A neighbor/good friend was over to lunch on Sunday, and we had a simple menu consisting of this baked mushroom and garlic concoction served on top of slices of good bread, a platter of prosciutto and melon I featured yesterday, and a bowl of Mrs. MM’s spaghetti carbonara. Yum. I simply chopped up the fresh straw mushrooms I featured here, along with an equal amount of oyster mushrooms, then added several cloves of minced garlic, good olive oil, salt and pepper and stuck this on a cookie pan and baked at 375F until cooked, say 15-20 minutes. Mix/toss the contents of the pan once halfway through the cooking process…
I also added about 2 teaspoons of really good aged balsamic vinegar and a last twist or two of the pepper mill and placed this in a shallow bowl. Make sure not to overcook it as it will be too dry. You don’t want it too wet, nor too dry, but somewhere perfectly in between. :) Slice some good bread and heat it briefly in the oven if desired, then serve together with the mushroom mixture as a topping. It tasted meaty, umamish, without added MSG, and it was substantial enough to stand up to a crusty piece of bread.
If we had Italian parsley on hand, I would have chopped some up and added it to the dish for color and taste…
19 Responses
Heh I love this site but I had to giggle when I read that this was a ‘simple menu’.
For my partner’s family in Navotas City, a simple menu is kanin and bagoong. To make it complex, add grilled bangus and a banana for dessert.
Ken, righto–
MM, have you tried balsamic glaze/reduction? I tried it home made first with good balsamic (modena of course) but it’s not becoming readily available at gourmet shops. I currently have balsamic reduction fig flavor and white balsamic truffle reduction. Really, really good. (It would have gone well with the prosciutto/melon…)
Ken, I know exactly what you mean. But relative to more involved menus we serve when there are guests around, this was ‘simple’ and extremely easy to make, by comparison. And I don’t mean to take away from the other kind of ‘simple’ meals…
I meant “it’s becoming readily available”…
yummy!
perfect! i just bought some mushrooms yesterday and couldn’t decide what to do
ohhh this gives me another menu idea for when i go grocery shopping tomorrow. im sure it could easily translate to a meatless main with the addition of maybe green bell peppers and such.
i will try this
Hi MM. I know this is off topic. I also left the same comment on an older post on jam dated Nov 23 09. I need some good advise from you. Over the weekend, I had a go at making mango jam from 4 kaings of mangoes from the farm. This is a real BIG first time for me. I looked up your posts on manggo jam and also read recipes from books. I also found good canning bottles and ended up canning the jam – successfully I HOPE. The bottled jams looks alright to me. Now that they are botlled and metal lids sucurely in place, please give instructions on how to best store the jams so they can have a longer shelf-life. Considering I did not add any preservative, how long can I store these bottled mango jams?
Also, please make suggestion where to pick-up and buy the bottles you use – with metal lids in pale gold like color. These look real nicer than the one I’m using. The ones I used is called peanut bottle like the ones use for kaong and nata de coco, lucky it came with the proper pop-up metal lids for canning. Hope to hear from you soon. I’m thinking of doing another batch come end of the month harvest. Maybe, when I get that fruity and chunky texture you’re after I might have the guts to have you sample a bottle..Heeheehee. The recent batch has smallish chunks but really screams 100% fruit. Looking forward to your suggestions.
Teresa, if they were properly bottled, and the bottles sterilized afterwards in a boiling bath of water, then the jams should in theory be good for up to a year or so in storage. Keep them in a cool dark place like a pantry or cabinet. I buy most of my bottles from San Miguel packaging, they have retailers if you call their packaging division. I also get bottles at Landmark in the house section. But these are pricey. They also have original ball jars in True Value at Rockwell. Mango jam is a bit tricky, as the fruit is incredibly watery, and therefor there is the risk that the jam will be too liquidy without the addition of pectin to jell it up a bit… Good luck with the results. After a week or so, you should open one bottle and test it. Then put it in the fridge and the next day taste it again and check for viscosity. If it spreads nicely, you have a winner…
Thanks MM! Will do as suggested. You’re right, the fruit rendered lots of liquid. When the fruit mixture was thickening, I still had fairly large pieces of fruit. But I was worried that it still contained undesired liquid and kept on reducing the fruit + sugar mixture. Thus, the mixture became slightly darker and the fruit pieces smaller. It was difficult to find pectin. I wonder if this is available locally. Looking forward to the the 1 week test you suggested. Thanks for the tips. By the way as a suggestion from my Aunt, I added a few drops of orange essence for lack of orange zest. It gave the jam a brighter scent so to speak with light notes of orange without the bitter taste. I loved every minute of the jam making! I could imagine how it is with you when you try to perfect the dishes you make.
Mushrooms and garlic are may favorites, singly or together!
Though I haven’t tried baking it, I just quickly sautee with lotsa garlic in olive oil, dash of Knorr, balsamic, Lea&Perrins, pepper, and a bit of paprika, and yes, chopped fresh parsley! :-)
Marketman, mojitodrinker,
Sorry to get out of topic, but the user name mojitodrinker s caught my attention. Do you have your own recipe for mojito? I grow mint, but I’ve never tried a mojito.
Teresa, I tried to make mango jam on a recent visit with Marketman but it turned out too watery. We used table mangoes and there was too much liquid in proportion to fiber. I also should have used more sugar. Maybe a combination of different mango varieties would help. I tried adding commercial apple pectin but did not use enough. Added lemon or calamansi juice, 1 tbsp. per cup of mango also helps. Marketman recommends a 10 minute boiling water bath once the jars are filled to insure mixture is sterile inside the jar. Sugar should be 150% of mango pulp, sounds like a lot but lessen it and you won’t have jam.
Looks delicious! This reminds me of the days when my NY roommates and I had bags and bags of frozen chanterelles. One of the roomies’ friends, a botany doc, knew of a (top secret) spot close to the NY Botanical Garden in the Bronx that was just lousy with chanterelles! A favorite winter meal was chanterelles sauteed in butter with chopped garlic, finished off with white wine. That, good crusty bread and more wine made for a simple but kingly meal.
I cook mushrooms (those native ones) adobo style……. YUMMY!
na mimiss ko tuloy si “Inay” (lola) in Laguna, we use to gather mushrooms when I was in grade 1 and she use to cook it so simple with broth (can’t remember how) but all I remember was it was so flavourful!
Thanks for the idea, MM, I’ll serve this tonight for dinner then. I’ve got some leftover button mushrooms (half I’ve used for risotto ai funghi yesterday) and some shiitake. The parsley’s there too, and so is some thyme at hand. In many ways I think mushrooms are like meat – I use them sparingly as the latter’s substitute.
Sister, thanks for the tips. This is already bonus after MM gave comments. Will try your suggestions as well. Next time I will try to document the recipe by weight so it would be easier to replicate the 2nd jam batch i would be making come the end-month harvest. I used 3 kilos of sugar which i believe is not anywhere close to the 150% proportion you suggest. Original recipe asked for 4 kilos. But the reduced mixture before it was bottled was screaming fruity jam (eat me! eat me! :-) ) Will do the 1 week test by Saturday — I cant wait to open a jar. I check almost everyday and from the looks of it, i do not see any liquid forming up.