Saturday, July 01, 2006

mushrooms with thyme and cinnamon


mushroom antipasta adapted from the cookbook Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style by Viana La Place

Recipe:
1 lb medium mushrooms
5 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, chopped
3 sprigs or 1 tbsp thyme
3 tbsp chopped parsley or 2 tbsp dried parsley
1 stick cinnamon broken in half or 1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
2 tbsp lemon juice

1) Saute the olive oil, garlic, thyme, parsley, and cinnamon over low heat for 3 minutes.
2) Add the mushrooms, raise the heat to medium, and saute for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
3) Lower the heat, and add the salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Stir the mushrooms, cover the pan, and cook another 2 to 3 minutes, or until the mushrooms are tender but firm.
4) Transfer the mushrooms to a dish and let cool. Cover and marinate for at least 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Serve at room temperature.

3 comments:

t. said...

Interesting recipe!
I jsut wonder if any kind of shrooms does the job...
I love oyester mushrooms but do not buy them anymore because of their 'maggot' content... yuck!

josh said...

the recipe called for button mushrooms and I think I used crimini mushrooms, so at least those two are fine. I think relatively thick mushrooms like that work well, because they can get nice and tender without getting soft. I'm not sure if this would be the case for oyster mushrooms. I'm not sure that I want to ask, but what's their "maggot content"?

t. said...

You are right, you probably do not want to know. Oyster mushrooms are the prefered breeding area for maggots (sorry, I do now know which species: it is some sort of small black fly): the adult animals eat from the mushrooms and can live most of their lives around them. They deposit their eggs (tiny tiny orange eggs) in the mushrooms and let the eggs grow into maggots first and into flies later.

I quit eating these mushrooms after getting too many creepy maggots in the mushrooms (and I did not even bought the wild variety! this was plastic sealed by a big supermakert chain: you cannot get more 'sterile' than that!). Now they creep me out just by looking at them...