Day 118.
We went to a birthday party last weekend and they had a bunch of vegetables roasted in balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Along with the roasted zucchini and peppers were slices of portabella mushroom. I couldn't get enough, and kept finding my way back at the buffet table to sneak a little bit more.
Portabella mushrooms are nice big, meaty mushrooms that can mimic the texture of meat in your mouth. They are amazing, and hold up well during slow cooking.
The Ingredients.
--4 large portabella mushrooms
--1 1/2 cups baby tomatoes
--1/4 cup olive oil
--1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
--1/2 t kosher salt
--1/2 t black pepper
--1 T dried basil
--1/3 cup shredded parmesan cheese
--1/4 cup bread crumbs (I have a bag of gluten free breadcrumbs I keep in the freezer)
The Directions.
--with a paring knife, carefully cut off the stems of each mushroom. Chop the stems up, and put them in a mixing bowl.
--use a spoon to scoop out the brown hairy looking stuff from the mushrooms. Put that in your mixing bowl, too.
--chop up the tomatoes, and add them to the mix along with the bread crumbs, olive oil, vingegar, cheese, and spices.
--mix it up.
--smear a bit of olive oil on the bottom of your crockpot stoneware insert
--put the mushroom caps on top of the oil. I have a large 6qt, and my mushroom caps did not fit "nicely"---they were kind of on top of each other at the edges and were leaning a bit up the sides of the stoneware.
It's okay. They will still cook for you.
--spoon your filling mixture on top of the mushrooms. Remind yourself that you aren't making food to appear in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen---this is for your family. It needn't look "perfect!"
Cover and cook on low for 4-7 hours. I left our mushrooms on for 6 hours and served them over rice.
Except Adam went out and got a steak for himself to go along with his mushrooms.
The Verdict.
These were moist, flavorful and amazingly delicious. It reminded me of fancy restaurant food. The mushrooms themselves were perfectly seasoned, but the sauce at the bottom of the crock was a bit too vinegar-y for my taste to put on top of the rice as gravy.
The kids picked out the tomatoes, and were polite enough when they asked for salami and cheese.
I would count on only serving 2 grownups with these proportions, but I think if you layered the mushrooms and filling you could fill a whole crock up nicely.
--> on a side note, this site surpassed 100k visits yesterday. Which is amazing, mind-boggling, and thrilling all at the same time. Thank you for passing my recipes along and testing them out---this is a lot of fun and so far my family hasn't committed me. ;-)
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