First let me just put it out there: I dig on fungus. I love it. And when I'm cooking anything in which mushrooms are a principle ingredient, I regularly overcompensate on the 'shrooms. These were for a mushroom-and-eggplant stir-fry that I was going to mix up from scratch, and true to form I started with about two pounds of fungus. Which brings me to my first point: why cook up two pounds of the same thing when you can mix and match? I recommend going for one of the cheaper varieties as your base, then throwing in some fancier types to show off a bit. Here I had about a pound and a half of baby bellas (on sale for $1.99 a pound), and a quarter pound each of oysters and shitakes (both $5.99 a pound). So you've got your medly -- now we come to the one and only foolproof step for how to cook up some bitchin' 'shrooms, which basically boils down to this: eat two pounds of mushrooms if that's your thing, but for the love of God don't try to cook them all at once.
It's as simple as that really: never put any more mushrooms into the pan than will just cover the bottom in one layer, and then do them in as many batches as it takes. Here I went through four batches, each time heating the oil, throwing in some garlic, ginger, and scallions, and then the mushrooms. Mushrooms actually contain a significant amount of water, and so they "sweat" a lot as they're cooking. If you pile a mound of them in the pan, the ones on top cook in the steam released by the ones on the bottom. If you're careful not to crowd them in there, though, the liquid they release evaporates away. When you keep the batches small, you can see just how much they shrink with all the water they give up.
You'll also notice that by roasting, rather than schvitzing in their own sweat, they brown up rather nicely, especially around the edges.
Cook them all in one big mass and they end up gray and slimy; give them some space and they look much more appetizing. Is it a bit of a pain? Maybe -- all in all it might take an extra few minutes or so, although each small batch cooks far more quickly than the whole mass would if you did it all in one go. The taste -- earthy, woodsy, and crisp, instead of bland and limp -- is more than worth it. And what the hell, giving them the occasional stir only requires the use of one hand, freeing up the other for hoisting another glass of vino as you pass the time.
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