Cold clear days in early Winter take me back to my childhood when we would spend entire days tramping across the paddocks of my Auntie's farm collecting field mushrooms. We would each have our own bucket and it wouldn't take all that long to fill them. So back at the farmhouse, our load would be cooked into an evil smelling black stew that adults devoured enthusiastically. But not the kids. What kid could eat anything that smelled so awful? I must have collected thousands of those mushrooms and never ate one. Since then, I have developed a taste for fungus, but sadly the farm and my aunty are both long gone. My parents tell me, you can't buy mushrooms with flavour like those ones we collected, but at the moment you might find large organic Swiss browns that go really well in this sandwich.
Garlic Butter
To cook the mushroom you first need garlic butter, make up a batch and keep a jar in the fridge at the ready, where it will keep for a week or so. Once the butter is made, other than the field mushroom sandwich, garlic bread is a simple and popular snack for adults or kids to prepare. Just split open a bread roll and spread liberally with garlic butter, wrap in foil, leaving a little opening in the top to let the steam out. Bake at 200 degrees for 20 minutes.
Ingredients
5 cloves of garlic peeled
100g unsalted butter chopped into two or three pieces
Small handful of parsley
Pinch of salt to taste
Method
Make sure your Thermomix bowl is dry. If you have just washed your Thermomix it is a good idea to briefly pulse on turbo to flick residual water out from beneath the blades.
Place garlic in the Thermomix bowl and chop for 10 seconds on speed 7
Add parsley and chop again for 10 seconds on speed 7
Scrape down the sides of the bowl with the spatula
Add butter (there is no need to bring it to room temp) and salt.
Chop/mix on speed 5 for 8 seconds.
Transfer the resulting butter to a jar or roll it in baking paper now it can be kept in the fridge or freezer
Field Mushroom Sandwich
I can't pretend that this is my idea, I have to acknowledge The Domestic Goddess herself, Nigella Lawson. A great meaty vegetarian lunch or light evening meal that is simplicity in a sandwich and just a little bit decadent (but you would expect that from Nigella wouldn't you?). This is something that is really worth trying. If you can't get field mushrooms, use the biggest Swiss Browns you can rustle up.
Ingredients
Large field mushroom per person
1 dessert spoon of garlic butter per person
Seed mustard
Lemon
Roquette
Turkish bread or bread of your choice
Method
Preheat the oven at 200 degrees
Remove the stalks of the mushrooms and spread a dessert spoon of garlic butter evenly over the underside.
Place the mushrooms buttered side up, in an ovenproof dish and bake in the oven for at least 20 minutes at 200 degrees (the longer the better I reckon)
When the mushrooms are almost done, spread your Turkish bread with seed mustard
Place a mushroom on the bread, squeeze lemon over it and put some roquette on top, close the sandwich then go ahead and eat it.
There's not that much butter, you have to try it.
6 comments:
You've taken me back to my childhood. My Dad and I used to eat this for breakfast very early every Saturday morning while watched the Thunderbirds. YUM! Saly my Ankle BIters haven't found fungal love yet (I bet that's not a sentence I'll utter when they are teenagers)
Gosh that was early in the morning! What a good dad he must have been. We would go on to watch Casper the friendly ghost and the Beatles cartoon. What was your favorite thunderbird?
As for fungal love, we have one child who adores these mushrooms whilst the other refuses to sit at the same table as any kind of fungus. But more about his eating habits another day
My Mum used to cook the field mushrooms in a wonderful retro glass saucepan in milk thickenned with a bit of cornflour. Believe me, I have never tasted mushrooms like them ever since and I have been trying!!!!!!
Thanks for the memories. Did howdever make a great garlic, thyme, red wine, butter and mushroom sauce in the Thermomix to accompany last nights roast beef!!!
Hi Lil, how's it going. I think that next year we are going to have to don the gum boots and fill some buckets with mushrooms. What do you think? Saw a flier for mushroom collecting field trips at Books for Cooks, I missed out by a few weeks though.
My Aunty would have had a lot to say about city slickers needing someone to point out mushrooms for them. But then my Aunty had a lot to say about everything.
Nice sauce!!!
Hi Rick
Have left a Varoma alternative method on my blog. Thanks for the idea.
As a mushroom fan, I will defo try this. Will be first time I try mushroom in bread!
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