“Cooking with Mushrooms: A Fungi Lover’s Guide to the World’s Most Versatile, Flavorful, Health-Boosting Ingredients” is a mushroom lovers’ paradise. The book includes nearly 100 recipes that explore the array of mushroom varieties and their flavor profiles.

Author Andrea Gentl includes information on how to grow your own mushrooms, plus how to make and use dried mushrooms. Recipes include dishes like Morels on Fried Sourdough with Smashed Favas and Peas; Roast Chicken with Miso-Mushroom Butter; and Maple Mushroom Ice Cream. The reader will come away with new ideas for using the mushroom as both a flavor enhancer and a food.

Gentl raises the possibilities on how to best incorporate mushrooms in surprising ways. How about mushroom powder sprinkled over granola or Schnitzel with King Trumpet Mushrooms?

I was intrigued with Enoki Alfredo. Simple to put together, the mushrooms act as the pasta here. Enoki mushrooms grow in a bundle of ghostly white strands. Once trimmed, each bundle can be separated into a pile of individual mushrooms. They are delicate and a little crunchy when cooked. When thrown into salted boiling water, the mushrooms take on an angel hair pasta-like appearance.

This dish is an incredibly simple nod to two classic Italian pastas — Alfredo and cacio e pepe — with just a handful of ingredients: enoki, butter, Parmesan, black pepper, grated nutmeg, and a drizzle of olive oil at the finish, for extra gloss. It’s a perfect recipe for anyone who doesn’t eat gluten but wants the indulgence of saucy, creamy pasta for dinner. One wonders if enoki could be the new spaghetti squash. A Russian River pinot noir would be a lovely accompaniment.

Enoki Alfredo

Serves 2

Coarse salt

1 pound (455 g) enoki mushrooms

4 tablespoons (2 oz/60 g) unsalted butter, cut into 1-tablespoon pieces

2 ounces (60 g) finely grated Parmesan (you should get a little more than 1/2 cup)

1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Freshly grated nutmeg

Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling

1. Bring a pot of generously salted water to a boil.

2. Trim the enoki and separate the strands into piles. Cook the mushrooms in the boiling water for 1 1/2 minutes. Reserve 1/4 cup (60 mL) cooking liquid and drain the mushrooms.

3. Return the mushrooms to the pot. Add the butter, stirring until melted. Add the parmesan and stir vigorously until the sauce is glossy and creamy. Add a little of the reserved cooking water, if needed.

4. Top with pepper, a scant grating of nutmeg, and a drizzle of oil, and serve.

Art excerpted from “Cooking with Mushrooms: A Fungi Lover’s Guide to the World’s Most Versatile, Flavorful, Health-Boosting Ingredients” by Andrea Gentl. Artisan Books © 2022.

(Diane Rossen Worthington is an authority on new American cooking. She is the author of 18 cookbooks, including “Seriously Simple Parties,” and a James Beard Award-winning radio show host. You can contact her at www.seriouslysimple.com.)

©2022 Diane Rossen Worthington. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.