When I asked my lovely followers on Facebook what kind of mushroom related post they would like to see me write in the coming weeks for my lovely friends at Mushrooms Canada, I received a pretty overwhelming response. Most people came up with some delicious way to cook them like sautéed in butter, or flash fried with tempura, but a good portion of responders said they hated them. How can this BE?!

There are ENDLESS varieties of mushrooms out there, and even though the grocery stores usually only stock crimini, white and portobello, other varieties of mushrooms are just waiting for you to try them out. They don’t all taste the same, and they definitely do not all have the same consistency or mouth feel, so why hate them? My personal take on not liking foods is to question the reason, if they are adults, that is. Kids have weird reasons for not liking foods, like textures or colours, but they they also have difficulties explaining to you why they don’t like something. So when you ask them why, and they can’t tell you, it all breaks down and no one is happy, but when an adult says they don’t like a food (barring allergies) I always ask, “but why?!”.

To me mushrooms are kind of a background bit of kind of spongy goodness that soaks up flavours like butter, salt and garlic (always a good mushroom combo right there) and that serve as little dishes to bring me other wonderful eats, such as crab and cream cheese or escargot. So let’s talk about that one right there, escargot. Another weird kind of food that only a select few awesome people eat. I get it, they’re snails…which are like bugs and are all slimy and gross and have antennas. The world is headed toward more bug eating though, as we find that the foods we do eat are harder to sustain. So why stick to the same old pork, beef, chicken and fish? Branch out! Eat some snails!

This flatbread is a great way to introduce escargot to anyone that has never tried it as they are chopped up quite fine and blend in with the mushrooms. My kids don’t usually eat onions, mushrooms and especially not snails, but they gobbled this “pizza” up like any other. Head on over to the Mushrooms Canada Blog to find the recipe and let me know what you think!