I love, love, LOVE cooking. Cleaning, however, is like an insult to me. The good must be taken with the bad. I have learned to embrace it. Lately I have realized that I should have spent more time in the kitchen with my mother. Life lesson: It's not until you are older that you learn to appreciate your mother. Now every time I go visit I will make sure to stay in the kitchen with her and write down all the recipes to my favorite Honduran dishes.
My mother NEVER uses recipes. She just goes with the flow. I, however need a recipe as a base. Eventually after making a dish countless times, I no longer need the recipe.
I never follow a recipe to the "T". Tweaking is my specialty. This is not a tutorial on this recipe rather how I took the recipe & made it my own. Stuffed mushrooms are so appetizing to me. If a restaurant has them, they must be ordered. I found this recipe online...no not on pinterest, but I did pin it. This happens to be a healthy & inexpensive dish. Cheese-and-Spinach-Stuffed Portobellos. That's the base recipe I used. I add more parmesan cheese to mine. In Homer Simpson voice "mmmmmm cheeeeesse".
I am getting a hang of this photography thing.
You know what bother's me about cooking shows, how all the ingredients are already prepared, chopped, diced and all placed in pretty little bowls so that the host of the show only has to dunk them all together. 30 minute meals... my ass Rachel Ray (I love you though! But I do NOT love your $20.00 garbage bowl. My dollar store garbage bowl works just fine!) Unless you are a seasoned chef, no one actually chops and dices as fast as you! What I loathe the most is how you NEVER see them do the dishes!
Anyway, here is what a real novice cook's kitchen looks like. That's my cheese and spinach filling. Sometimes I use too many utensils. They are my nemeses. Washing utensils is the most tedious work. My mother-in-law says that i'm always all over the place in the kitchen. Guilty. It's the only way I know to be. I'm like all of Woody Allen's characters all rolled into one.
Here's one of my tricks to the recipe. I scrape off some of the inside of the portabello, chop it up and add it to the filling. After I roast the mushrooms I place them in a muffin pan. By the way, I cook mine in the toaster oven instead of the actual oven. I should invest in a convention oven.
Portobellos lose their cup shape when you roast them. Also to please my hubby I places a slice of salami and broiled them. We love genoa in my house. Hard salami is too smokey. My hubby has a thing about meals with no meat, to him it's an atrocity. Chicken meals also count as an atrocity. If it's not cow or pork, it is vegetarian to him. He'll even pout and have a temper tantrum like my 2 year old if beef is not what's for dinner.
Pour on the marinara sauce. I just happened to have some left over sauce from some rotini we made recently.
Then I topped it off with the filling. I should really call these OVER-stuffed
mushrooms.
This is me watching too much top chef with the hubby. Plating is very important. I tried to get all fancy and gourmet. Ta da! Yummy Yummy!
My kids won't eat this. They don't like mushrooms. I only make it for my hubby and I. Does it not look delicious. It is! Now go try it!
You know what bother's me about cooking shows, how all the ingredients are already prepared, chopped, diced and all placed in pretty little bowls so that the host of the show only has to dunk them all together. 30 minute meals... my ass Rachel Ray (I love you though! But I do NOT love your $20.00 garbage bowl. My dollar store garbage bowl works just fine!) Unless you are a seasoned chef, no one actually chops and dices as fast as you! What I loathe the most is how you NEVER see them do the dishes!
Anyway, here is what a real novice cook's kitchen looks like. That's my cheese and spinach filling. Sometimes I use too many utensils. They are my nemeses. Washing utensils is the most tedious work. My mother-in-law says that i'm always all over the place in the kitchen. Guilty. It's the only way I know to be. I'm like all of Woody Allen's characters all rolled into one.
Here's one of my tricks to the recipe. I scrape off some of the inside of the portabello, chop it up and add it to the filling. After I roast the mushrooms I place them in a muffin pan. By the way, I cook mine in the toaster oven instead of the actual oven. I should invest in a convention oven.
Portobellos lose their cup shape when you roast them. Also to please my hubby I places a slice of salami and broiled them. We love genoa in my house. Hard salami is too smokey. My hubby has a thing about meals with no meat, to him it's an atrocity. Chicken meals also count as an atrocity. If it's not cow or pork, it is vegetarian to him. He'll even pout and have a temper tantrum like my 2 year old if beef is not what's for dinner.
Pour on the marinara sauce. I just happened to have some left over sauce from some rotini we made recently.
Then I topped it off with the filling. I should really call these OVER-stuffedmushrooms.
This is me watching too much top chef with the hubby. Plating is very important. I tried to get all fancy and gourmet. Ta da! Yummy Yummy!
My kids won't eat this. They don't like mushrooms. I only make it for my hubby and I. Does it not look delicious. It is! Now go try it!
