Fairy food is this!

I really like mushrooms and I eat quite a lot of them. The reason behind such a devotion to all types of edible mushrooms isn’t simply just its taste or umbrella-like cuteness. Somewhere in my head, I associate mushrooms with fairies (I wouldn’t dare say I don’t believe in them for fear one might just drop dead in fairyland you know). I even have a book of fairies and other magical creatures I bought when I was fifteen and went about searching for these otherworldly beings in the most common places, such as my school field — where I actually found a ring of wild mushrooms and insisted that a fairy meeting or gathering had taken place the night before!

Whether or not there’s truth in such a belief doesn’t really bother me. It’s just an image in my head I’ve since a long time ago always connected to mushrooms. They’re quite the medieval, mysterious earthy ingredient from the woods, packed with medicinal properties and guess what — beauty properties too!

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This wasn’t exactly going to be my Beauty and the Feast post but after having a quick look at my eye serum, I realized I’d covered about 50% of the major ingredients in it so here’s my post in dedication to the food event I’m currently holding. For more details and the story behind this event, click on the link above! You’re more than welcome, foodblog or no, to take part. From now till the deadline which is 2 June 08 (Monday), I’ll be trying to post as many Beauty and the Feast posts as possible just to get into the spirit of things.

This Mega-Mushroom Eye Serum by Origins uses mushroom extract, ginger, turmeric, basil, olive oil and grapeseed extract. It doesn’t have the prettiest smell I admit but it works wonders on days where I work well into the night on papers and readings. It has quite the cooling comforting effect after dabbing it onto the eye area too, helping to lull you into sleep. ‘Yummy’ as it sounds, I managed to hit the mushroom, olive oil and basil ingredients; not quite the perfect score but not too bad (if I can say so myself) for my first food event post.

Watch this space as I bring you more interesting recipes and strange food-related beauty products till the 2nd of June!

This recipe is great as an appetizer or a light lunch (if served with a side salad) for 2:

Fiery Cheese & Salami Stuffed Large Flat Mushrooms with Garlic Butter
Ingredients

2 large flat mushrooms, with stalks
3 thin slices of Italian salami
a few slices of red chilli (leave seeds on if you dare)
half a garlic clove, chopped
heaped tbs of green chillis, finely chopped
1/3 cup chopped onions
1/4 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
2 tbs tomato sauce
2 tsp fresh sun-dried tomato pesto
1 tsp dried basil
mature cheddar, grated
salt and pepper, for seasoning

For the garlic butter (enough for 2 mushrooms):
2 tbs butter
half a garlic clove, crushed and messily chopped
1/2 tsp dried basil
sea salt, for seasoning

Preheat oven to 180d Celsius.
Prepare all the chopped vegetables. Remove the stalks off the mushrooms and finely chop them. Slice into thin strips a folded slice of salami.
Heat some olive oil in a frying pan. When the oil is hot (but not too hot), rub the round tops of the mushrooms into the oil. Place these, gills facing up, on a baking tray. Drizzle some oil over the mushrooms and place in oven as you prepare the stuffing.

Add the onions and chopped garlic and fry them over medium heat. When it’s just beginning to brown, lower heat and add the green chillis, tomato sauce, pesto and half of the cherry tomatoes. Cook. Next, add the chopped mushroom stalks and salami. When it’s all cooked through, season till desired taste and add the herbs for added flavour. Remove from heat.

Take out the mushrooms from the oven. Place a salami slice over the top of each mushroom.
Spoon the stuffing (about 3tbs) into the centre of each mushroom. Split the rest of the cherry tomatoes between the two, pushing it gently into the cooked stuffing so that it doesn’t fall off the mushroom. Grate your favourite mature cheddar cheese over the tops and return to oven for 5min.
You can continue to bake these.
I chose to switch the oven setting to a grill after 5min to get the mushrooms to crisp up around the sides and for the cheese to get more off a under-the-grill look. Grill for another 5-10min depending on the size of your mushrooms.

For the garlic butter:
You can make this about an hour before you get started. Because it’s only a small serving you’re preparing, it’s very quick and requires very non-complicated methods. If you increase the amount, keep in a container for later use on roast meats or on toasted bruschetta.

Mix the butter with all the other ingredients. Cover with clingwrap and place in the fridge for flavour to infuse the butter and for the butter to firm up.

Remove from stuffed mushrooms from oven. Serve out onto plates using a large spatula. Garnish with fresh red chilli and some extra herbs. Top each mushroom with garlic butter and serve with a nice salad. I’ve served mine with a dressing-free salad with cherry tomatoes and fresh cherries. Cherries will help calm the heat of the chillis if you eat them after.