Seared Mushrooms with Steak Seasoning

I have never had mushrooms quite like these, but they have quickly become a favorite. The cooking technique allows for them to almost crisp a bit and the steak seasoning adds a savory kick to the flavor. This is not something you can make for a big crow, but it's absolutely worth the timing and cooking precision for a smaller dinner.

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Spinach, Mushroom and Zucchini Quiche

Quiche is one of those great foods where you can use whatever vegetables you have laying around and still have a fantastic end result. I recently had a handful of mushrooms and half a bag of spinach sitting in the fridge and decided a quiche would be the best way to go. Feel free to use whatever vegetables you have on hand.

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Spicy Thai Noodles with Zucchini and Mushrooms

 

One of the easiest dinners to make is a quick noodle stir fry style meal. This dish is delicious and comes together very quickly for an easy weeknight dinner. Feel free to add your favorite protein to this dish if you're not a big fan of vegetarian dishes. I love this version and you can always add another egg to make it heartier. This is great fresh from the pan, or can be warmed up the next day. Feel free to adjust the seasoning to your liking. I like to add cilantro and peanuts, as well as use 1/5 tablespoon of chili garlic sauce in the sauce.

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Vegetarian Tuscan Pasta

My mom is the one who deserves credit for finding this recipe. She was looking for vegetarian options and decided to try this one out. It turns out this is a delicious pasta dish that meat lovers and vegetarians will both be happy to eat. I consider this a main course. It's filling without making you feel overly full. Great for a summer night and full of flavor.

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Mushroom Risotto

Since recently realizing I can make good risotto at home, I have spent more than a few evening standing over my stove and stirring. Though the process of making risotto is a little time consuming, it is actually really easy to make.

This recipe is simple and doesn't require any particular kitchen skill except patience. You can use almost any kind of mushroom in the recipe such as shiitake, chanterelle, or even simple button mushrooms. The flavor will be more intense with a more flavorsome mushroom like shiitake, but button mushrooms will be tasty as well. Since you can never say exactly how much stock will be needed for making risotto, err on the side of caution and prepare 7 cups (though I only used 5).

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Green Bean and Mushroom Risotto

For a while now I've been staring at a box of risotto on my shelf and I've finally decided to use it. I had a pound of green beans sitting in my fridge, needing to be used, so I figured I'd make a green bean risotto. I also had some mushrooms, so I used those as well, but if you don't have have mushrooms on hand, you'll still enjoy this risotto without them. Same goes for the green beans. This is pretty much your basic risotto recipe with green beans and mushrooms, which means you can swap them out for any other veggies you love.

Try using a white wine that you'd actually enjoy drinking on its own, not just a cooking wine that makes you cringe when you smell it. Sometime wine quality seems to make no difference at all, but with risotto you need to stick with something a little better. Dry white wine is best, but I've used others as well and they've done the job. Play around with this recipe to use up any veggies you have in your fridge or herbs that need eating.

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Steak with Mushroom, Sherry, and Whole Grain Mustard Sauce

I was looking for a recipe to spice up a standard steak. I was making a birthday meal for a friend and wanted it to be a little nicer than your average grill dinner. I found this recipe and gave it a whirl. The sauce is full of great flavors without being too heavy or rich (often the case with mushroom sauces). It's super easy to make and can withstand a bit of compromising. It's not a thick sauce, but rather a thinner sauce with mushroom chunks.

Gordon Ramsay suggests serving this over a t-bone steak, and since I'm not a steak specialist, I'd take his word on it. Of course t-bone steaks aren't available in my part of Switzerland, so I made this sauce for a sirloin. I imagine the sauce would also be great with chicken if you prefer not to eat red meat.

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Mushroom Lasagna

If you want to indulge in a delicious, rich meal, make this lasagna. This is a meal I will only make on occasion since it's full of butter, something I try to use minimally or for baking. It's also a messy meal to make, using 5 big dishes/pots. But once you try your first bite of this, you'll realize it was worth the effort (and calories). This lasagna is the perfect comfort food to make on a cold evening. And trust me, although 3 pound of mushrooms sounds like a lot, you could use even more if you want. They lose lots of volume once you cook them.

When I first made this lasagna I tried to skip a step and use no-boil lasagna noodles. Turns out this was a bad idea. The no boil noodles require more liquid around them in the baking process to soften, which doesn't happen with the béchamel sauce. Put in the extra effort of boiling lasagna noodles and save yourself the let down of slightly crunchy noodles. This lasagna can be made ahead of time and can be frozen if you want. Leftovers on day 2 were just as good as day one.

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Stuffed Mushrooms

 
Stuffed Mushrooms are an appetizer I have been having for years. This is another one of those recipes I learned from my mom, but can't remember the first time I had these (I was little). They're so easy to make, and the ingredients are fairly simple. It's also an easy recipe to tweak, so feel free to do so. My mom sometimes includes crushed red pepper flakes in the filling for an added kick. Or if she's out of parsley, she will just omit it. Every time she has made them, I loved them, which is why I stole this recipe from her a few years ago.

These stuffed mushrooms make a great crowd-pleasing appetizer. Even during my childhood phase of hating mushrooms I loved this recipe. Not only are the mushrooms a hit, they're also pretty easy to make. It only takes about 25 minutes from start to finish. You could easily double this recipe without any problems if you're serving this to a larger crowd. These mushrooms taste best when they're baked right before you eat them. If you want to prepare part of the recipe ahead of time, make the filling, stuff the mushrooms, and leave them covered in the fridge until you are ready to bake.

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Mushroom Ragout

The Passover leftovers are finally (almost) all gone, which means it's time to start using up the veggies that never made it into a dish. I'll admit we overestimated everyone's eating capability for the holiday, leaving my sister with a massive bag of onions, fingerling potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, celery and mushrooms. Not to mention the hundreds of garlic cloves. If only we actually felt like making veggie soup...

To begin tackling this veggie surplus, we made a dinner of side dishes last night. It was actually really good, and surprisingly filling. My sister made roasted sweet potatoes and a salad and I made a mushroom ragout (although she did help with that too). Mushroom ragout always remind me of Thanksgiving because its one of my mom's yearly side dishes for the holiday. But that doesn't mean these mushrooms aren't delicious year round. They're quick, easy and use simple ingredients. It's one of those dishes that you can throw together after a long day and still have the energy to make. If the slicing or chopping is uneven, it really doesn't matter. Enjoy this as a side dish, or even over some fish (in which case you may want to cook the fish in a white wine/butter sauce).

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