Portobello Mushroom Mania: Two Ways with Eggs for Breakfast

WARNING: MORE MUSHROOMS!

That bag of mushrooms I bought doesn't have a bottom. It's a magic mushroom bag. As in, a magic bag containing mushrooms, not a bag of magic mushrooms unfortunately! ;)

So I've made dinner (soup) and lunch (sandwich) with these portobello mushrooms already, so obvious next up is breakfast!

In order to prevent mushroom boredom, I decided to make my portobello mushroom breakfast in TWO different ways. Oh, the choices!

Both use eggs and bread and a simple balsamic reduction. Easy! So with the same ingredients, you can make:

1. Poached eggs with sliced portobello mushrooms on toast
2. Portobello mushroom omelette
3. Both!

Slice up your mushrooms. You can use as many you like, or as few. It just depends how many mushrooms you want. Then sauté them in sizzling hot butter until all the water evaporates off. Set them aside.

Now put the pan back on a medium-low heat and pour in about 50mL of balsamic vinegar. There's no need to use the fancy schmancy stuff, regular stuff is fine - just make sure it's not the pre-mixed vinaigrette. Scrape any sticky mushrooms bits off the pan with a wooden spatula and reduce the balsamic vinegar until it's about half the volume. Reserve it in a small bowl or dish.

That's pretty much that basis of these two breakfasts. Sautéed portobello mushrooms and a balsamic reduction for sauce.

So first up, poached eggs.

Simply toast some bread, butter it up if desired, and top with a layer of mushrooms. Then poach an egg and lay in on top.

Drizzle some of that balsamic reduction, which may have thickened up once cooled, on top and serve warm.

Breaking into that runny gooey yolk and watching it ooze all over the mushrooms and toast is a feast for your eyes. Then taking a bite of the smooth silky egg, combined with the umami / meaty feel of the mushrooms, then the crunch of the toast, all topped with a sweet tangy balsamic sauce will be pleasure for your tastebuds.

There isn't much more you want in life.

Apart from this omelette of course. ;)

Just your standard omelette. So beat up two eggs, season with a pinch of salt and pepper, and pour into a buttered pan over medium heat. Give the pan a swirl, so that the bottom is all hidden by the egg, and let cook for 2 minutes until the edges have set, but the top isn't quick done. Sprinkle over the mushrooms on one half. Then with a spatula, or two, or with whatever works for you, pick up edges on the half without the mushroom filling, lift, and fold on top of the half with the mushrooms.

Again, drizzle with the balsamic reduction. Serve with toast.

It's a brilliantly filling and satisfying, shroomy and eggy breakfast, that will get your day off to a bright and cherry start.

Which one's for you? Which one do you want to wake up to? 

Portobello Mushroom Grilled Cheese and Pesto Sandwich

In an ideal world, I would have amazing sandwiches for lunch errrday. Delicious slices of bread with lots of scrumptious filling would definitely make my days. Beef steak with rocket, pesto chicken and tomatoes, smoked salmon with avocado, caramelised onion and sausage... Oh my!

In reality, I have pita bread. Plain. On a good day, when I have time to grab something from the kitchen counter and shove it into my bag. Otherwise it's a low calorie day for me!

That's because I don't get up early enough in the morning to make lunch, and I wouldn't make it the night before in the fear it wouldn't taste the same a whole day later. Self-inflicted, really.

So I suffer through the week, but that's what makes weekend lunches so much more to look forward to.

I've still got my massive bag of portobello mushrooms, so they're definitely going to be on the menu today. And tomorrow. And the day after. Hopefully not the day after that, but maybe. 

These meatilicious mushrooms are a great vegetarian sandwich filler because of their texture and flavour. I roasted these in the oven at 200˚C (fan-forced) for 15 minutes or so until all the juices had steamed off and they started getting dry and crispy on the edges. All I added was some olive oil and salt and pepper.

On two thick-cut slices of bread I smeared one side with pesto, and topped the other with cheese. I used Red Leicester. It's actually the first time I've tried it (I bought it because of the beautiful orange colour) and it's definitely something I would go for again. If you don't know what it is either, I'd describe it as similar to cheddar, but milder and more nutty.

Grill those in the oven on the top shelf until the cheese melts and bubbles.

Arrange your mushrooms on top of the slice with cheese. Then top with the other slice. 

The flavours and colours of this sandwich are wonderful. Green pesto + Orange (not red?) Red Leicester cheese + Black portobello mushrooms + Golden toasted white bread.

Depending on the size of your slices of bread, this sandwich can be quite a mouthful and not practically easy to eat. In that case, cut in half and go from there.

I bet you're salivating ;)

Portobello Mushroom Soup

My local market doesn't understand the use of labelling. I love shopping there, don't get me wrong, but I really think they should start labelling things properly.

So it probably doesn't matter much with things like banana, cherries, broccoli, etc. but it's very unhelpful to label various sizes, shapes and colours of potatoes all as potatoes. Oh sometimes, they put 'large potatoes', 'small potatoes', and 'washed potatoes' but that isn't very informative either. So when recipes tell you to buy some floury varieties like Desiree, Maris Piper or King Edward, I just have to guess and check.

Are all flat-capped mushrooms with black gills called portobello mushrooms? A Google search of portobello mushrooms does show up mushrooms like these. The only reason I wonder is because this entire bag (weighing 1.7kg!) only cost me £1.50! Whereas, in Hong Kong, the supermarkets could sell at up to HK$40 for 4. To put that into comparable terms, that's just under £3 for 4 mushrooms. 

How crazy is the price difference?

These mushrooms certainly look, feel, and taste like the same portobellos I buy in Hong Kong. I'd love to know if they really are the same thing.

I ended up with this whole bag because the man at the store convinced me that a small bag (for 50p) wouldn't be enough. "Eh pet, you sure you don't want a big bag, them mushrooms'll shrink and you'll be left with nothin', go on take a big bag"

So now I have close to 2kg of mushrooms to devour.

The quickest way to use up as many mushrooms as possible is to make soup, I thought. So I went a-chop-chop-chopping.

I used about half my bag - 800g ish. 

Now a lot of mushroom soup recipes call for a variety of other vegetables - potatoes, leeks, onions... but I wanted to let my shrooms shine (well also because I didn't have any of those other vegetables at hand...) so I kept the other ingredients to a minimum.

When cooking portobello mushrooms, I find they have much meatier texture and richer taste than normal white button mushrooms, so I may have been able to miss this next step. But I love mushrooms, and the more the merrier, so I soaked a small handful of dried wild mushrooms too.

With some butter sizzling on a very hot pan, I fried some minced garlic until fragrant, and then poured in my diced portobello mushrooms.

I cooked mine in two batches because I wanted to properly sauté the mushrooms, rather than boil / steam them as can happen when the pan gets overcrowded. It's like tanning on a hot beach, if it's empty and quiet then you can relax and get nicely evenly brown, but if it's crowded, you just feel like is hot and sweaty, and not in a good way!

It's tempting to stir your mushrooms, but I find that if you leave them in the pan to do their own thing,  they'll cook much better. As long as you have enough butter to cover the pan, they shouldn't stick too much. 

The mushrooms will then give off all their water, and at this point I reduced the heat to medium, and let it boil off and then begin to caramelise. Then, I used the soaking water from the dried mushrooms to deglaze any brown sticky bits from the pan.

Add in your now soaked dried wild mushrooms, all diced up too, and give a quick stir.

Top with 1L of milk and chicken stock. I used 500mL of each, but you can vary it according to how creamy you want it. Add some sprigs of thyme, and boil for 5 minutes or so.

If you want it smooth and creamy, scoop batches into a jug blender and blitz all the chunks of mushroom into oblivion. Now season to taste. 

Then you can just gently reheat the soup to serve, with some extra thyme, and sautéed mushrooms. 

It's magical mushroom essence, with all the notes of the outdoors - the trees, forests, muddy woodlands, and tiny sparkly fairies. The velvet texture of the soup also resembles the feel of the tops of raw mushrooms. I can see why the fairies like to perch there.  

I got a good crusty loaf of bread from my local market as well for 50p to dunk with the soup ;)