Mushroom and cashew pâté

This pareve spread is a great addition to your hors d’oeuvres offerings. It works for any and all holidays, as it’s also allowed for Passover. You can think of it as a vegan substitute for Jewish chopped liver, good for serving to vegetarians or at a dairy meal, but it need not pretend to be anything other than what it is—it’s fabulous, and always popular with everyone, vegetarian or not. There’s never been a smidgeon left when I serve it to my family.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons walnut oil (you can use a neutral oil but this will really enhance the flavor)

• 2 large yellow onions, peeled and sliced into half moons

• 1 ½ cups thinly sliced cremini mushrooms

• ½ cup thinly sliced shiitake mushroom caps

• ¾ cup roasted cashew nuts

• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste (the amount of salt you’ll need will depend upon whether or not your cashews are salted.

Method:

• Warm the oil in a medium skillet. Add the onion slices with a light sprinkle of salt and sauté them slowly over medium heat. Cooking them slowly gives the natural sugars in the onions to release. Give them a stir every few minutes.

• When the onions are just beginning to turn color, add the sliced mushrooms with another pinch of salt, and stir. As the mushrooms cook, they will give off their liquid. Keep cooking until that liquid is absorbed again, then sauté the onions and mushrooms until they’re a deep mahogany in color, but don’t let them burn or they’ll taste bitter. The cooking method and the caramelization is what gives the dish its flavor and color, so don’t rush it.

• Turn the onions and mushrooms into the work bowl of a food processor. Add the cashews and the lemon juice, plus a few turns of the pepper mill. Process until you have an almost smooth purée—it’s best when there’s just a little texture remaining to the pâté.

• Taste for salt and add more if needed. You don’t want it to be too salty, but it will taste flat if it’s under-salted.

• Scrape the mixture into a serving bowl or mound it nicely on a flat plate. Or, you can get fancy and pack it into a small, well-greased mold. Cover the pâté tightly with plastic wrap and keep in the fridge, up to one day, until ready to serve. (Its flavor is at its best when eaten within a day.)

• If you’ve used a mold, turn it out onto a nice plate at serving time. Serve the Mushroom and Cashew Pate with thin slices of toasted baguette, your favorite crackers (plain ones that don’t conflict with the flavor of the spread), as a topping for bagels with other traditional bagel offerings, or with broken matzo pieces for Passover.