Stuffed Mushrooms | All Things Sicilian and more

On this occasion I cooked dairy free and gluten free, stuffed, baked mushrooms (funghi ripieni or funghi farciti in Italian).

For those of you who would prefer to use breadcrumbs instead of crumbed gluten free cracker biscuits and you may like to add a bit of grated Parmesan cheese (as I usually do).

Apart from the crumbed cracker biscuits these mushrooms are stuffed with the mushroom stalks, silver beet (or spinach), parsley, garlic, nutmeg, extra virgin olive oil and the herb Nepitella (calamint) that I am growing on my balcony. Nepitella is not very well known in Australia but this aromatic herb it is used in Tuscany and Lazio especially for for the preparation of artichokes, mushrooms but also with eggs and other vegetables.

I have used Nepitella to stuff delicate tasting fish and I also like it with pork. A couple of months ago I was in Tuscany and I enjoyed collecting Nepitella (it grows wild); when i cooked, I used it extensively. Marjoram or thyme also go well with mushrooms. The larger leaves in the photo below are young plants of Warrigal Greens.

No need for quantities…once again, you can estimate how much you wish to use by what what amounts and ratio of amounts I estimated I wanted in my stuffing.

Wipe the mushrooms clean. Remove the stalks and finely chop them. Slice and chop the silver beet or spinach leaves.Crumb the cracker biscuits (or use breadcrumbs). Preheat oven at 180˚C.

Heat the oil in a pan add the chopped mushroom stalks and garlic. Cook for about 2 minutes until soft and golden. Remove from the stove.

Mix in in the silver beet or spinach, walnuts, biscuit (or bread) crumbs, a dash of extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, herbs and nutmeg. Spoon the mixture onto the mushrooms. Bake them until cooked through and browned on top; mine were large mushrooms and I baked them for 15–20 minutes, I used baking paper with a little extra virgin olive oil.

I am not one for measuring ingredients when I am cooking – Italians call this method of cooking all’ occhio,( occhio is an eye) that is, I use my eyes and roughly culculate the weights and measures of what I want and employ all my senses (except hearing) to proceed with the preparation and cooking.

These mushrooms were huge! The largest was 19 cm across – perfect for stuffing and baking.

They were very easy to prepare and to cook! No scraping of the brown underside (unless damaged), no peeling of the mushroom skin (many people peel mushrooms) or pre-cooking any of the ingredients used in the stuffing (many use sautéed onion and the stalks of the mushroom in the stuffing) .

As you can see I stuffed four mushrooms and I used about:
1 cup of fresh breadcrumbs (made with 1-2 day old good quality bread)
2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped,
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
4 tablespoons pine nuts
1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Wipe clean or wash mushrooms (depending on how dirty they are) and trim ends of stems.
Heat oven to 180- 200°.
Drizzle olive oil on a baking dish large enough to hold the mushrooms in a single layer.
Combine together the bread crumbs, parsley, garlic, pine nuts, salt and pepper and a big glug of the oil.
Drizzle a little of the olive oil over each mushroom cap.
Fill the mushroom caps with the stuffing.
Drizzle more olive oil over the filling of each mushroom.
Bake until you can smell that they are ready – use your senses – and the filling looks golden on top. Mine took about 20 minutes to cook.
Eat them hot or cold – both good.

Variation: add grated Parmesan cheese to the stuffing mixture.

I feel strongly about eating balanced meals so as a main meal I accompanied them with a salad of green beans, feta, walnuts, egg mayonnaise and pears.

These little roasted tomatoes wern’t bad either.

Tag: Stuffed Mushrooms

STUFFED BAKED MUSHROOMS with Nepitella

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