Portobello Mushrooms Stuffed with Spinach and Feta

A couple nights ago we wanted to try cooking something that involved portobello mushrooms. Originally I wanted to grill them and have a portobello mushroom sandwich/burger, but instead we came across this recipe on Epicurious that seemed quite good--Portobello mushrooms stuffed with spinach and feta cheese. It sounded a bit more interesting than just tossing the mushrooms on the grill.

So we picked up 4 big portobellos at Trader Joes and I washed and trimmed the stems (we saved the stems for the filling later on).

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Mmm big bellas!

Greg then prepared the marinade (adapted from the recipe, but we only made 2/3 of what they called for):
2/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 garlic cloves, pressed
Dash of coarse kosher salt
Dash of freshly ground black pepper
A little less than 1/4 cup Port (instead of Marsala) (optional)
 ~A bunch fresh thyme sprigs
 4 large portobello mushrooms

We combined these ingredients in a dish and stuck the mushrooms in the fridge to marinate for approximately 3 hrs.

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Close to the end of the marination time we prepared the fillings using my handy little mini food processor (first time used yay!).

1 10-ounce package frozen spinach
12 oz button mushrooms
1ish tablespoons olive oil
2/3 cup chopped sweet onion (such as Maui or Vidalia)
2 garlic cloves, pressed
~1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
~1/4 cup unseasoned dry breadcrumbs
3.5 oz soft fresh goat cheese, crumbled

We chopped all the mushrooms (plus the saved portobello stems) in the processor, and cooked the frozen spinach in the microwave (following the ingredients on the package). We heated up some oil in our pan and sauteed the onions first. After the onions browned a bit we stirred in the garlic and then added the chopped mushrooms.  The mushrooms and onions were cooked for about 8 minutes and then transferred to a dish to cool to room temperature.

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Meanwhile, we preheated the oven to 400 degrees and put the marinated mushrooms gill side down on a baking sheet, and let the mushrooms roast for 15 minutes. (Note: I recommend laying down some foil because it made a mess on our pans!) Once the filling mixture was cooled we tossed with the remaining ingredients and set aside. We then turned the mushrooms over and filled with the stuffing. We felt there was a lot more filling than there was room in the mushrooms, but we made mountains of filling anyways. We sprinkled the mounds of filling with more parmesan cheese and baked for about 15 more minutes. Good stuff!

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Messy pan!

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Mushroomey, cheesey goodness.

Chicken in a Pot

Ah, it's been quite awhile since our last post. Who knew life could get so busy and blogging about food would be last on the list? Well, I feel like we've caught up a bit and I can take some time to write about one of our favorite easy dishes to make.

We saw this recipe on an episode of America's Test Kitchen and had to try it...It's their French Chicken in a Pot. Basically all you need for this recipe is a whole chicken, a dutch oven, and your oven and you're set. We have a nice Lodge pre-seasoned 5 qt. cast iron dutch oven that works for all of our dutch oven needs. It was only $30 on Amazon! It's a great deal compared to the Le Creuset dutch ovens that go for around $250. If you take good care of your cast iron dutch oven, it should be a lasting and cheap choice! (Maybe we'll get a Le Creuset some day, the enamel ones are lovely!)

The best part about this recipe is the end result: the juiciest roast chicken you'll ever have in just under 2 hours!  We've already made this meal several times because it's so irresistibly good! The secret is a hybrid roast/braise in the lidded dutch oven. No liquid is added, so technically it's not a braise, but over time the chicken releases its juices, steam builds up in the dutch oven, and the chicken ends up incredibly tender, moist, and flavorful.

To start off, clean the extra fat and giblets from your chicken and preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Meanwhile, heat up a tablespoon of olive oil in the dutch oven over medium heat until it gets wavy/just starts smoking.  Add the chicken, breast side down, and then throw in some chopped onion, celery, garlic cloves, bay leaf, and rosemary sprigs (we use fresh rosemary from my new herb container garden...yum).  Cook it until it starts to brown (around 5-6 minutes). Flip the chicken breast side up and continue to cook on the stove for 8 more minutes. This way, the white meat wont dry out, and the dark meat will get enough heat to get to the right temperature (160 for white, 180 for dark).

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Browned and ready to go into the oven.

Next, cover the dutch oven with the lid and stick it in the oven. We generally cook ours for about an hour and a half, and then check the temperature with an instant read thermometer. It should be at 160 degrees at the thickest part of the breast when it is fully cooked. You'll notice that the chicken skin will have lost a lot of color, and that the skin looks very unappetizing (we always end up taking off the skin). Don't fret though, it sacrificed itself to flavor the beautiful jus at the bottom of the pot.  We then allow the chicken to rest for 20 minutes, tented with foil.

When you carve the chicken you're going to get puddles of juice. It's wonderful! We also put the jus from the pot through a fat separator, and then pour it over our chicken for some extra chickeny goodness!

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Fresh out of the oven!

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Juicy carving action!

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3-Cheese Bread

This past weekend we also made a delicious home-made three-cheese bread adapted from a recipe from another food blogger.  We've been dappling in bread making over the past few months and decided to give it another go.

This bread recipe was different because it called for semolina flour (course ground durum wheat flour) which is also used to make pastas along with normal all-purpose flour instead of bread flour.  We had some lying around in our cupboard and decided it would be good to use up for this purpose!

I started off by combining the ingredients into the bowl of my stand mixer:

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup semolina flour
2 tsp instant yeast
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/8 cups lukewarm water

I beat on medium speed with the flat beater for about a minute until it looked well combined and then switched to the dough hook to knead for around 5 minutes. Meanwhile, I prepared my 3 glorious cheeses (12 oz total); parmesan-like cheese (aged Sarvecchio) from Wisconsin (coarsely grated), Paranno (cubed), and Italian asiago cheese (cubed).  The recipe called for using Parmesan, asiago and Provolone cheeses but said you could use any you'd like as long as they are strong-flavored so they can shine through in the bread baking process. 

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Cheese blocks...Mmmmm!

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Mix mix mix...

I tossed the cheese into the bowl with the kneaded dough and kneaded until combined. I set the dough into a greased bowl and covered to let rise for 2 hours.

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Pre-rise.

I lightly greased my pastry mat after the 2 hour rise and gently deflated the loaf by patting it down and folding it over a few times. I dropped the dough into its final resting place in the parchment paper sling in our cast iron dutch oven. I covered it and let it rise for another hour in the warm oven. Towards the end of the rising time I took the bread out of the oven, preheated the oven to 425 degrees, spritzed the loaf with water for the crust and split the dough with sharp knife in a cross shape along the top.

I baked the loaf in the covered dutch oven for around 40 minutes (it took longer because the dutch oven had to heat up) and removed the cover for 10 more minutes to until nice and golden brown.  I checked the internal temperature of the bread--it was around 183, but I knew that our thermometer doesn't do too well with temperatures past that so I called it done. I let the bread cool on the wire wrack for about an hour before eating.

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Temp check w/ our finicky thermometer.

Cutting into the the bread you could see nice lovely pockets of ooey-gooey melty cheeses. Mmmm! It tasted so rich with cheese (kind of like Goldfish crackers x10) and had a nice consistency. Greg and I wished we could achieve the nice yeasty flavor bakery breads have, but we figured we can't get that flavor from the store-bought packaged yeast.  Getting a better yeast flavor will be the next goal!

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Sous Vide Lamb Chops

This past weekend we embarked on another experimental cooking adventure involving our trusty camping cooler. We attempted (and succeeded) to cook lamb chops sous vide without any fancy equipment. Hot water, a zip lock bag, a thermometer, and a cooler is all you need to get perfectly cooked meat!

We saw this recipe on the food blog Serious Eats and adapted it using lamb loin chops instead of the more expensive rack of lamb. We started off with about a pound and a half of lamb loin chops we picked up from Whole Foods on sale and trimmed most of the fatty parts off.

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Lovely meat!! (before trimming)

After giving them a proper salt and pepper, we threw them into a quart-size zip-lock bag along with a bunch of fresh rosemary and thyme from our herb garden, roughly chopped garlic, and minced shallots for aromatics. Before sealing the bag, we filled a pot of water and submerged the bag up to the zipper to expel all of the air essentially making a vacuum. After sealing the bag, we took it out of the water and set it aside to prepare the cooking vessel (aka, the cooler).

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Submerge to vacuum-pack.

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Nice and sealed.

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Meat in the cooler.

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Blanket for extra insulation.

We began to warm up around 2 gallons of water in our stock pot to 135 degrees Fahrenheit (an instant read thermometer is vital) and filled our cooler up. 132 degrees is medium rare, but we decided to overshoot our goal because we figured we would lose some heat in the transfer. As it turned out, we still had to heat up a few more small batches of water to get the temperature to 132 degrees.

Once the temperature in the cooler stabilized at 132 degrees we added our bag of lamb chops (which stayed submerged due to the vacuum), closed the lid, and then insulated the cooler with a blanket to make sure it lost as little heat as possible. We kept it in the cooler/cooker for 3 hours (though you can cook it for a minimum of 45 minutes, but a longer cooker time will tenderize the meat). We had to check the water periodically to make sure the temperature stayed around 132 (and had to add more hot water a few times), but all in all it was a pretty easy process.

What came out were gloriously tender pieces of lamb, albeit a little pale in color.  The next step to finish off the cooking process is to get a nice brown sear on each side. We patted the lamb down with paper towels to dry off the surface so it would sear well. We heated up some vegetable oil in our stainless steel skillet and cooked until each side was well browned (about a minute and a half on each side).  We decided to try to make a pan sauce with the juice drippings leftover from our plastic bag by reducing it with some heavy cream and dijon mustard.  It didn't look that pretty, but it sure tasted good. We served the lamb with a side of green beans. The meat was so tender and a perfectly cooked medium rare--well worth the wait!

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Fresh out of the cooler! (Before the sear)

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Mmmm...