Bleu Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms and/or Arrancini
My mother-in-law, Jane, makes a beautiful spread of hors d’oevres on Christmas Eve, and it left me feeling very inspired to direct some energy on my appetizer game. I could seriously be content to eat appetizers instead of a meal for dinner. Appetizers are small and delicious, and you can try a lot more things than if you’re just having steak and potatoes.
There are more appetizer recipes to come, but I feel these three cover a lot of what is desired in an appetizer spread: something meaty, something sweet, and something cheesy and bready. I’ll also direct you to one of my favorite appetizers of all time: deviled eggs. Alas, Jim’s whole family despises hard boiled eggs, so I don’t have much reason to make them often!
Jim got me this fantastic book for Christmas called KitchenWise by the brilliant, mastermind food scientist, Shirley Corriher, and I have gleaned so much information from it! The ginger fruit salad and the flank steak recipes below are from her.
However, the bleu cheese stuffed mushrooms come from my heart. I live about six hours away from my home town where a great little restaurant serves tempura battered bleu cheese and herb stuffed mushrooms. Now I pride myself on being able to make most things that I crave with the exception of Home Run Inn pizza and those bleu cheese mushrooms, but in an attempt to recreate them, I made something else in the process and was really happy with the result!
I had a little left over filling after stuffing the mushrooms, and serendipitously also had leftover saffron rice, so I combined the powerful forces and rolled out arrancini, breading and frying them with the mushrooms.
I can’t imagine these mushrooms without the sauce, but feel free to omit if you want. It is essentially an alfredo sauce made with bleu cheese and creme fresh.
Despite living in quarantine for almost a year now, it is still very difficult for me to refrain from making too much food. It’s just the two of us, but I love cooking for a crowd. I managed to exercise restraint and foresight and breaded 30 mushrooms and put 20 of them in the freezer. I only fried up 10 and grab one or two as a nice addition to my dinner (though, they’re obviously best fresh).
Ingredients
10 oz whole baby bella mushrooms, cleaned
8 strips of bacon, fat reserved for soffrito
1 carrot, minced
1/2 leek (or 1/4 onion), minced
1 small celery stalk, minced
4 oz bleu cheese, divided
2 tbsp breadcrumbs
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup flour
2 eggs
2 tbsp heavy cream
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup panko breadcrumbs
1/3 cup Italian breadcrumbs
1/4 tsp onion salt
4 oz creme fresh
4 tbsp butter
Process
Gently pull off the stems of the mushrooms. Set the caps aside and dice the stems finely.
In a large skillet, fry the bacon and set on a plate lined with paper towels to absorb some of the grease. In the same skillet on medium heat, fry the minced carrot, leek/onion, and celery, stirring occasionally until very tender, about 20-30 minutes. (This is called soffrito.) Add the diced mushroom stems and Worcestershire sauce, and cook for an additional 5 minutes.
While the soffrito cooks, crumble half of the bleu cheese with breadcrumbs in a medium bowl. Crumble the bacon into this bowl as well. Then line a large jelly roll pan with aluminum foil and arrange mushrooms on it in rows, bottoms facing up.
Once soffrito and mushrooms are finished cooking spoon them into the bowl with the bleu cheese, breadcrumbs, and bacon. Combine with a spatula until homogenous. You should not need to add salt as the bacon, bleu cheese, and Worcestershire have plenty.
Using a 1/4 tsp measuring spoon (because it is small and easier to navigate), stuff the mushrooms with the soffrito mixture, packing the stuffing in tightly. They should each have a rounded, heaping amount. Excess stuffing can be used in arrancini, if desired.
Cover the pan with Press-N-Seal and let it chill for four hours or overnight in the refrigerator.
After the stuffed mushrooms have chilled, prepare a bowl of 1/2 cup of flour.
Uncover mushrooms and one by one dredge them in the flour bowl and returning to the pan. Dump out remaining flour from the bowl and then add and combine the Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and salt. In a second bowl beat eggs and heavy cream. Again working one by one, dredge the mushrooms in egg and then coat generously with breadcrumbs. Place back on baking sheet.
Once all mushrooms have been breaded, heat a small-medium pot with about 2″ of oil to 300F. Fry mushrooms in batches of two. Fry for 30 seconds to one minute per batch. Sprinkle salt on the mushrooms as they come out of the hot oil so the salt sticks to them. Any breaded mushrooms you don’t plan to eat right away can be kept in a freezer-grade Ziploc bag in the freezer.
The sauce can be made ahead of time, as the mushroom frying goes by very quickly. Melt 4 tbsp of butter. Add 4 oz of creme fresh and the remaining 2 oz of crumbled bleu cheese. Crush the cheese with a whisk and stir continuously until thick and creamy. Drizzle over fried mushrooms and serve immediately. You can garnish with chopped chives or green onions.
Ginger Fruit Salad
This is a fruit salad I put together based on a recipe from the book KitchenWise where the author makes a ginger-infused syrup to pour over fresh fruit. Her recipe called for a few fruits I did not have on hand, but it doesn’t matter so long as you have the same volume of fruits. This recipe will work with just about any fruit.
I really like fruit salads! Last year my favorite was the winter citrus salad I got from my friend Lauren. If you don’t like grapefruit, substitute it for two oranges. If you don’t like blueberries, use strawberries. If you don’t like cantaloupe, use watermelon! This is a very versatile mix!
Ingredients
1/2 cantaloupe, balled
1 grapefruit, peeled and pulp removed
1 orange, peeled and pulp removed
2 cups of green grapes, sliced in half lengthwise
2 cups of blueberries
2″ of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1 cup of boiling water
2 cups of cool water
1 cup of sugar
Process
Place cut fruit in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate.
Pour 1 cup of boiling water over the freshly grated ginger and allow to steep in a bowl for half an hour. Then strain the ginger pieces out and retain the syrup.
In a medium-sized pot on medium heat, combine sugar, 2 cups of cool water, and the ginger syrup. Heat only to the point that the sugar dissolves. Allow to cool completely and then pour half (or all…) over the fruit. Allow to chill overnight so ginger syrup soaks in.
London Broil Rollups
Another KitchenWise recipe for you! Flank steak has a reputation for being really tough, but this recipe combined with the quality of meat and the oven time take toughness out of the equation. Don’t forget that you have to cut flank steak against the grain. I rolled these up and skewered them for appetizers, but this flank steak is great on its own for fajitas!
Ingredients
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tsp McCormick’s Montreal steak seasoning
2 tbsp dark brown sugar
2 lb flank steak, preferably USDA Grade prime or choice, about 3/4″ thick
Process
Combine all ingredients in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag and slide in the flank steak. Allow it to marinade overnight, turning it once to ensure the marinade is evenly distributed.
Place oven rack about 4″ from the broiler. Place a large cast iron skillet on that rack in the oven and turn on the broiler. Allow the oven and pan to heat up for 15-20 minutes. When it’s hot, take out the cast iron skillet (use oven mitts!!!) and place on the stove.
Take the steak out of the fridge and shake off any excess marinade. Lightly coat with oil and place on the cast iron skillet. It should sizzle.
Return skillet to oven and broil 8 minutes. Flip the steak and broil an additional 10 minutes. (Broil time may be longer for thicker steaks.)
Remove steak from broiler and let it stand tented under foil on the skillet for 10 minutes.
Slice the steak perpendicular to the grain in thin slices. This tenderizes the meat. Roll the slices up and secure with a toothpick. Garnish and serve with sesame seeds and sliced green onions, if desired.
Oh my! As I viewed the food you posted on my big screen, i swear i was salivating….goodness, it all looks so delicious! thank you for sharing your wonderful talent……I’m excited to be able to pick and choose which I want to tackle first! As always….yuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmm