Sweet Tooth and Mushroom Ragout with Creamy Polenta

Ian McKewan's Sweet Tooth has one of those standout food moments that bookcooker is all about.  The novel, which I must admit I thought would be a little sexier 007 than it was, is about Serena Frome, a smart, pretty, wispy Cambridge girl who finds her herself working for MI5 in early 1970's London.  This is not a path Serena would have found on her own  - she is the daughter of a bishop and a maths major with a suppressed passion for literature and bad taste in men.  It is through an affair with a much older and worldly professor that she finds herself working in the British domestic spy agency during the gloomy days of the cold war, British economic depression and the threat of the IRA.  It is the older professor that also introduces her to this earthy, sexy dish - forest mushrooms with creamy polenta.  Serena and Tony Canning, a professor at Cambridge were Serena is a student, spend secret weekends together at a cottage in the country. Tony teaches Serena about world affairs and they drink wine and good food that Tony cooks.  This dish was particularly intriguing to me (I love polenta!) and for Serena it was a symbol of the kind of sophisticated world she thought Tony was opening up for her.   Of course, since this is a spy novel, Tony was not what he seemed, he cruelly dumped Serena but she went to work for MI5 in London anyway.  Rather than the exciting and sexy experience you would expect, Serena's work and life was dreary and demeaning - until she was recruited into the "Sweet Tooth" project...

Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth is a spy novel for nerds.  After graduating Cambridge and a disastrous love affair with a professor, Serena Frome moves to London in the early 1970's to work for the British domestic spying agency.  She lives in a flat with a bunch of anti-social law students and spends her days doing dreary clerical work.  The agency she works at is extremely sexist and Serena soon realizes that this will not be the glamorous career she imagined.  While she is no zealot, in the midst of the counterculture of the day, she is a bit of a straight - and firmly anti-communist.  She spends her days sleepily going through the motions at work and at night comes home to her small room and focuses on her passion for reading.  She reads at a voracious pace and is no snob - she thinks Jacqueline Susann is as good as Austen.  It is this love of literature that lands her her first real spy gig on the Sweet Tooth project.  In an effort to spread the government's anti-communist views, MI5 decides to secretly fund the projects of several up and coming writers whose work supports this philosophy.  Most of the writers are journalists or academics, but Serena is chosen to recruit and run a novelist  - Tom Haley - into the program.  Serena pretends to be from an independent foundation and tells Tom that it has chosen to give him a large stipend so that he may work on a novel.  Although for some this would seem too good to be true, Tom conducts some de minimus due diligence and agrees to accept the money.   This might have gone down so easily because Serena is so pretty, and Serena is immediately attracted to Tom as well.  The two fall in love.  Serena keeps the affair a secret from her employers, but spends every weekend with Tom playing house at his apartment in beach-side Brighton.  Serena revels in the special little routines she and Tom create - Chablis and oysters on Friday, his special writing time in the morning while she fetches croissants.  It is all quite romantic, but Serena knows she is betraying Tom by not telling him who she really is.  Serena is not just Tom's lover, but as a representative of his funder, she is the first reader of his work.  One of my favorite parts of the book is when McEwan gives us pieces of Tom's writing, as if we are Serena reading it.  While the spy stuff is the distraction, what McEwan really meant to write about here is reading and literature, and through Serena explores what books mean to us all.  Not the sexy spy thriller I was expecting, but a fulfilling book nonethless.

Creamy Polenta with Mushroom Ragout, adapted from Food and Wine
(printable recipe)

This is a deceptively simple but thoroughly rich and seductive dish.  In the book, Tony Canning used cepes (or porcini) mushrooms foraged from the forest floor.  Alas, I am not a skilled mushroom hunter and porcini, which I love, are hard to find in my neck of the woods.  I used more garden variety shrooms - portobellos, shitake and oyster, if you have some fabulous wild mushrooms available near you, this is definitely the dish that will make them shine.  With a glass of wine, this a lovely winter meal.
Ingredients
(For Mushrooms)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 shallots, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound assorted mushrooms, thickly chopped
1/4 cup white wine
1/2 cup chicken stock
two thyme springs, leaves removed and chopped
(For Polenta)
2 cups whole milk
2 and 1/2 cups chicken stock (plus more if necessary)
1 cup polenta (not instant)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. To make polenta, combine the chicken stock and milk in a large saucepan and bring to a boil.
2. Reduce the heat to medium and then slowly add the polenta, whisking constantly so that no lumps form.
3. Reduce heat to low, and cover.  Let cook slowly over low heat for 20 minutes, until thick and creamy.
4. Stir in cheese and salt and pepper to taste.  You won't need a lot of salt because the cheese.
5. For mushrooms:  Cook the mushrooms at first in two batches.
6. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of oil over medium high heat in a large skillet.
7. Add 2 tablespoons of shallot and 1 tablespoon of garlic and add half of the mushrooms.  Continue to cook over medium high heat until the mushrooms are soft and golden, about 6 minutes.  Remove the first batch of mushrooms to a plate.
8. In same skillet heat the remaining butter and oil over medium high heat.  Add the remaining shallots, garlic and mushrooms and cook about 6 minutes - until the mushrooms are soft and golden.
9. Add the already cooked mushrooms to the skillet, then add the wine and chicken stock and stir. 
10. Reduce heat to low and the let the mushrooms simmer for five more minutes, so that some of the liquid is reduced.
11. Stir in the chopped thyme and salt and pepper to taste.
12. Serve over the polenta.