la.foodblogging

Anyone who has eaten produce around me over the last year has heard my sales pitch for Marina Farms in Culver City. Last night I whipped up some stuffed mushrooms from only ingredients I bought on Monday night at the produce market.

When I have made stuffed mushrooms in the past, I have always used white buttons, this time I used some larger crimini mushrooms which are a bit flatter, and have less of a cup. I was curious if the mushroom caps would hold the filling as well as the buttons do. The criminis were also a bit softer than white mushrooms and I hoped that they would hold up to the baking process.

After washing the ’shrooms (I use the wet paper towel method), I plucked the stems apart from the caps. After preheating the oven to 400F, I put the caps, stem side up on a baking pan. After trimming the ends off of the stems, I put them in the mini-prep food processor and gave it a couple pulses to chop them up. The mini prep did fine for the job, but it probably would have been easier to throw everything in the full size processor. I ended up chopping each item individually.

Poking around my fridge, I found a small container of pine nuts (also from Marina Farms), I whirled those in the food processor and put them in the bowl with the chopped stems. I also chopped up a whole zucchini and mixed that in, as well as half of a whole wheat pita (I didn’t have breadcrumbs, so I chopped that in the processor as well).

After the solid ingredients were in the bowl, I mixed in some olive oil, cracked pepper and some kosher salt. I’m not good with exact measurements of that sort of stuff, so I wont even guess. The last ingredient was a clove of chopped (Marina Farms) garlic and mixed everything together with a mini spatula. If you like your stuff extra with extra garlic, you could throw in an extra clove or two here, I always forget that raw garlic is so much stronger than cooked (epecially baked) garlic.

After everything was mixed, I scooped a portion of the filling on top of the caps. It ended up being a perfect amount, where all of the caps were filled and there wasn’t any filling left over. As a finishing touch, I put a small cube of gorgonzola cheese (from Whole Foods) on top of half of the mushrooms. Another option is to toss parmesian cheese in with the filling, but I think I prefer the top coat on the mushrooms, and the gorgonzola gives a mild flavor burst that I enjoy.

The baking sheet went in the oven for 25 minutes and my kitchen was filled with the subtle smells of cooking mushrooms. The cheese melted over the top of the filling and the caps softened as they cooked. I pulled them out and devoured the whole sheet (my fiance is out of town, I didn’t have anyone to share with).

My biggest mistake was not putting cheese on all of the mushrooms, and I should have left them in for another five minutes to brown the cheese a bit more. The cheese that had crusted over a bit was the best of the bunch.

Marina Farms
5454 S Centinela Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
310-827-3049

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.