Wagamama Week: Ginger Chilli Mushrooms

Years ago, I bought my friend a copy of The Wagamama Cookbook and posted it to him for his birthday. Unbeknownst to me, he had also posted me a copy, so they arrived at almost the same time :) I've occasionally used recipes from it, but early in my cooking career, I didn't have many of the exotic-seeming Japanese ingredients, so stuck to the simplest recipes. Opening my closet now, I find I have almost everything I need, so thought I'd get stuck in by trying the first seven vegetarian recipes in the book, one by one. Otherwise, I'd never have been able to pick - they all look so yummy!

I went through each one and wrote down what I needed - the only new storecupboard ingredient was konbu for making dashi, as the store I go to doesn't have dashi no moto, even though that's what Wagamama use ;) Writing down exactly what I needed made shopping strange - I don't think I've ever gone to the store looking to buy '4 carrots' instead of just 'carrots'. And it had the unfortunate side-effect of making me completely forget about lunch ingredients. On the plus side, I know I spent almost exactly $100, and in theory I will be out of food in exactly one week's time.

So to kick off the week, the brave SO started with one of the simpler recipes while I went to Zumba. It's nice when someone else suffers for your art ;)

Ingredients (Quantities in brackets are my revised suggestions):

• 250g soba noodles (150g)
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 red chilli, trimmed, deseeded and finely sliced
• 2 tbsp peeled and grated fresh ginger root
• 4 (king) oyster mushrooms, cut into 1cm slices
• 4 shiitake mushrooms, cut into 1cm slices
• clump of enoki mushrooms, about the size of your first, broken up
• handful of roughly chopped choi sum
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• generous handful of beansprouts
• 600ml miso soup (500ml)
• 4 spring onions, trimmed and sliced
• 2 sprigs coriander

Cook the noodles in a large pan of boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then drain and divide between two bowls, dropping the beansprouts on top. In a large hot wok, fry the chilli and ginger in the vegetable oil for 15-20 seconds, then add the mushrooms, choi sum and spring onions. Season with salt and sugar, and stir fry for 2-3 minutes.

Spoon the stir fry over the beansprouts and noodles, and ladle over the hot miso soup. Scatter with coriander and serve.

Verdict:

This was a pretty nice combination. The mushrooms lent a sort-of earthiness which was balanced well by the warming ginger and chilli, and the umame miso soup. We did feel like there were too many noodles; we ended up saving about 1/3 of the whole meal for one person's lunch the next day. I think 150g would be a more sensible amount. The mushroom pack we bought had a king oyster mushroom in it, and that stood up to the stir frying considerably better than the oysters and enokis, which basically vanished. I would switch to just using king oyster and shiitake, or even chestnut mushrooms, or add the enokis and oysters only 1 minute before serving. Lastly, the flavours were balanced, but a bit samey. I'd serve this with a hot lemon tea, or a lemonade, to try to bring in some contrasting sourness, as it's missing that note entirely.

Oyster Mushrooms and Chinese Greens in Peanut Sauce

There were big boxes of Chinese greens at the grocers' market at the weekend, and because it's spring, some still had beautiful little yellow flowers on them. I couldn't resist, and bought a tray of oyster mushrooms to go with, since I'd enjoyed the ones I ate at Greenhouse so much. Most stir-fry recipes just tell you to throw them in with everything else, but I can't argue against this strongly enough. The best way to cook them is to lay them all out in a large flat pan with a drizzle of oil, and fry until golden, then flip and repeat - it only takes a couple of minutes and you simply have to be strong and leave them alone. The rest of the veg can be stir-fried normally and then you can put it all together at the end. The result has far better flavour than stir-frying everything together.

Ingredients:

• a large bunch of Chinese greens (we used flowering choy sum)
• a carrot
• 3 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
• 1 tsp Chinese five-spice
• knife-point of cayenne or chilli powder
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 3 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 1 tsp lemon or lime juice
• 1 clove garlic
• 5 tbsp boiling water
• 300g oyster mushrooms

Cut the choy sum bunches widthways in half to separate the thick stalks from the thin stalks with leaves. Slice the thick stalks diagonally into bite-sized pieces, and roughly chop the leafy ends. Reserve any flowers. Peel and mandolin or julienne the carrot. Combine the peanut butter, five-spice, cayenne, sugar, soy sauce, mirin and lemon juice in a small bowl.

Heat a wok and a large flat frying pan, each with a little vegetable oil, until shimmering. Place the oyster mushrooms in the frying pan in a single layer, and fry until golden - about two minutes - then turn and caramelise on the other side. Meanwhile, stir-fry the carrot in the wok for a minute, then add the choy sum stalks and crush in the garlic and fry for a further two minutes. Add the leaves of the choy sum and the bowl of sauce and stir until the leaves have wilted. Top up with boiling water if the sauce looks dry. Serve over rice, with the oyster mushrooms and flowers placed on top, and the sauce drizzled over.

Miso Soup with Shimeji Mushrooms

A slightly bulked-up variant on my previous miso soup, as I had a very long day running around getting my Indian visa sorted, suffered a flat tire on my bicycle, and had to catch up on nearly a week's worth of email. Helpful husband locked himself out of the house so I needed to put together something fairly quickly. I attempted to follow a recipe, but substituted every single ingredient. Heh.

Ingredients:

• a small handful of dried shitake mushrooms
• 3 tbsp sesame seeds
• sesame oil
• a sweet potato, daikon, carrot, or parsnip
• 1 tsp dashi or seafood stock powder
• 3 tbsp of miso paste
• a couple of pak choi or bok choi, or other leafy Chinese vegetables
• a block of shimeji or a couple of handfuls of oyster mushrooms
• two spring onions
• finely shredded nori (seaweed)

Pour enough boiling water over the shitake mushrooms to cover, and leave for at least ten minutes to fully rehydrate. Dry-fry the sesame seeds until golden, then set aside for later. Peel and cut the sweet potato (or other root vegetable) in half lengthwise, then into fat half-moons (about the only thing I kept from the original recipe). Prepare a wok with a tsp of sesame oil and a tsp of vegetable oil, and a large stock pot or sauce pan with the stock powder in the bottom. Fry the sweet potato in the wok for a few minutes, turning irregularly, so it begins to caramelise. When the half-moons have taken on a golden colour around the edges, tip them into the stock pot, and cover with boiling water. Add the miso paste, shitake mushrooms, and their soaking water (although be careful not to add any grit). Simmer for five minutes - stop as soon as the sweet potatoes begin to yield to a fork.

Meanwhile, separate the leaves from the pak choi, and cut the stalks into diagonal pieces. Stir fry for a couple of minutes, then add to the soup in the stock pot. Separate the shimeji mushrooms with your hands. Turn the wok up to a high heat, then fry the mushrooms for a minute on each side, then add them to the soup. Slice the spring onions lengthwise and roughly chop with the pak choi greens, then add them to the soup. Simmer for a minute or so to bring the soup up to temperature, finish cooking the sweet potato, and wilt the greens, then turn off the heat. Taste and add more miso or a splash of soy sauce if necessary. Serve with the sesame seeds and shredded seaweed scattered over.

Beef Stroganoff - Quick Version

Mmm, great for a post-Zumba-workout day! There are two ways of cooking stroganoff - this is the 'quick-cook' method, for which you need to buy very good beef, so that it sears and cooks quickly, without becoming watery or tough. If you are using a cheaper cut, you'll need to stew it much longer - I'll try to make that version another time. Along with some simple steamed vegetables, we usually serve this with tagliatelle, but hot fresh bread or mashed potatoes would probably work delightfully. Wikipedia has just informed me that my version is completely un-authentic, and rice is the proper accompaniment. Oh well :)

Ingredients:

• 500g mushrooms
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• 300g very good fillet or rump steak
• half a glass of white wine
• 1 tbsp sweet paprika
• 150g crème fraîche

Slice the mushrooms into 1/2-cm thick pieces, cutting parallel to the stalk to make them attractive. Fry over a medium heat until softened, then crush in the garlic and fry for a further minute. Remove from the pan. Slice the steak thinly into long pieces. Heat oil in the pan until smoking, then sear the beef pieces quickly on each side - about 10 seconds a pop if you have the pan properly hot and the beef nice and thin. Remove from the pan and rest on a plate for a minute, retaining any juices. Turn down the heat and deglaze the pan with the wine, then return the beef and mushrooms to the pan, and add the paprika and creme fraiche. Stir gently to combine and reheat - don't boil or the cream will separate. Serve over the pasta with a handful of chopped fresh parsley.

Pasta with Mushroom Sauce

Only a small amount of
mushrooms...

After abandoning all domestic responsibility and gliding all weekend, I had to make the best of whatever shopping the cute one had done on Saturday. And it turns out that if you don't want a 2 kg bag of mushrooms in your fridge... you have to do the shopping yourself ;)

There's no way to make a heap of
fried mushrooms look attractive.

So I needed to use up a lot of wilting mushrooms... and pretty quickly, before my evening telecon. I found a recipe online which suggested frying mushrooms and then adding yoghurt to make a creamy sauce for pasta. Mine completely separated within seconds, even though I didn't heat it at all, so I had to take the fried mushrooms out, and reduce down a huge amount of extra liquid.  Another lesson learned: if you want a creamy mushroom sauce, you have to use cream.

Mushroom and Spinach Pancakes with Goats Cheese

I was planning to make a mushroom and goats cheese pizza or calzone this week, but today I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was Pancake Day! It's not as celebrated here as in the UK - probably because cooking a stack of pancakes on a hot stove when it's 40C outside is not a smart move. It's unusually cool this summer - just 28C this evening - so it wasn't too hot to make pancakes instead.

I googled for a recipe to convert my pizza topping into crepe filling, and stumbled across a lovely blog, Closet Cooking, which appears to be run by a guy called Kevin, cooking in a kitchen the size of a closet. I remember those days well! I love using blog recipes because they're made by real people, with real ingredients, and usually around the time constraints of a real job and in a real kitchen. So you know that it's doable in a sensible amount of time, and you're not going to find that the whole thing depends on some obscure ingredient or kitchen implement. So I followed Kevin's excellent recipe for yummy vegetarian savoury filling for whole-wheat pancakes, and they were spot-on. I did change just a couple of things so I've reblogged the recipe with my changes. My only mistake was not tripling the batter so that I'd have to make sweet pancakes :)

Ingredients:
For the filling:

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 500g mushrooms
• a few sprigs of thyme, stripped to their leaves
• 250g frozen chopped spinach
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 splash dry sherry, or splash white wine + 1tsp of sugar
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar 
• 6 wholewheat crepes
• 1 large handful goat cheese, crumbled

For the pancakes (makes 6):

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup plain white flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil

Set your spinach defrosting (in the microwave or on the hob).

Whisk all the batter ingredients together to create the pancake batter and start making crepes. You'll probably find that the chaff of the wholewheat flour sinks to the bottom, so try to ladle up the lower layer occasionally, and add a little water toward the end if you find that the batter becomes too thick.

Drain the spinach well, in a sieve. Crush it a bit with your hands to get all the water out.

Finely chop the onion and gently fry until soft and turning golden, about 8 minutes. Slice the mushrooms thinly. Crush the garlic and add it, the butter, the mushrooms and the thyme to the onions, then sweat for a further 6-10 minutes, until the mushrooms have let out their liquid. Add the spinach and season well with pepper, and a little salt; warm through. Reduce the balsamic vinegar in a small saucepan - it takes a couple of minutes.

Fold the crepes into little pockets and scoop in the filling, tucking in crumbled goats cheese as you go. Drizzle over the balsamic reduction and serve!

BBQ Challenge Week: Day 4: Mushroom, Ricotta and Prosciutto Calzone

I bought some large field mushrooms in the market at the weekend, thinking we'd perhaps marinade them and have them on toasted buns with some cheese. But I'm a bit under the weather at the moment so quite forgot to put the marinade on, and they were looking quite sad when I got home, so I knew they wouldn't last much longer in the fridge. Some friends at work were asking me today how I come up with my recipes, and this was a classic example. The thought process went somewhat along the lines of

juicy bbq'd mushrooms -- yum but plain -- inna bun? -- no time to cook buns -- besides I suck at making buns -- salad? -- hot mushrooms make leaves wilt -- what else do I have? -- ooh, ricotta! -- ricotta-stuffed mushrooms? -- what is this, the 70s? -- would go so well in cannelloni -- but I can't use the oven -- what can I put them in? -- pizza? -- they would go very dry -- calzone??

And at that point I felt I was on to something, so I switched the laptop on and googled for 'bbq calzone' recipes, as I'd never made one before, let alone made one on the barbie. I found this hilarious American youtube video where they make a calzone that would quintuple your risk of pancreatic cancer in a single mouthful. But it had great tips for the basic method, and after another foray into the fridge and storecupboard I was ready to get going. This is enough for two; we doubled it so we'd have lunch ready for another day. I'm sure you could use any fillings you like, but this is what we made.

Ingredients:

• Your favourite pizza dough
• 4 large field mushrooms
• 3 generous tbsp of tomato puree
• 150g ricotta or mozzarella cheese
• a small handful of parsley
• a roasted red pepper, deskinned
• 3 slices of prosciutto or spicy salami
• salt n pepper n flour n olive oil

Let the dough rise up for 15-60  minutes after kneading - longer time will give you better flavour and airier crust. Meanwhile, grill or bbq the mushrooms until tender and juicy, then cut into fat slices. Finely chop the parsley and combine with the cheese, then season well with salt and pepper. Tear the red pepper into strips. Heat a pizza stone on your bbq - or get the flat plate hot but indirectly heated.

When ready, roll out the dough on a well-floured surface into a 30cm x 30cm square piece. Leaving an inch gap around the edge, spread the tomato puree evenly over the surface. On the half closest to you, lay the mushroom slices down, then the pepper strips, then the cheese mixture, and finally cover with slices of prosciutto. Fold the other half over the toppings toward you, then pinch closed around the edges,  making sure it's a good seal. Get a giant spatula, breadboard or plate, and flour well, then put the calzone on and transfer to an again well-floured pizza stone. Cook for 15 minutes on the first side, then 10 on the second, then leave for 10 minutes to rest. If you don't, you will end up with explosive hot sauces going everywhere, and the flavours will be too hot to taste properly. In the meantime you can make a nice salad to go alongside :)

Mushrooms, butter beans and pumpkin scone

Just a super-quick meal of fallbacks tonight: a punnet of mushrooms fried with two cloves of crushed garlic, a bag of broad beans, podded, boiled and dressed with mint, lime and olive oil, and Nigel's lovely pumpkin scone.

Lamb Chops and Beetroot Tzatziki

This is a dish we frequently eat in the spring, when British lamb is cheap and delicious, and beetroots can be dug young and sweet. Apparently 'Lambing Live' is actually reducing the sales of lamb this year, and people find them too cute to eat. Sales of chicken and beef are up... how hypocritical! Without  a demand for lamb as a meat, there wouldn't be much lambing going on in the UK at all...

I like to vary the filling for this dish depending on whatever I have to hand. A tin of chickpeas, some leftover roast potatoes, some blanched broad beans, etc. Just fry with a bit of garlic, yum! Likewise with the tzatziki, if you don't like beetroot, more chopped mint or fresh coriander works fine - although it won't be such an attractively bonkers magenta. Back in Cambridge now - so this serves two!

Ingredients:

• Four lamb chops
• soy sauce
• juice of half a lime
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 100g mushrooms
• 2 cloves of garlic
• a handful of pine nuts
• 10 green olives
• 1 cooked or raw beetroot (not pickled)
• 2 tsp caraway seeds
• 200 ml natural yoghurt
• juice of half a lemon
• a handful of mint leaves
• 2-4 wholemeal pitta breads
• a few handfuls of spinach leaves

Pound the coriander seeds gently in a mortar and pestle. Put the lamb chops in a dish and splash with some soy sauce, the lime juice and the seeds; leave for an hour or while you prepare everything else.

Slice the mushrooms thickly and fry them in a few tsp of vegetable oil until golden on all sides. Turn down the heat and crush in the garlic, and add the pine nuts. Stir through a few times until the garlic is softened and the pine nuts have toasted. Halve the olives and add them at the end (I like to use chilli olives from the market for a bit of heat!)

Meanwhile, grate the beetroot into a medium pyrex bowl. Toast the caraway seeds lightly and crush in a mortar and pestle. Add these to the beetroot along with the yoghurt and lemon juice. Stir through and season with salt and black pepper. Grill the lamb at a high temperature for a few minutes on each side, until golden on the outside but pink in the middle.

Serve the chops with a hot pitta bread (or two) filled with spinach leaves, the mushroom mixture, a generous spooning of tzatziki and a few shredded mint leaves. This is very very messy to eat, so serve with napkins and a bowl to throw in the lamb bones and extra fat!

Portabella Bun with Taleggio

I popped into the Cambridge Cheese Company at the weekend, and bought some painfully expensive but excellent taleggio, partly inspired by the Stickybeaks supper club I attended a few weeks ago. I thought it would go very well on a couple of juicy portabella mushrooms in between some soft buns. I was right!

Two buns served me for dinner, and one would serve one person for lunch. Very hungry people might want some chips and/or salad on the side.

Ingredients:

• 2 large portabella mushrooms (they shrink when cooked)
• 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp mixed herbs
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 2 tbsp water or chicken stock
• a few thick slices of taleggio
• lettuce, tomato, or your favourite sandwich leaf
• nice soft buns or ciabatta rolls
• HP sauce (optional)

Combine the vinegar, sugar, salt, herbs, Worcestershire sauce, garlic and water or stock, and pour over the two mushrooms; marinade at room temperature for at least half an hour, preferably more.

Preheat the grill to a moderate heat, then grill the portabellos about 5 minutes each side: do the round sides first and finish with the gills upright, so as to capture the juices. I've tried frying them in the past, and it works ok but tends to sear the outsides before the inner meat is properly cooked.

Combine on a toasted bun with the rest of the ingredients; I know my youngest sister would then slather with HP sauce and I can't say I blame her :)

Braised Shitake Mushrooms

For years I struggled with cooking shitake mushrooms. They are very different from most other varieties: unlike oyster or enoki, they are very resilient and are never in danger of breaking up while cooking. Unlike European field, chestnut or white mushrooms, they barely sweat while cooking. Undercooked shitake is unpleasant and very chewy, so I really needed a better method than just frying and hoping.

At last I found a good method, in a recipe book I hadn't used in years, simply called 'Japanese Cooking'. I recall I bought it in a Borders sale, years before they went bust...  Anyway. The technique is to braise the mushrooms: rapidly fry them over a high heat to give some caramelisation, then add flavoured liquid, cover and cook on a low heat for at least 20 minutes. Like braising sausages or chicken, this method gives them a nice smoky outer flavour, but cooks their tough proteins all the way through, leaving them soft and succulent. The liquid reduces, leaving a delicious sauce that can be varied with whatever flavours you wish to add. The recipe below serves one person, but can easily be scaled up.

Ingredients:

• 75g sesame seeds
• 10 fresh shitake mushrooms, or dried, rehydrated for 24 hours
• 100ml hot water or stock (if you use bouillon, reduce the amount of soy sauce you add)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sugar

Dry-fry the sesame seeds in a non-stick, heavy-based frying pan, remove when golden, and set aside. After wiping and checking over for odd bits, slice the shitakes into thick slices, making sure to cut through the tougher stalks. (Some people remove these entirely but I think it's a bit of a waste.) Fry the mushrooms over a high heat in a little vegetable oil; they will immediately absorb it but don't be tempted to add more. They will start to hiss as the steam escapes; turn frequently for five minutes until they have taken on a golden hue.

Pour the rest of the ingredients into the pan, stir to combine, cover and immediately reduce the heat to low. Braise for 25 minutes, stirring and turning occasionally, and adding more water if the pan shows signs of going dry. Serve topped with the sesame seeds: this goes well with stir fry and salads, or you could even drop them into a broth of noodles and greens.

Duck with Shitake Mushrooms

Today I felt like something warming and delicious, but not too heavy. It's also getting toward the end of the week so I have a few ingredients which are beginning to look a bit tattered. So here's a fresh take on duck for spring, with a sweet and crip salad and smoky shitake mushrooms. This morning I put the marinade on the duck, a matter of a few minutes work, and this evening the meal took about half an hour to prepare. We settled down and watched 'In Bruges', which was rather excellent!

 Ingredients:

For the marinaded duck:

• a few splashes of soy sauce
• a few splashes of fish sauce
• a thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely grated
• a clove of garlic, crushed
• 2 tsp of Szechuan peppercorns (or substitute 1tsp black peppercorns if unavailable), pounded
• juice of one lemon
• Two duck breasts

For the salad:

• Three small or two large pears
• Half a bulb of fennel
• a small bag or bunch of watercress
• juice of one lime

For the rest:

• A handful of fresh shitake mushrooms (or soaked, dried)
• 1/2 tsp of sugar
• soy sauce
• short grain Asian or 'fragrant' rice

Between 6 and 36 hours before you want to cook, marinade the duck breasts in the marinade ingredients, covered in the fridge.

Set the rice cooking according to the instructions (I use 2:1 water:rice, barely simmering, covered for 10 minutes). Heat a medium-sized heavy-based non-stick frying pan to moderate heat, and place the duck breasts fat-side down. While the duck fries and the rice cooks, thickly slice the mushrooms and add them to the fat rendering from the duck, tossing occasionally. You'll need to turn the duck after about five minutes; don't be worried if the fat is blackened a little on the outside by this time. Remove the mushrooms when they have turned dark gold and shrunk slightly.

While the duck and mushrooms cook, using a sharp knife, slice the fennel as thinly as possible, reserving the fluffy heads if they have them. Peel and cut the pear into long, thin slices. Wash and roughly shred the watercress. Combine the salad ingredients, tossing in the lime juice and a little olive oil if you like.

When the duck is finished cooking - a matter of five minutes per side - remove and leave to rest. Wipe out the pan, return the mushrooms to it, with a teaspoon of sugar, a splash of soy sauce, and enough water to thinly cover the bottom of the pan. Cover and leave on a low heat for about 5-10 minutes, allowing some of the liquid to evaporate and soak back into the mushrooms. If you like, strip the fat from the duck, before slicing into thick bite-sized pieces. You're aiming for a nice juicy pink colour, with clear or slightly pinkish juices. Arrange over the salad, and serve with the rice and mushrooms, sprinkled with fresh coriander or mint leaves.