According to its residents, the mushroom capital of the entire world is a small Pennsylvania village called Kennett Square (Town Motto: Mushrooms Are Good). The people of Kennett Square take their roles as Mushroom Ambassadors very seriously, and I warn you now: if you drive to Kennett Square from out-of-state, you must always lock your car, otherwise you may return to discover a Mushroom Ambassador has placed a giant basket of mushrooms in your backseat, along with some Educational Pamphlets (did you know, for instance, that mushrooms are Nature's Hidden Resource for Vitamin D?) Seriously, every fall, Kennett Square plays host to a wonderful Mushroom Festival, complete with mushroom soup cook-offs, a 5K mushroom run (I am not making this up), mushroom cooking demonstrations and mushroom parades. I know this because we happened to be near Kennett Square on a business trip and were perplexed as to why people dressed as giant mushrooms kept crossing the street. Anyway, in the culinary tent, one of the chefs was demonstrating how to cook this amazing-looking fungi I later discovered was a hen-of-the-woods mushroom, which he prepared with Marsala, greens, and prosciutto and which inspired this recipe. As Portobello and shitake are about as exotic as my local market gets these days, I tried to jazz up the "wild" element by infusing olive oil with reconstituted dried wild mushrooms. Thanks, Kennett Square!! (Photo courtesy the Mushroom Festival) - wssmom

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