My Portobello Tale

I brought my family out at The Gardens and had lunch at Tony Roma's yesterday because my wife just had to have their shrimp farfalle! Not ribs, not burgers, but pasta..

Anyway, while there I had the chance to stock up on my cooking condiments at Cold Storage as many would know that they stock stuff that many other supermarkets don't (even though they and Giant stores share the same parent company).

While pushing the shopping cart + my little boy, I stumbled upon a crate of Portobello mushrooms. Here's how they normally look like:
Now, I love mushrooms, but neither my kid or wife eats them. Here is a fully matured fungi, the size of my palm and costs like RM4 each, and I just had to find a way to sneak it into their dinners, without giving the robust, wholesome flavor away..

To the Jamie Oliver wannabe's out there, mushrooms are a joy to prepare - as long as you know how.

Most of the issues surrounding the prep work for them are whether you need to wash them, dust them, remove the stems, discard the outside 'skin' and/or removing the 'gills'. My advice is, as long as you know how they taste like once you've cooked it, and if you do like it, then you should be ok.

*****

2 hours later, I was still thinking of how many mushrooms should I take. My kid was urging me to take him to the cereal corner, so I just plopped two pieces into the plastic bag at RM7.10. Guess how much it's gonna cost you at the upscale diners?

So, I woke up this morning, with full enthusiasm to prepare breakfast. I decided that the best way to appreciate the exquisite flavor of the mushrooms were by cooking it on its own, minus all the fancy-schmancy sauces and what-have-you.

I picked up really fresh sausages at Jaya 33 supermarket a couple of days ago, so that went onto the grill together with the mushrooms, tomato halves as well as a couple of eggs. Oh, the mushrooms have to be dry for this to work, so too your pan which needs to be very hot, if not you'll end up steaming the fungi which is what we don't want to happen.

You might also want to drizzle some good olive oil and a teaspoonful of unsalted butter just to get the flavors going. The tomatoes could also use a pinch of salt and some freshly cracked black pepper, but be careful not to overcook them.

Served with a hot piece of freshly toasted baguette, and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice - Yum!