina and says to substitute mozzarella if you can't get it... not some other kind of Fontina. They mean it. I didn't listen to them, because I thought the knowledgeable cheesepeople at Formaggio Kitchen would give me the best possible substitute... and they did... flavor-wise. However, the deal here is hardness, which I didn't appreciate until we were getting ready to make our first cheese layer and had vastly too little cheese. Of course, we had the right amount weight wise, but because the Belgian fontina we had was very soft, it didn't shred at all really... just sort of made little balls of cheese. So instead of even layers, we ended up with pools of cheese interspersed within... not the end of the world, and the same overall level of cheesy goodness, but not ideal. We almost went to the store for some mozzarella at the last minute, but I worried we might overcompensate and make it too cheesy(yes, it is possible)... so we decided to just forge ahead.
Aside from the above fiasco, I think it came out quite well. The béchamel sauce was fun to make, as was assembling the layers of lasagna. I'm pretty sure we'll try it again with wild mushrooms and the right type of cheese!
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