On Tuesdays this term I get home nice an early (around 11:30am), so I get to have a nice homemade lunch. On the bus ride home I was thinking about what to have for lunch and I just couldn't think of anything that I had at home (fridge full of nothing syndrome). I didn't want to go to the store because I knew I'd just end up getting bread and cheese - not that there's anything wrong with bread and cheese, but I'm really trying to actually cook for myself as much as possible. Homemade food is satisfying and is often both more nutritious and cheaper than ready made or fast foods.
I get home and start rummaging through my fridge. Deep in the depths of my veggie drawer I find a small paper bag with four crimini mushrooms. Now, I love mushrooms. I love mushrooms to a really rediculous extent, but I rarely eat them. So how could I make lunch out of four mushrooms? Well, I've always got various kinds of pasta in the house so I pulled out some vermicelli and decided to turn it into lunch.
I sliced the mushrooms into relatively thick slabs, maybe 1/4-1/3 of an inch thick. I put a little butter in a nine inch enameled cast iron pan. I let the butter just begin to brown and then chucked in the mushrooms on medium heat. To the side I started a pot of water for the vermicelli. I noticed that the mushrooms weren't really wilting so I decided to toss in about 3 tbs of chicken stock to soften them. The mushrooms started giving up their liquid and the stock started reducing into a thick chickeny-mushroomy sauce.
I cooked the pasta until it was al dente and let the mushrooms saute until they had sucked up all the remaining stock. I dressed the pasta with a little sesame oil, tossed in the mushrooms, and then topped it off with a few toasted sesame seeds. It was delicious. It only took about fifteen minutes total and was much better than a sandwich from the refrigerator case.
I get home and start rummaging through my fridge. Deep in the depths of my veggie drawer I find a small paper bag with four crimini mushrooms. Now, I love mushrooms. I love mushrooms to a really rediculous extent, but I rarely eat them. So how could I make lunch out of four mushrooms? Well, I've always got various kinds of pasta in the house so I pulled out some vermicelli and decided to turn it into lunch.
I sliced the mushrooms into relatively thick slabs, maybe 1/4-1/3 of an inch thick. I put a little butter in a nine inch enameled cast iron pan. I let the butter just begin to brown and then chucked in the mushrooms on medium heat. To the side I started a pot of water for the vermicelli. I noticed that the mushrooms weren't really wilting so I decided to toss in about 3 tbs of chicken stock to soften them. The mushrooms started giving up their liquid and the stock started reducing into a thick chickeny-mushroomy sauce.
I cooked the pasta until it was al dente and let the mushrooms saute until they had sucked up all the remaining stock. I dressed the pasta with a little sesame oil, tossed in the mushrooms, and then topped it off with a few toasted sesame seeds. It was delicious. It only took about fifteen minutes total and was much better than a sandwich from the refrigerator case.
I went through a similar dilemma the other night myself and decided to utilize a new trick I'd picked up earlier in the day (because us self-taught cooks are ALWAYS finding these, right?). I used my microplane to grate a couple cloves of garlic into a sauce of olive oil and melted butter ( a couple of tablespoons in total) and added salt, freshly ground pepper, thyme and basil, then tossed my cooked fusilli with it and a little freshly grated parmesan - all the garlicky herb taste and very evenly coated on the pasta - total win!
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