Oh. My. Goodness. Why have I lived this long before trying out stuffed mushrooms?!?! They are incredible!! At least, the ones I made for our 7-course dinner starters were. I’ve heard it said many times that you shouldn’t try out a new recipe for a dinner party, in case it’s a dismal failure and you spend the rest of the event with your culinary tail between your legs. But when I was searching for starters for our meal, the various recipes I found for baked mushrooms seemed so easy that I wasn’t worried about them making their debut at our dinner. (As with the appetisers I made, there’s a myriad options for filling mushrooms. The recipe below catered to our specific taste preferences, but you could add virtually any stuffing you’d like.)
8 large brown mushrooms
4 T bacon bits, fried and chopped
4 sundried tomatoes
1 t water
1 t olive oil
1 T butter
Crumbs
Herbs of your choice (I used dried origanum, dried chives and black pepper)
1/2 C cheddar cheese, cut into small cubes
1 C mozzarella cheese, grated
1. Using a kitchen scissors, snip the tomatoes into little shreds. Mix in a small bowl with the herbs, water and oil. Leave to soak until needed.
2. With a sharp paring knife, cut out the stems of the mushrooms. Finely chop up these stems.
3. Melt the butter in a pot and fry the stems with the bacon and the crumbs. Add the tomato mix.
4. Fill the mushrooms with the fried mixture.
5. Add a few cheddar cubes to each mushroom, and top with grated mozzarella.
6. Bake the mushrooms on a greased baking tray at 200 °C for 15 minutes, until cheese is melted and slightly browned.
7. Carefully remove from tray and eat immediately.
Notes
1. I found that greasing the tray was really important so that the mushrooms came off easily.
2. My menu for our dinner said that these would be crumbed mushrooms, but they looked so good when they came out of the oven that I completely forgot to add extra crumbs on top!
3. I had already fried and chopped the bacon separately the day before, so I just added it when stuffing the mushrooms.
4. You can also make the filling of stems, tomato and crumbs a couple of hours beforehand. Just keep it in the fridge until you need it.
Ninja’s verdict on this course: ‘Magic! Magic mushrooms!’
My verdict: I could have happily eaten this for each of the 7 courses, haha! They tasted like mini mushroom pizzas. These will definitely become part of our regular mushroom treats 🙂
Sunshine Scrapbook 