Mushroom Tartlets - Preparing the Mushrooms

Bryan Davis: Hi, my name is Bryan Davis with Chef Bryan's Kitchen and today we are going to make some Mushroom Tartlets. What we are going to do first is we are going to start with chopping the garlic, so what we are going to need is about two cloves of garlic and what we are going to do is we are going to do a fine chop on the garlic. We are not going -- we want it smaller than rough chop but we dont need to it be down to a mess. So what we are going to do, we are just going to slice the garlic down and then we are going to run our blade through it a few types just to get it down to finely rough chop. We dont need it to be tiny, it is going to cook for a while so it is going to have time to break down and flavor our ingredients. So we are going to continue just to run the knife through it, get a nice little chop on it and then we are going to be set, okay. So we are starting with two cloves of garlic, now we are going to do our parsley. You are going to need, oh I dont know maybe two tablespoons of parsley. What we are going to do is just kind of run our knife through it, get a nice little chop on it. Instead of parsley if you wanted to use a different herb, chives, rosemary, I would not go with any of the more stronger flavor such as cilantro but any of the milder herbs marjoram, oregano, chives would work fine in this, in place of the parsley. Okay we have got our garlic chopped, we have got our parsley chopped. Now we are going to prep our mushrooms. We got here Shiitake mushrooms and basically all we want to do with the Shiitake is to take the stem off, so if you grab them with the base, kind of pinch and twist, the stems come right off. So that is what we are going to do with our Shiitake mushrooms. So we are going to take our mushroom and we are just basically run our knife through it and make some little French stripes. For the larger mushrooms we want to cut them in half, turn them sideways because you still want them to be small enough that they are going to be fit in the tart shells. So we have got our sliced Shiitakes there. Now for the button mushrooms, to remove the stems the easiest way to do it, you take the mushroom and you push the stem away from you and then pull back and it lifts right out. So what we are going to do is we are going to use the paper towel, just a regular dry paper towel and we are just going to brush them off. Okay, you just want to take a light -- little bit of slight pressure to them, get all the stuff on the outside off, you dont really need to get into and scrub them but you want to get all that loose particles off the mushrooms themselves. Okay so we have got our mushrooms, now what we are going to do is we are just going to run our knife through and slice them. I am going to run our knife through again and just kind of chop them down and you can do this beforehand like I am doing or you can actually cook the mushrooms and then chop them afterwards. The reason I like doing this is I was taught going to a culinary school that the more you can seize-in the individual pieces the better flavor it is going to be. So rather than sauting the whole mushrooms and the large button size, I am chopping them down and when we add the salt, pepper and red wine to these each individual piece will be flavored rather then the whole piece and then cut down. And when we come back in the next segment I am going to show you how to saute these mushrooms with the wine and the cheese and the cream.