The key to giving a portobello (or any mushroom) dense texture is to cook it slowly in oil so that most of its moisture is driven out. My biggest successes came in taking whole mushrooms and cooking them, covered, for as long as two hours. Nearly as good, however, and more than twice as fast, is to cut up the mushrooms and cook them in oil, uncovered, for 30 to 45 minutes. At that point, you not only have fabulous mushrooms, which you can use in a pasta sauce, as I do here, or to top salads or stir into rice dishes, but you also have very good-flavored oil. To further improve the mushrooms' flavor, I like to use the trick popularized by Marcella Hazan: add a few reconstituted dried porcini to the portobellos.

Featured in: The Minimalist; Mushroom Heaven.