Friday, December 16, 2011

Stuffed Mushrooms

So I had friends in, which was delightful, for most of the past two weeks. One came, one went, just passing through, dropping a little stardust into my life.
But one night this week I had one friend who is mostly vegetarian, glucose intolerant, won't eat eggs, no milk.
Another was vegan, can't eat eggs, no milk.
Okay, so what to make?
Both would eat a little cheese.
Okay, so I started with my basic basmati rice. Cook garlic in a little olive oil till the garlic is ready. Add water with a touch of sea salt. When water is boiling, add rice. Stir rice on high flame till 80 percent of the water is absorbed, about 7=8 minutes. Turn down to very low, cover tightly and let it cook for another half hour or so, stirring to fluff once or twice during that time.
Then I made a nice spaghetti squash: cut squash in half, eliminate seeds, score lightly both length and width, put both halves in a roasting pan. Put thin slices of butter, maybe five or six, atop each side, bent in so that it will drip into the center. Cook at 350 for about an hour. Take that out, use a large spoon to remove all the gorgeous squash.
Heat a little garlic and olive oil. Toss in diced red pepper. When pepper is nearly done, put in the squash and stir till well mixed and smelling scrumptious. Top with some fresh minced scallions or parsley or cilantro.
I made a veggie nice stir fry to put atop the rice.
And ten I decided to make stuffed mushrooms. I bought mid-sized baby portabellas. Stem them, chop stems (no bread, remember?) Sautee finely chopped stems in garlic and olive oil. I did it in two separate pans. In one pan I added finely diced walnuts; in the other I added raisins.
To the walnut stuffing I added good crumbled blue cheese and stuffed half the shrooms with that mix.
To the raisin stuffing I added good swiss (a nice home-shreded Ementhaler). I stuffed the other mushrooms with that.
A couple of mushrooms got both the raisins and walnuts.
I heated the shrooms for a minute in the hot saute pans, transfered to a baking dish and baked till the shroom meat was tender and juicy.
They were really rich. No fooling.
I will refine those stuffings a bit next time, but for a first-time invention, they were darned tasty.
So make them.

2 comments:

José Pepe said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
José Pepe said...

Hey! Just finished reading Ayahuasca in my Blood on kindle and I loved it. Already reviewed it on amazon so everyone knows is worth it. By the way, if you found out what "fresh meat" meant, please share!

Thanks for sharing your experience, I found it very helpful since I'm starting to go down that road myself.

Greetings from Venezuela!