Stuff My Mushrooms.

 

The evenings are getting lighter! 

It's seven o' clock as I write and it's still light outside. Which is lovely. 

This time of year always makes me want to go wandering round National Trust properties and do lots of studying. It's sort of lucky that I have a dissertation and a whole bunch of exam revision to do really... (I also got to go to a National Trust place this weekend - Ightham Mote, it was lovely-pictures below.) 

These lighter evenings make it an awful lot easier to take food photos - living in a flat in halls with awful neon lighting doesn't make for particularly appetising ones. But, tonight I was in the kitchen making dinner, the light looked lovely and I just had to get some photos. 

 Basically, I love mushrooms. (Bryony doesn't! Which means that if we're out and she has food with mushrooms in I always get to eat her mushrooms, so I'm not really complaining...) These are my rice stuffed mushrooms. I've blogged stuffed mushrooms before, but these ones are different. Possibly better.... 

But you'll just have to make both recipes and try them out for yourselves... 

 

Rice stuffed mushrooms (to serve two as a main or four as a side):

150g long grain rice 

2 white onions 

6 spring onions 

2 cloves of garlic 

2 tsp mixed Italian herbs 

1 stock cube 

4 flat cap mushrooms 

A liberal handful of grated cheddar cheese 

A knob of butter and a dash of olive oil 

Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Cook the rice (You place in a saucepan of boiling water and cook for about fifteen minutes until the rice is tender. Don't stir it too much or the starch from the rice is released and it goes all gooey. Drain the rice in a colander, and rinse it through with hot water.) 

2. While the rice is cooking, finely chop the onions. Heat a knob of butter and dash of olive oil in a large saucepan, and add the onion. Fry gently. 

3. Slice the spring onions and add to the pan, along with the dried herbs and a crushed stock cube. Stir in thoroughly. 

4. Crush the garlic (using a knife, or a special garlic crusher if you have one) and add to the pan. 

5. Cut the stems out of your mushrooms, chop these and add to the pan as well. 

6. By now your rice should be cooked. Add it to the onion/garlic/spring onion pan, season with salt and pepper and stir through thoroughly. Turn off the heat. 

7. Place your mushrooms in a reasonably high sided dish or roasting tray, and add a generous spoonful of the rice mixture to each mushroom. If there's any left in the pan after you've run out of room in your mushrooms just stuff it into the gaps between them in the tray, burying the mushrooms. Top with the cheese. 

8. Place the mushroom/rice tray into the oven and cook for about twenty to thirty minutes until the cheese is melted and golden. 

9. Take the tray out and serve the mushrooms. I ate mine with parsnips, but I think this would go really well with cheesy leeks, or even as a side to go with a quiche or a tart.

Northumberland Coquetdale and National Cheese Week

It’s the British National Cheese Week!

Bryony and I absolutely love cheese. Most of our posts here at This is Uni Food feature cheese. You could tell how dangerous our addiction was when we shared a fridge and there was a 3 for 2 deal on cheese at Tesco. You could not move for cheese. We’d probably buy six blocks each, at least half of which were goats cheeses. I mastered the art of eating a whole block of goats cheese, with Ryvita, in one sitting. I'm pretty sure Bryony can match me on that. Needless to say, we genuinely really quite like cheese.

I don’t really have a favourite cheese (unless you count ALL of the cheeses) but I like to try random varieties when I can. So when I was up in County Durham with my family this week, I naturally wanted to try some (relatively) local cheese.

At the Wolsingham Show

We went to the Wolsingham Agricultural Show (which is apparently the oldest agricultural show in the country, fancy that) and amidst all the sheep, oversized vegetables and the monster trucks (why would there NOT be monster trucks? They were pulling other cars apart in tugs of war, it was awesome.) I found a rather lovely cheese called Northumberland Coquetdale. It has a lovely strong flavour but not too overpowering and it’s now one of my favourites. Although when it comes to cheese, I’m easy to please...

Baked stuffed mushrooms with Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, red wine and onion gravy and some roasted veg

I decided I would incorporate my Coquetdale into my Sunday roast, so I made cheesy baked stuffed mushrooms, which taste much cheesier than they look. You can add breadcrumbs to the stuffing and sprinkle some over the top for a crunchier version, but I couldn’t be bothered to make breadcrumbs, so yknow… 

Here’s what you need for four:

4 large flat mushrooms

3 small mushrooms

2 tsp red pesto

1 (or 2 if you’re feeling antisocial) cloves of garlic, chopped or crushed.

Handful of basil leaves, chopped

Handful of rocket leaves, chopped.

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

A really large handful of grated Coquetdale. Or you could use Parmesan or another similar cheese.

1.Preheat your oven to 200C.

2.  Carefully cut the stems out of the large mushrooms, and place the cap of the mushroom gill side up in a small roasting tin. Do you like my fancy mushroom terms? I googled them. 

3. Take the mushroom stems and chop them up into very small cubes. Cut your (whole) small mushrooms into similarly sized pieces and combine in a bowl with the pesto, basil, rocket, garlic, some of your Coquetdale/Parmesan and a small splash of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

4. Divide your mushroom-pesto mixture equally and spoon into the caps of your flat mushrooms. If you’re feeling fancy, you can place a slice of mushroom on the top for decoration. Sprinkle the rest of your cheese on top, and drizzle them all with olive oil.

5. Bake your mushrooms in the oven for around half an hour, take them out and serve - I ate mine as part of a roast dinner, but you could easily serve with toast for a simple lunch or supper.

A gratuitous photo of the beautiful valley we were staying in. From our cottage door looking towards Wolsingham.

Franklins Risotto

 

At the end of the street my Dad lives on in London there is a beautiful farm shop called Franklins, and across the road is their restaurant. Everything is organic and seasonal, and the majority of their produce is sourced locally. Sadly, this usually means that price-wise it's way out of the league of a poor student, but Zosia and Jamie had come to stay - and we had a plan. 

We envisaged creating a beautiful risotto full of things we could never usually justify buying, which we would then eat in the sunshine whilst pretending we were sitting outside a fancy restaurant. Or that may have just been me - but either way we were all excited.

The ingredients list is a bit vague as rather than weighing things out we just put in a bit of what we fancied, but you can really do whatever you like with it.
- 225g arborio risotto rice
- 1 large red onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- handful of chestnut mushrooms
- 2 tsp dried rosemary
- 1125ml of vegetable stock
- 6 spring onions (we only used 3, but they were HUGE)
- 2 handfuls of garden peas in pods
- large glass white wine
- 2 handfuls of fresh tarragon, chopped
- large handful of samphire
- large handful of rocket
- 100g goats' cheese

Start by shelling your peas. This takes ages but is very satisfying - and in our case Jamie was our chief-sheller while Zosia and I started on the risotto. THANKS JAMIE.

Melt some butter in a pan (with a teeny bit of olive oil first to stop it burning) while you chop the red onion and the garlic. Add them to the pan and let them soften for around 5 minutes while you wash and chop the mushrooms, then add those too along with the rosemary.

Organic vegetables are funny looking.

Once you've let that cook for about 2 minutes, add the rice and stir to coat, followed by the wine. Allow that to simmer and reduce down a little bit before starting to add the stock (about a ladle-full at a time) (the full stock-adding process should take around half an hour). Chop the spring onions, and after about half of the stock has been absorbed add them to the pan along with the shelled peas.

About 5 minutes before the risotto is ready, cook your samphire. None of us had ever had it before and Zosia was anxious about putting it straight in with the risotto in case we did it wrong or it turned out awful, so we loosely followed THIS recipe (the first one) and boiled it for 4 minutes. We added the butter and seasoned but instead of oil and lemon wedges we just added a squirt of Jiff from the fridge. We are students, after all.

Once all the stock has been added and the risotto's looking good, add the rocket, tarragon and cheese and stir well. I also added a drizzle of garlic-infused olive oil because I found some in the cupboard and it's amazing, but that's not really a necessity. Serve with the samphire on the side.

So there you go. It sounds posh, but in actual fact we ate a restaurant quality (if we say so ourselves) meal for only £4 each. Eating fancy on a budget is easy when you cook for yourself.