OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for hearty mushroom paprikash.

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Welp, we made it through the worst of it. The sun now sets after 5 p.m., and in a week beset by fire and ice, let’s take a win where we can find it. OK, yes, it’s still pretty cold and gloomy out, but hey! The daylight is here for happy hour. If you aren’t getting much sunshine these days (or you’re vegan), dieticians might recommend taking vitamin D supplements to maintain bone health, combat depression and even slow the growth of tumors. Of course, you can usually get enough vitamin D from your diet — even though most sources come from animal products, mushrooms can be a good source for vegans or folks who can’t have dairy. Maybe it’s because evolutionarily, fungi are closer to animals than plants — though fungi don’t need sunlight to grow, like us, mushrooms make more vitamin D when exposed to UV rays. (No word from science on how vitamin D deficiency affects a mushroom’s mood.)

Vitamin D isn’t the only reason why mushrooms can keep you healthy — clinical trials also suggest that some mushrooms contain bioactive chemicals that protect the heart, kidneys and immune system, have antibacterial and antiviral properties and can even prevent cancerous tumors through “radical scavenging” (which sounds pretty punk rock but is really just about donating protons to unpaired electrons). Most of the adaptogenic mushrooms you’ll find as nutritional supplements and teas; these can be bitter or have a muddy flavor that make them a little unpleasant to take in straight, but one gourmet mushroom (that happens to grow in the Northwest) has recently gained buzz for its potential beneficial properties, especially for promoting gastrointestinal health. Do you know what it is? Read on to find out!

There’s water in them thar hills

While trying to locate a volcanic transition zone in the Cascade Range, scientists at the University of Oregon made a possibly even more important discovery: An enormous aquifer containing more than 80 cubic kilometers of water stored in the rocks. This is around three times the volume of Flathead Lake in Montana (a remnant of Missoula Lake, which flooded the Willamette Valley when a massive ice dam broke around 15,000 years ago). Watch the Soil episode of “Superabundant”

Red #3 is off the menu

The FDA has just banned the artificial food coloring known as Red #3 (a petroleum-derived chemical known in nerdier circles as ​​erythrosine, banned from cosmetics decades ago for causing cancer in lab rats. Fun fact: When Red #2 was banned in the 1970s, some food manufacturers had to pivot to a new colorant for raspberry-flavored products — this is how why the 1970s saw an explosion in blue raspberry in everything from Otter Pops to soda.

Portland Mercado will rebuild

After a fire tore through the main building a year ago, the Latinx marketplace and food hub Portland Mercado announced its plans to rebuild the space. On “All Things Considered” last week, OPB’s Crystal Ligori spoke with Ernesto Fonseca, the CEO of Hacienda Community Development Corporation (which oversees the space).

More Animal Style for the Beaver State

Good news, Bridge City burger heads: In-N-Out is coming to town. The California-based fast food chain is scoping out a new location near the Portland airport. If it opens, it will be the fifth location in Oregon. (If you can’t wait, you can always hack your way to a Double-Double, Animal Style at home.)

“Be prepared” for cookie cancellation

Girl Scouts cookie season has officially kicked off, but if S’mores and Toast-Yay are your favorites, you better heed the Girl Scouts motto and stock up while you can — these two varieties are being discontinued this year. (Everyone knows Samoas and Thin Mints are the best, anyway.)

Citrus is still the star of the show this week, with sour Seville oranges now joining the produce aisle ranks for your whole-orange cake and marmalade-making needs. Meyer lemons are fantastic for marmalade too, but they’re even better for lemon curd and honey limoncello (try adding a sprig of lavender).

I’ve been hitting the seed catalogs pretty hard, looking ahead to warmer weather. It’s still too early to plant most spring crops, but you can sow peas, beets, garlic and mustard-family vegetables like broccoli, radishes, cabbage, bok choy and mustard greens in the winter.

Of course, you can also grow some vegetables from cuttings. Slice off the bottom inch of bok choy at the root end and set it in a tray of water; in a week you’ll have leaf sprouts popping out of the spaces between the stems. Once roots emerge from the bottom, you can plant them in soil. This also works for celery, leeks, scallions and fennel bulbs.

Lately, in the “Superabundant” kitchen

✨ In an effort to work through a backlog of stored winter squash, one night I made pasta with roasted black futsu, shallots, escarole, butter-fried sage and toasted pumpkin seeds. It was one of those unintentionally vegan meals that completely hit the spot.

✨ Having heads of escarole and radicchio means there have been a lot of side salads with our meals, sometimes with yuzu vinaigrette and diced cucumbers, sometimes with crumbled cotija and cumin-spiced sunflower seeds, and sometimes with a Caesar-type dressing of anchovies, lemon juice and Lebanese garlic sauce.

✨ One chilly evening had me craving Salisbury steak (of all things!), so I made beef patties with shiitake gravy and mashed potatoes. If only I’d made some peas with diced carrots and a cherry crisp, it would have been a perfect TV dinner. I didn’t have any beef broth for the gravy, but got a rich sauce nonetheless by browning the beef, mushrooms and onions in butter, stirring in a spoonful of flour, then adding Worcestershire sauce, a splash of water (stirring to dissolve the browned bits) and a Maggi cube.

Recipe: Mushroom paprikash

This time of year you might be bombarded with information (and ads) promoting nutritional supplements to help you hit your January wellness goals. Probiotics (beneficial gut bacteria found in fermented foods) and even prebiotics (high-fiber foods that nourish our microbiome) are old hat by now. But nutraceuticals, functional foods, adaptogens — what do these words mean?

Nutraceuticals are just anything we consume that purport to have health benefits, and this includes both dietary supplements (like multivitamins and herbs) and functional foods, or foods that have been nutritionally boosted (e.g., milk with vitamin D added, orange juice with calcium, cereal fortified with riboflavin). Adaptogens are plants and fungi that are intended to help our bodies “adapt” to stresses, be they physiological or psychological. Whether or not they really do anything is still being studied, but in theory, they won’t do any harm, so if you’re curious, knock yourself out.

If you watched “The Last of Us” you may be familiar with cordyceps, used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine, but one of the best-tasting of the adaptogenic mushrooms is lion’s mane (aka bearded tooth fungus), which has been studied for its potential to prevent or treat a range of gastrointestinal maladies. Resembling a white Koosh ball, lion’s manes are cold-season mushrooms that grow in the Pacific Northwest; you can find them on dead oak and maple trees or in farmers markets with better-stocked produce aisles.

They also grow throughout Eurasia, including Hungary, and while I’ve never seen a recipe for Hungarian mushroom anything that specifically calls for lion’s mane, that’s never stopped me from plowing full steam ahead. (Wild mushrooms are generally adored throughout Eastern Europe, and once I get an idea for a dish I can always find a way to justify shoehorning an ingredient in.)

Lion’s mane is often used as a shellfish substitute (it makes a divine meat-free crab cake) the meaty texture is beautifully suited to a hearty Hungarian stew like paprikash, one of the country’s national dishes. With the addition of onions, this recipe technically hews toward pörkölt (another national dish of Hungary) but is enriched with sour cream like paprikash. Paprikash is usually served alongside small dumplings such as nokedli, kluski, spaetzle or haluski, but store-bought wide egg noodles are also great here. If you cook the dumplings or pasta in the stew, you end up with Hungary’s third (and perhaps best-known) national dish, gulyás. Serves 4-6

Notes: If you want to use pimentòn (Spanish smoked paprika), keep it to 1 teaspoon or less and use regular paprika for the rest of the recipe — smoked paprika has a strong flavor that can easily bury that of the mushrooms. Look for red pepper paste in international grocery stores like Mingala Market or Edelweiss (or online — it’s worth keeping in the pantry), or use tomato paste instead.

Ingredients

2 pounds mushrooms (preferably a mix, but button is fine), sliced ¼ inch thick

3 tablespoons neutral cooking oil or lard

1 large white or yellow onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon coarse sea salt or kosher salt

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

3 tablespoons sweet paprika (preferably Hungarian)

1 teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 cups vegetable or chicken broth

3 tablespoons red pepper paste (mild or hot) or tomato paste

1 cup sour cream

Chopped parsley and/or dill and dumplings for serving

Instructions

1. Heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat and add the mushrooms without the fat — cooking in a hot, dry pan will give the best results here. Cook on each side until the mushrooms are seared and browned, about a minute or two on each side.
2. Add the oil, onion, garlic and salt and reduce the heat to medium. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions have begun to brown and become fragrant, about five minutes.
3. Add the caraway, paprika, pepper and flour, stirring to coat the vegetables. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the flour begins to take on a toasty fragrance, about 6-8 minutes.
4. Add the vegetable or chicken broth, scraping the browned bits with your spoon, then add the red pepper or tomato paste. Stir until the flour and pepper paste are dissolved, then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the sauce has thickened to a gravy-like consistency.
5. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed, then turn off the heat and stir in the sour cream. Serve with a sprinkle of chopped fresh herbs and dumplings.