About the Book
In all my years of reading menus in great restaurants, I can remember no experience to rival the wonderful, mouthwatering anticipation of literally skipping (joyfully) through this delightfully written and illustrated book. It's a labor of love between two people in love who have found the way to delight and do less harm. This is a book I will use often and treasure always.
---Graham Kerr, author of Growing at the Speed of Life: A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden
The first time I tasted a Michigan morel mushroom was one of the most incredible culinary experiences of my life. I was amazed! I thank Ruth Mossok Johnston for allowing me to revisit this experience through her exceptional collection of recipes.
---Takashi Yagihashi, James Beard Foundation Award winner for Best Chef: Midwest and author of Takashi's Noodles
Ruth Mossok Johnston hasn't given us the usual butter, heavy cream, and wine. Her recipes are imaginative, adventurous, worldly, and heart healthy as well as practical and accessible to curious cooks. I'm hoping that, as a loyal customer of Zingerman's Delicatessen, she'll see it as a compliment when her dishes find their way into our cases!
---Paul Saginaw, Co-Founder and Co-Owner of Zingerman's A true treasure of innovative and unique ways to showcase morel mushrooms. Who but Ruth Mossok Johnston could even contemplate a Savory Morel Cheesecake much less create an explicit and easily followed recipe to create your own? Yet a dilemma remains . . . does the connoisseur buy this book because of the contribution it makes to the art of cooking or because the original artwork by David McCall Johnston makes it worthy of an art collector's wall? The only reasonable solution . . . buy two.
---James Hiller, President, Hiller's Markets
I love this book! Each dish is a rewarding, memorable experience, and Ruth Mossok Johnston's refreshing, intelligent, and witty take on everything food related here again shows her passion for cooking healthfully, entertainingly, and with culinary artistry. The magnificent original artwork is the perfect complement to this special journey.
---John Berndt, General Manager, Pan Pacific Nirwana Bali Resort
Ruth Mossok Johnston expands on the luxurious flavor and texture of the delicate and prized morel in every recipe, while her husband David McCall Johnston captures the innate beauty of this earthly delight in his astounding illustrations. With recipes at our fingertips ranging from Yorkshire Pudding to Sticky Brown Rice, we'll never mow the lawn again without scouring it for this precious fungus first.
---Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, authors of Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese and Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter
I've followed David Johnston's art for years and found these images in The Art of Cooking Morels to be as delicious, inventive, and inspirational as the recipes themselves. The food and the paintings are a sensory treat.
---Kit Hinrichs, Designer, Studio Hinrichs
The Art of Cooking Morels showcases Ruth Mossok Johnston's passion for healthy and delicious recipes with a refreshing focus on using organic ingredients, promoting sustainable agriculture, and, in many cases, procuring from local farmers.
---Gerard van Grinsven, President and CEO, Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital
Morels have captured the imagination of America's cooks: more than any other mushroom, they entice chefs to forage in the wilderness each spring, attempting to find the treasured, honeycombed fungus in its hiding places in the wild.
In The Art of Cooking Morels , Ruth Mossok Johnston brings together more than 80 recipes for this delicacy, suitable for cooking with fresh mushrooms in season or dried year-round. The recipes, accompanied by stunning full-color illustrations, offer options for appetizers, soups, entrées, and side dishes from simple and elegant to exotic and sophisticated, and always mindful of highlighting the delicate morel.
Johnston's recipes are heart healthy, inventive, and delicious. The author also includes instructions for handling, storing, and preserving morels.
About the Author:
Ruth Mossok Johnston is the owner of Feed Me Heartfully, LLC, a company that specializes in an intergenerational approach to healthy food and a creative healthy lifestyle. She is also an author of cookbooks, a food journalist, and a culinary consultant. Ruth was the Editorial Director for Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, heading the division of Family and Consumer Sciences--encompassing all the books on food, nutrition, culinary arts, and interior design. As a freelance journalist, she wrote for Meredith Publishing, Food.Com, the Christian Science Monitor, the American Heart Association, Old House Journal, the Detroit Free Press, and the Jewish News.
David McCall Johnston is an internationally known artist/illustrator. Represented for more than 40 years in New York, he is identified in the book The Illustrator in America 1880--1980 and the companion book The Illustrator in America 1860--2000. Some of his commissions include paintings for the Jules Verne Museum in Nantes, France; the Holocaust Museum; New York University; Steuben Glass; and Mt. Rushmore's Golden Anniversary; corporate art for Hickory Farms, Earthy Delights, Keeneland, Michigan Apple Growers, Whirlpool Corporation, and Maker's Mark Distillery; illustrations for many award-winning books; and artwork for private collectors.
