Tag Archives: food

Sweet and Sour Mushrooms

This recipe is designed to help tide me over until I have time to blog about our Thanksgiving capers in Kentucky . . . a gorgeous photo shoot with my pregnant sister . . . my fabulous weekend trip to the Pioneer Woman’s ranch . . . and that gig Sunday night with my friend Carrie. So much to say! So many pictures to process! Soon Christmas adventures will be added to the list and my head just might explode. With joy. Good, old fashioned, blogging overload joy.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share this versatile little number with you. To the mushroom haters in the crowd: have you considered mushroom rehab? Where you work towards liking this fungus in a 30-day program? I hear there’s a similar program for blue cheese haters.

It’s just something to think about, you know. No need to get all defensive there. The little fungus guys and the moldy cheese should be welcomed into your home this Christmas season, not rejected and left out to freeze in a snow bank.

Anyway, enough proselitizing. This is super quick to toss together. It can be a delightful side dish, or it can be a main dish, piled on some rice with two fried eggs on top. I found the original recipe via TastyKitchen from food blogger Fuji Mama, but I couldn’t resist adding a little garlic. Just make sure to eat it with piles upon piles of white rice–that alone will make your life complete.

Ingredients

(Serves 3 as a side dish)

8 oz mushrooms, chopped (any kind works–I used Portobellini)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1.5 TBS sesame oil

1 TBS soy sauce (to taste)

2 green onions, for garnish (optional)

2 TBS rice wine vinegar

1 TBS sugar

pinch salt

2 eggs (optional)

First, wipe the mushrooms clean. Would you look at this beauty? Oh my.

I love mushrooms.

Oh wait, have I already said that? Like, a million times? Sorry.

I’ll try to be more interesting. And say things that are more unexpected.

As the punches swung right and left and the plate of stuffed mushrooms went flying across the reception hall, Marissa used her volleyball skills from 20 years prior to make a body dive across the slippery floor–not a single mushroom could go to waste! Leroy knew it was true love when he saw the concentration in her beautiful face, and the athletic arm-reach that enabled the platter of delicious little appetizers to land safely on her upturned palm. Then in a fit of love he cried “Marry me Marissa! We shall serve stuffed mushrooms at our wedding, and make them a cornerstone of our hearth and home!”

See? ‘Surprise’ is my middle name.

Slice them up.

This would also be a good time to mince the garlic.

Heat the sesame oil in a skillet over medium-high heat for a couple minutes. When the oil is hot, add the mushrooms and garlic.

Fry for 5 minutes. Don’t be like me and overcrowd the pot/pan . . . it will slow the process down significantly. In these pictures you can see that I had doubled the recipe, but I should have spread the mushrooms out into two skillets. If not, you can get in the way of the browning.

Add the soy sauce and continue to fry until golden and delicious, about 5-8 more minutes.

While the mushrooms are cooking, heat the rice vinegar, sugar, and pinch of salt in a little bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Stir to dissolve.

Bam! You just made something called ‘amazu’ (the sweet and sour sauce). Don’t you feel international?

Toss the cooked mushrooms in the amazu (the vinegar mixture) and serve!

Yum!

If you want to top the mushrooms with eggs to make it into a meal, fry the eggs in a tablespoon of oil and drizzle some seasoning on top: hot sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, or dark sweet soy sauce (kecap manis, which is what I used below) and a minced green onion.

About a week prior, I made this dish with a mixture of white beech, shiitake, and enoki mushrooms.

It was delicious, but the texture of cooked enoki gave me the eebly jeeblies.

Doesn’t it look like . . . alien innards?

I loved it the first day . . .

. . . but after a night in the refrigerator, I couldn’t bring myself to revisit it. The words ‘cold’ and ‘slimy’ did it to me.

So let’s go back to our friendly Portobellini–a little less photogenic, but so much friendlier after refrigeration!

I also want to make this with crimini mushrooms. And shiitake mushrooms. And oyster mushrooms. It’s so basic, and quick, and easy, and tasty–all mushrooms must be allowed to participate.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Sweet and Sour Mushrooms

Off to Oklahoma to meet the Pioneer Woman

Well, for those of you that I haven’t called while screaming hysterically or who haven’t seen my facebook update, I might as well tell you: I am going to the Pioneer Woman’s house this weekend. In fact, I will shortly be on my way to the airport, to a plane that will whisk me away to a magical place in Middle-of-Nowhere, Oklahoma. A magical place of cooking, chaps, cows, and no traffic noises.

The Pioneer Woman had a holiday baking weekend giveaway, inviting 4 lucky gals to her house to be fed, drink coffee, feed the cows, learn about baking, and sleep in.

Among those lucky gals are longtime friends Jennifer and Ann. After checking out their blogs, I can’t wait to meet them in person.

Prior to this I had never won any lottery-style thingamaging in my life . . . but I had a little itch when I entered, and even thought to myself, “man, if I win I have to make sure I can make it back by Sunday night” (for that gig at the Red Line Tap). Then I told myself “This is ridiculous. Don’t even worry about that–it’s not like you’re going to get picked! Not with those crazy odds! Heck, half of the female population in America is entering this giveaway!”

But the itch persisted.

I was comment #16,128, and I was picked. From about 40,000 entries. With only 4 winners, that was a 0.01% chance. If you’re having trouble even believing the words that I’m saying to you (I’m having trouble believing them myself), you can check out my name emblazoned for the world to see on her “holiday baking weekend winners” post.

I found out on Friday November 5th, and my first reaction was honestly to start laughing hysterically. Thankfully my boss wasn’t in the office to witness the insanity. I laughed for about 15 minutes, on and off, with tears in my eyes. I also screamed multiple times. I had to verbally instruct my own self to calm down. Then I called my sister, called my Mom, and texted my other sister (sleeping soundly in Alaska).

Ree allows everyone to bring a guest, so I’m taking my Mom with me, since Heidi will be too pregnant to fly in from Alaska, and Erica’s husband-man gets deployed that same month . . . for a year. Incidentally, this is why we’re voting for the P-Dub to do an army wives weekend. So Erica and Heidi can go.

Leading up to this weekend, I’ve been having the craziest dreams. In one of them, Ree had a heavy Eastern European accent and a smoker’s voice, and told us she was going to die of cancer by age 49. I immediately started crying, and realized that her blog would now go from a happy, cheerful place, to the diary of a dying woman.

In another dream, I kept trying to take pictures of the sunset on the ranch, but my camera’s memory card was malfunctioning and didn’t save any of my amazing photographs.

In yet another, when we arrived at the guest lodgings, there were cats, mice, and other animals everywhere, and there was a pile of cat poo in the shower. Oh, and a dead mouse had been skinned and gutted by some cowboy in the middle of the carpet. Thankfully in this dream I had the sense to bring my Mom and Erica and Heidi, and they promptly cleaned it all up for me.

I don’t want to sound like a crazy obsessed fan, but I love this woman. I love her humor, I’ve cooked (and loved) over 30 of her recipes (seriously, I’ll make you a list some day), I learned the rudiments of photography and Photoshop from her, and I’ve admired her site for over a year. In fact, it was her blog that taught me what a blog even was!

At this point, baking isn’t my forte. But after this holiday baking weekend, and after absorbing the magical skills which will undoubtedly be in the air, I should be set.

Just look at the sinfully delightful things she cooks up. I dare you not to salivate.

The cry that has been ringing in the back of my mind for weeks now betrays the fact that I am a girl, through and through:

But . . . I don’t have anything to weeeeeeeeaaaar!

I will be blogging all about the experience, make no mistake.

*both photos courtesy of thepioneerwoman.com