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Doug Levy is the picture of calm in the kitchen.

When he puts too much egg in the wild mushroom sformato he's making for a segment of the Star's online cooking show, "Cooking With the Star," he doesn't panic. "Whoops," he says nonchalantly. "We'll take some of this out."

When he needs just half an egg yolk, he pokes a hole in the center of it and lets the bright orange center drip into the bowl. "That's about half," he says with a shrug.

A slippery cutting board? No panic. He wets a dish towel, and slips it under the board. "Keeps it from going every which way," explains Levy.

Levy, as the owner/chef of Feast Tasteful Takeout, needs to have an easygoing manner: He serves a couple thousand people a month at his Midtown restaurant. And he and his staff are kept on their toes because the menu changes monthly.

For this "Cooking With the Star" segment, Levy is making a Wild Mushroom Sformato (basically, a sformato is a dish cooked in a mold and then unmolded) — a treat currently found on the Feast menu. As a crown for the dish: Roasted Garlic Goat Cheese Cream Sauce.

"The hardest part of this dish is getting the mushrooms thin enough," says Levy as he grabs a handful of fresh shiitake mushrooms, puts them on the cutting board and begins slicing.

As he does, he gives a quick lesson on the proper way to cut.

"A sharp knife is important," he explains. "A dull knife slips. Tuck your fingers in and slice. Rest the tip of the knife across the cutting board."

He whips through about four cups of mushrooms very quickly, without a spot of blood, though he laughs when asked if he had ever cut himself.

"Now ask me if I've ever burnt myself," he says. Clearly, the answer to both questions was "yes."

This is the most time-consuming aspect of this recipe, but Levy wouldn't cut the time down by using a food processor.

"Shiitake are spongy," he explains. "They'll get caught in the blades and they'll get gummy."

He picks through the mushrooms, discarding the ones that look feeble and dry. And he stresses using fresh shiitake for this dish. "The dried ones are fine if you're doing a soup," he says.

He throws the sliced mushrooms into a sauté pan with a bit of butter, adding another tablespoon or so when they get too dry. The mushrooms shrink down, are a toasty brown along the edges and glisten slightly with the butter.

He gently stirs in a generous tablespoon of mascarpone cheese and lets the dish cool before adding the eggs. "If you throw in the eggs when the mushrooms are still hot, you'll get scrambled eggs and mushrooms, which are fine, but not what we're making," he says.

After the dish cools and he adds the egg, he scoops the mushroom mixture into ramekin dishes, puts them into a pan with water that went about halfway up the ramekins, and pops them in the oven.

The water bath is essential, he says. "Anytime you cook in ramekins, you want the center to cook as quickly as the outside," says Levy. "The water slows down the outside cooking."

Then he turns to the cream sauce.

This takes roasted garlic, which Levy did in advance. "To roast fresh garlic," he explains, "cut off the tops, sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and roast at 350 degrees for an hour or so. When they pop out of their sleeves, you know they are done."

The cream sauce takes just minutes to do, though it becomes a tad too thick for Levy's liking. He adds a touch more white wine, then a splash of water. No big deal.

Twenty minutes later, the sformatos are done. Levy carefully taps them out of the ramekins, drizzles the cream sauce over them and pushes the dish toward an observer.

"This could be an appetizer, or an element in a main dish," he says of the very rich, earthy mushrooms, silky with a creamy sauce that coats the mouth and sets off the shiitakes.

"I would serve it with beef tenderloin. That would be kind of cute and delicious."